A Beast Who’s Lost His Place “There’s nothing more dangerous than a beast who’s lost his place.”

Ban-Dai Visual(Sunrise Sotsu Agency),”The Real Folk Blues, Pt. 2,” from the animé series Cowboy Bebop

20 JANUARY, 2226 12:01:27 TAI

“I, Cynthia Louise McKinley,” the treacherous bitch daring to call itself Chief Justice of His Supreme Court said to His fucking Gilda, that black bitch repeating the words, her filthy hand defiling a copy of His Word, the so-called fucking Chief Justice then going on to say,”Do solemnly swear.”

“Do solemnly swear,” the little bitch parroted.

“That,” the traitor swearing her in said,” I shall faithfully execute all the duties and responsibilities of the office of the Governor of the Republican Union of—“

“Goddamnit,” Guy Thomas Zellner, Governor of the Union, shrieked at the HV,”I’m your Governor, I am your motherfuckin’—“

“—Governor,” fucking Gilda told him back,”of the Republican Union of Terranova.”

“To faithfully uphold, defend and execute the Terranovan Articles of Union—” that bastard so- called fucking Chief Justice had balls to say, his Governor screaming,”goddamnit, I said those were null and void, null and v—“

“—and,” that miserable, troublemaking litle black piece of fucking pootie repeated,”the Official Code of Terranova, to the best of my abilities, so help me G—“

“So help you God is right!” her Governor screamed, getting in the face of the HV projector now a million fucking pieces burning holes in the Grade One Axeminster, His California-Winchester M2149 rail pistol smoking, blistering the hand that held it, the Governor of the Union, the He who was over all others not noticing a damn thing, shouting into the dead air,”so help you God is right, bitch!” the foam on His lip cooling as it evaporated.

“Guy?!” His man whined and puled like his little whore of a fucking sister.

“Guy?!” Matthew repeated, still not acting like a fucking man was supposed to, all His efforts at training him fucking going to waste, same as always.

“Guy?!” Matthew said, in an even bitchier, whinier tone, as his Governor turned and looked down upon him, His body trembling, jaw clenching in frustration. “Guy, are you aaaaahhhhhhhhhhahahahahhhhhhhaaaaaaaaa!”

“For all you motherfuckers!” the Governor of the Union repeated, His Capitol carrying out His command without hesitation, the He who was over all others stomping the twitching, flailing body of His little bitch onto his back.

His Lord smiling, as He looked down upon him.

20 JANUARY, 2226 13:00:00 TAI

They’d sworn in a new Governor, but the fighting was so far from over it wasn’t even funny. Lieutenant Coloniel Carson Selkirk led his Commonwealth Forces Intelligence Arm field reconnaisance team deeper behind enemy lines, his second, 1st Lieutenant Meghan Polk, bringing up the rear, the other eight women under his command, and the Mid reporter who’d been with him through the worst of three decades’ worth of war and false peace between them, all of them cautiously making their way through woods running parallel to Intercounty Highway 75 as it headed south towards Metter, the team already within sight of the bridge indicating the first of the city’s three exits on the intercounty.

The access ramps to Terranova Highway 121 were locked down tight, no ground vehicles on any of IC 75’s twenty lanes, a column of DNSB Teüfelhund Schwerpanzers, bristling with armament, thundering the wrong way down the southbound lanes at well over Mach times three and a quarter, the eleven of them hunkering down behind trees, peeking out, knowing that those trees wouldn’t do them a fucking bit of good if those gay Nazi ass pirates had actually spotted them….

They hadn’t, Carson turning his attention back to the access ramps, their blocking fields up and running at full strength, hastily-erected and heavily-armed checkpoints set up behind them, a pair of tanks —Sakuran Type 824s—sitting behind each of the checkpoints Carson was facing, ready to hose anyone who’d gotten that far.

The polynoculars built into his suit zoomed in on 121 itself…ground traffic moved, but not at all your typical Friday afternoon post-lunch hour rush, especially with a Sam & Bill’s girdling both sides of the highway near the northbound on ramp and a somewhat smaller South Candler Mall sprawling across both sides of the street near the southbound exit ramp…too many of the groundcars he was seeing bristled with 90-millimeter railguns and 25 mm Gatling railers grafted on to them, these trolling the highway like cops, except they weren’t, the National Police having been formally disbanded immediately following last month’s recall election.

Citizen’s volunteer militia, backed up by Ranger Light Infantry and Reggie pissboys in combat sleds and Meat Wagon armored personnel carriers, there to make damn skippy the slobs in the unarmed ground vehicles went about the business which required them to be on the road in the first place and not do anything construed as treasonous towards their Governor; otherwise….

He trailed off, thinking about their situation instead of visualizing even their enemies being jazzed by the neural servos they’d willingly had implanted into their medulla oblongatas a month ago…their cover extended only to the back of the MegaCenter; from there, it was urban sprawl all the goddamn way down to Unionsboro—that was where they had to be—they might as well be as naked as a bunch of freakin’ Topaz for all the good that cover would do them…even with Zellner’s restrictions on civilian travel, especially on shopping, there were still way too many people out there for his liking.

“Not good,” Jay Todman said over his link, the Mid reporter standing shoulder to shoulder with his old friend.

“Smokes some fat bone, I tell you what,” Carson replied.

“I love these missions where we have to paint big fucking bullseyes on our backs,” he added,”and with flourescent paint too.”

He sighed, the sigh feeling tighter in his chest than it should, Carson not wanting to think about what that meant, instead telling Jay the very obvious.

“But, we got to get to Unionsboro, somehow.”

“You think the back of that Wal-Mart’s being trolled?”

That was Meghan now, thinking what he was thinking, trying to come up with some fresh ideas, that being part of any good second’s job…she was just seventeen, having compressed two years’ worth of Academy into one, wanting to get her butt out here to serve her Commonwealth as quickly as possible…. That had him thinking about how old he’d been when command of his old team had fallen to him during the J-War.

Which had him just as quickly wanting to think about something else.

Anything else.

Even their current predicament.

“It’s a safe bet, Leftenant,” Carson replied,”equally a safe bet their one-tens ain’t the ones doing the trolling, you’d never catch any Wal-Mart employee outside the store except the cart pushers.”

“Knowing Wal-Mart,” Jay commented,”they probably got them armed, dangerous and skulking about in the back.”

“Yeah,” Carson replied,”all one of ‘em, along with about a good two, three dozen Microsoft Security icewarriors and a tac unit or three of Mountaindickhead colonial deps, maybe some citizen’s volunteer militia thrown into the mix…League regulars’ll be in the store or out front, I’d reckon on about one or two companies’ worth on this side alone.”

“Five hundred meters,” Meghan observed,”of woods between them and us.”

“And,” she added,”no way to go but through.”

Nodding his head, Carson led the way, his Browning M3 assault railer at the ready.

20 JANUARY, 2226 13:18:47 TAI

Saturday had been the twentieth anniversary of the attack on Bearclaw Station.

Naturally, the Movie Board had gone out of its way glorifying the “great League victory against the forces of Babylon the Great,” as See BS’ Harrold Osgoode had put it in the ‘cast of the Saturday Early Morning Show devoted exclusively to the destruction of an unarmed terraforming station, the eventual slaughter of 3,500 of its ten thousand personnel and the nine years’ of bloody, brutal, unrelenting war which had followed on the heels of that “great victory.”

Osgoode and the three women forced by men’s fists and men’s pricks to be his mouthpieces had interviewed Yanker and Mountaindick spacers who’d been there—including her alcoholic bastard father and the commander of the League Mobile Force—their memories being a bit hazy owing to two decades of opportunity to recreate the “battle” in their image, grafting guns and shielding onto the first of the Middies’ permanent terraforming stations, increasing the number of Commonwealth Forces warbirds present at said combat by a factor of ten, twelve and a half or even twenty or thirty thousand, depending on which of those veterans was recalling his part in carrying out the twenty-third century‘s 9/11.

Hell, the His Story Channel’s infinity of shows dedicated to telling tales of masculine derring-do set during 9YW and all the wars before it had its army of experts pinning down the number of Commonwealth and Midnight Sun machines at no less than five divisions apiece, along with ten or twelve armies of ground forces which had been sent to Big Sky to force its “loyal Mountaindove citizens” to obey the will of “offworld dyke feminist troublemakers.”

Lord knows, the History Channel never lies.

Naturally, the Movie Board—who’d spent that long or longer making her the devil of their ancient tales—had not bothered to consult the commander of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken on her side of what had happened twenty years ago. Which was fine by her.

Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier didn’t much feel like talking about that, not even to Shelli Krebs, sitting across the relief deck from her, watching her fuck up a plate of ribs which had been in the icebox since God knows when, washing them and the bowl of ice-cold, limp, greasy chips buried in ketchup, mayonnaise, blue cheese dressing and 57 sauce down with her third two-liter self-chilling bottle of Cryogenic…three solid weeks of hyperspace interdiction-counterinterdiction duty—over twenty hours, subjective—made for one hell of an appetite.

The ship was in good hands, Jami’s wife and second, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads, had the conn, she’d know….

…alarms screaming in her fucking head, the astro deck a shambles, enemy warbirds all over the goddamn place, Elli Tilghmann lying there strapped to the conn, a piece of the bloody ship sticking out from between her eyes.…leaving a frightened, nineteen-year old girl who didn’t have clue one about a goddamn thing in command of the Unbroken, the only thing standing between all those hostile machines and ten thousand civs in the wrong place at the wrong time.

With absolutely the wrong fucking blonde bitch holding their lives in her trembling hands….

…what to do when the tachyar lit up enemy warbirds and assault transports trying to make a go at strengthening League forces already in the Proxima Centauri system.

That, she reminded herself, was what mattered right now, the fighting in the system of the infamous Hell Star was now three days shy of being in its first month, casaulties on the JMC side running in the tens of millions, only a fraction of the prison’s 610,523,943,463 female political prisoners housed in twenty-six cellblocks on the surface of Tartarus’ rockball core liberated thus far.

That was what mattered, her part in this war, not what happened two decades ago, certainly not her failure to deliver all the station’s residents from the evil they’d suffered at fucking Black Mountain, anything she had to say on that subject wouldn’t do a damn thing towards bringing any of them back.

She bit into another rib, getting congealed fat and barbecue sauce all over her face, stripping it down to the bone before taking another swallow of smoky, ice-blue sports drink—part LOX, part glucose, part adenosine triphosphate, part fruit flavoring and blue food coloring, kept chilled by the circuitry in the bottle to a couple hundred degrees below zero, hence the name—sticking her hand into another mound of chips, shovelling them in, CBC’s second-best reporter—second only to Irma DeLong herself—fiddling with the sensorshades she wore, waiting silently, patiently for Jami to talk to her about that day.

“Baby,” she said, after washing down the chips she ate,”there’s no reason for you to sit there and watch me eat; help yourself, we end up cooking too much food round here anyway, God knows we can use the help in cleaning out the icebox.”

“I’m good,” Shelli replied,” thanks.”

“Just made a fresh pot,” Jami said, picking up another carnosaur rib,”if you want a cup; sugar, miel escarlet, non-dairy creamer and hot chocolate mix are all in the cupboard above the coffeema—“

She threw the rib back down onto the plate, running a wetwipe across her face, sealing up her suit, already through the inter-section connector and onto Unbroken’s red-lit astro deck by the time it had dawned upon her that the radar alarm had blown of, one of the five-thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate’s security troops shouting out,”commander on deck!” even as Jami took her place at the command conn, accepting the transfer of all command functions to her station, eyes on the master holodisplay showing her the view from the 432 Raptor III unmanned aerospace vehicles strung out along the squadron’s vanguard, their 144 Mark IV Osprey fightercraft trailing the Raptors, the twelve frigates just behind them. The enemy formation on vector to Proxima Centauri from Mandela was huge, at least three, four groups of Yanker Freeman Lang-class frigates, Azanian Johannesburg-class frigates and N.C.O. Manassas-class frigates, one Sakuran Noabunga-class battleship, a pair of Azanian Chakas trailing behind and ten thousand assault transports—mostly Yanker CS-141D Astrolifter-class birds—in the center of all those warbirds, fighters and UAVs.

All of whom detected Unbroken and her squadron the same instant they’d detected the enemy, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson starting to tell her this much, when the commander of the Unbroken started snapping out orders:

“All fighters, alter vector zero-nine-zero, Raptors, alter vector two-seven-zero, frigates, hold present vector, all units, increase speed, close to gun range, hold off on the hyperspace tactical missiles until absolutely necessary!”

“Leftenant,” she added, Stevie pouring it on, driving the Unbroken into the heart of the enemy formation,” send signal to the nearest available JMC units, advise them we’ve got a big convoy on our hands, and that we could use all the help we can get.”

“…nothin’,”Pappaw said, looking down at him, shaking his head,”but a fuckin’ disappointment to me.”

“Been better,” he added, turning to Daddy now,”if you had let your bitch go off and have an abortion, Jacob, least then, you wouldn’t have to be saddled with another bitch, and a boy so fuckin’ weak he might as well be a little bitch too.”

“I know, Daddy,” Daddy said, looking down at Guy as he lay twitching on the floor, foaming at the mouth, lips working manically to try and tell them he could be every bit the man his Pappaw wanted him to be, just, please, give him one more chance.

He could only manage incoherent gibbering, Pappaw, with a snort of contempt, turning and walking out of the living room, Daddy spitting in his son’s spasming face, telling him,”you fuckin’ make me sick,” before following Pappaw out of the room, leaving the six-year old boy alone to flail about and babble helplessly on, not even able to keep himself from crapping and peeing….

…all over herself, the little bitch flopping around on the bed, messing the sheets up underneath her, the monocarbon wire binding her by her wrists and ankles to the footboard and the headboard, the cut extension cord taped to her pussy and her asshole spitting photons up in that shit, little Gilda screaming like the little bitch she was, begging her bubba for more of the same, just like all ‘em other sluts in ‘em pornos begged their bubbas—and their sissies too—to do all sorts of nasty things to ‘em.

“What the fuck?!” Daddy roared, storming into Gilda’s room, ripping both cords out of her stinking pootie-poot, giving the horny little girlie the back of his hand across her screaming cooter head.

“Goddamn horny fuckin’ lil’ bitch!” he spat out. “What the fuck’s the idea makin’ your brother do that shit to you, huh?! What the fuck is that?!”

“G-guy,” that deceitful little Gilda dared talk back to her Daddy,”w-was the o-one—“

“Oh, hell no, hell no,” Daddy screamed, slapping the shit out of that nasty little cooter again and again and again,”hell no, you just didn’t try putting this off on your bubba, you goddamn fuckin’ whore! Fuckin’ look at him, he’s a damn cripple, for Christ’s….”

20 JANUARY, 2226 13:30:13 TAI

…sake. He sipped His fourth waterglass of vintage Kentucky, Matthew nursing his third, both men watching the History’s Greatest Battles marathon on the History Channel—one of Viacomm’s ratings leaders amongst the target audience—former CBS anchorman Peter J. Mudd talking in the background as Terranovan and Mountaindove warbirds swarmed all over that bitch, putting 406s through her shielding, through her, while spaceplanes loaded down with security troops moved in on what was left of that eyesore of a Middie terraforming station to capture as much of that Mid pootie-poot as Black Mountain could train, and that had been one hell of a lot of stinking pootie.

“We were up against a fiercely determined enemy,” Commanding General Bradley Richard Selkirk, Supreme Commander of His forces, said, as he sat in his quarters aboard the Benjamin Zellner, talking with one of the History Channel’s nameless interviewers,”ready to do just about anything to make sure the rule of law and of the people did not prevail on Big Sky, that their lesbian dominatrix jackboot order had no opportunity whatsoever to spread their political correctness and its attendent moral depravities to yet another innocent, unsuspecting people.”

“They,” General Clarence D. Braxton, commanding His Mobile Force, said, the camera dissolving to him now,”were cowards, pure and simple. Sure, they were able enough to terrorize and intimidate the weak and defenseless with their Death Star of a so-called terraforming station, the stockpile of biological and chemical weapons it manufactured and the nearly thirty thousand frigates and battleships it housed. But, against the spirit, tenancity and superiority—in technology, intellect, creativity, science, evolution and morals—of the Terranovan fighting man and of our Mountaindove allies, they simply could not prevail; when they realized they were fighting an enemy they could not bully into submission, they fled.”

“But,” Mudd now said to Bradley, the two of them in the main History Channel studios in Vargas’ Saint Ronald Reagan Boulevard,” the Big Sky government claims, to this day, that the Commonwealth and its satellites liberated their people.”

“And,” Bradley, snorting contempt, cocking his head the way his Governor had only seen one other man do before him, replied,”you liberals in the media believe and spread that load, furthering their attempt to poison our worlds with their politically-correct, morally-incorrect way of thinking.”

The HV dissolved to closeups of nasty little bitches, all hanging upside down by meathooks shoved up in their stinking pooties, fucking T&A swaying and dangling from every lamppost, flagpole, stoplight, bridge and g-rail like a fat crop of jackapples weighing down the branches on which they depended.

“Those women,” Bradley’s voice said,” who refused their ‘liberators’’ call to give up the civilized behaviors of their men and return to the jungle paid the ultimate price...they did not die quietly or with dignity,” the camera panned even closer on ‘em licentious fuckin’ goddamn howlers, making sure every motherfucker out there saw all their burns, all their bruises, all their welts, each and every last slash across their titties and their twots, “ but suffered for a long time,” the HV dissolved to bitches throwing down on other bitches, as even more bitches watched and cheered from the bleachers of a passible fascsimile of New Seattle’s City Center Stadium, “horribly degraded, sexually abused, tortured, murdered, all for public amusement, for the amusement of both the Commies and the women of Big Sky who betrayed their men, who obeyed the call of the wild, who sold their people and their world to their jackbooted mistresses and their diabolical conspiracy.”

Damn, the Governor of the Union thought to Himself, Bradley’s done went and learned himself a big word; I could almost….

“…be proud of ‘im,” he heard Pappaw say to Uncle Roger, as Daddy led the eight-year old boy from the boys’ bathroom , past all the reporters, TSID, Gnats, school security, teachers and classmates all jammed up into that little hallway. “Almost,” he added, Pappaw snorting like he usually did when he was talking about someone he didn’t like . “I would think,” Uncle Roger replied,”there’d be no’ almost’ to it, Benjamin. After all, it is his first kill, most—“

“Yeah,” Pappaw said, snorting again,”his first kill, and he couldn’t even fuckin’ get that right…. ”

“…bitch, don’t fuckin’ drool all over yourself!” Zellner snapped at his man, his fucking tongue hanging out like a damn dog’s, eyes bugged out to here watching Black fucking Jami Lanier—not wearing a goddamn thing except a collar, a pair of fucking jackboots and black leather straps round her fuckin’ T&A—lasewhipping the shit out of some little black-haired slut lying face-down, ass up and squealing “yes, Mistress, yes, yes, yessss!” on the deck, her hands chained behind her damn back , that chain leading up to the ceiling, fucking stinking little pootie didn’t have nothing on but a leather corset that made her ass and titties both look twice bigger than what they were, Bradley’s voice, still in the background, commenting:

“Remember the girls abducted from all the schools and colleges of our Union in the last year; well, this is where they ended up, in the City Center Stadium in New Seattle, having their pretty little asses lasewhipped bloody and raw by Black Jami during the state-sponsored celebration of the tenth anniversary of Big Sky’s so-called liberation this past Saturday, Peter, that is what the Communist client government in New Seattle considers liberation.”

Black Jami moved down the line to some fat, red-headed piece of pussy, ass and titties both fucking huge, as she lay naked, collared, chained and trembling with anticipation of her Mistress’ loving caress with the lasewhip over her nasty fucking asscrack, Bradley repeating, with slight variation,”there’s your liberation for you, Peter, a liberation which has freed a minority of ultraradical feminists—ultraradical feminists who do not represent the majority of people on that world, who aren’t even native to that world— to assist their lesbian lovers in stealing away our girls, liberating them of the values we tried to teach them, liberated to the point where they’re more than willing to lay down while some sick twist of a goddamn lesbian sex killer whips their asses for public amusement…just before these liberated girls of theirs do everything in their power to fetch themselves a good price when they’re sold at public auction to the richest, most influential and powerful women in all of space, and Black Jami Lanier herself, the honored guest of this liberated Commonwealth client state, is the one selling ‘em off!”

The HV now showed naked bitches being led onto the auction block, Black Jami walking round each and every one of them, patting their asses, squeezing on their titties, fingering a couple of ‘em in their moist, dripping cunts while auctioning ‘em off at thousands and tens of thousands of dollars a motherfuckin’ cut, the Governor of the Union smiling, as He watched this, glancing over at Matthew, who’d managed to control his baser emotions, confining his appraisal of the scene before him to a nod and a slight smile.

Perhaps, this one could be trained up to take over from Him.

20 JANUARY, 2226 13:41:19 TAI

Nobody was trolling the back of the four-story northbound complex.

Nobody was there at all, save some management piece of shit working a sit-down lift on the second floor, lifting ten or fifteen big-ass bales of compressed cardboard from the grocery side and carrying them all the way up into the trailer of an AG lorry with Wal-Mart’s logo splashed all over it…being he was management—probably a support manager, since they were the lowest form of management on the food chain—asshole dropped half his load onto the ground level, right in front of the trailer behind which Carson, his people and the Mid reporter were hunkered down, the bales bursting open and scattering themselves over as much of the backlot as the wind could carry. “Another job for the cart crew,” Carson remarked over his link.

“All one of ‘em,” Jay replied, the cardboard and other trash being swirled about by the wind abruptly swept to the side of the building and the the doors of the trailers at ground level by the AG drivers of the ugliest vehicles used for law-enforcement this side of the Bravo Boxy.

Actually, the Boxy was a thing of beauty compared to the monstrosity and its three ugly stepbrothers coming to a stop in the middle of the backlot, each of them bristling with quad 25s and quad- mounted tribarrels between each of the sixteen doors on either slab of the bargelike contraption, the bow on either end topped by a turret sporting a 127 and four co-axial 90s, with dual 90s mounted on each side of the midline.

The troop hatches opened and slapped down onto the ferrocrete, sixteen men in suits the color of raw liver bulleting forth onto the backlot, their Palmer-Walker IAWs at the ready, the two main turrets slewing to cover them as the forty-eight men on Carson’s side went round the vehicle to join their comrades on the opposite side of their vehicles.

The Reggies had started out calling them Johnsons or Jacksons or some other famous Ginnie, but, during the War of ’69, some disgruntled Reggie groundpounder had dubbed these slow, graceless, poorly- shielded, underpowered hunks of junk Meat Wagons, and that was the name which had stuck with them as they were transferred from military to law enforcement duties, the vehicles becoming the calling cards of His Royal Highness’ Nova Regina Paramilitary Police.

Or pissboys, as even those they were supposed to protect from excess freedom while serving the cause of greater fascism called them, the pissboys fanning out, cupolas rolling out of every fourth entry door on each of their Meat Wagons, fourteen-fives manned by even more pissboys covering their mates as some of them headed towards the garden center, some headed back down grocery side, several heading upside, towards the management idiot scattering more cardboard all over the place.

“I don’t think,” Master Technical Sergeant Kimba Bledsoe remarked,”those damn things have enough weapons.”

“No,” Lance Corporal Anne McGowan replied, gas spitters telescoping up out of the midline of each of the Meat Wagons, more of them projecting themselves out from the bows of the APCs, six per bow, just underneath the three front(rear)- and corner-mounted dual heavy nerve projector turrets.

Even more spitters showed themselves, stubbing out of the sides between the quad 25 turrets and the quad tribarrel turrets.

“More than a slight bit of overkill,” Master Medical Technician Mary Blagg commented.

“Yeah,” Carson said, nodding his head, taking aim at one of the door gunners on the Meat Wagon nearest him, everyone else raising their M3s, M6s and M2166 to their shoulders, Jay and the other members of Carson’s team dispersing, moving into more optimal firing positions.

“Master Bledsoe,” Carson said,” see if you can hack into the comp of the Meat Wagon in the center…if you can, what you do after is up to whatever your imagination can devise.”

“Already hacked in, sir,” Kimba’s voice replied.

“Goddamn, that was fast,” Carson remarked, taking out the two door gunners on his side before either one of them could react. The firepower of the middle Meat Wagon just as quickly erupting into action, taking out both of the other two APCs, before their six-man crews could wrap their tiny brains round the idea of one of their own ambushing them.

The pissboys already on the ground were a bit more on the ball than their unfortunate comrades, turning their guns on the remaining APC and the eleven Commonwealth and Midnight Sun citizens pouring fire down on all of them, Kimba retracting the 14.5s and slamming the troop doors shut as she threw all the power of its puny antimatter reactor into its eight Rolls-Royce Triad AG drivers, the Meat Wagon spinning round like a top, the turrets blazing away, each side letting loose with a hail of one and a quarters and 25s as it came to bear on the remaining pissboys, hosing them all over the back wall of the Sam & Bill’s.

Carson running like hell for the APC, lifting himself up onto the top of it, Kimba already irising the forward driver’s hatch open for him, the poor Reggie bastard inside furiously working the controls, cursing in Ginnie the entire time, Carson firing a single deuce and a half from his M3, point-blank range, the pissboy’s shielding no help in preventing him from being a smear on the deck, Carson dropping through the hatch, a ten-round burst going through the Meat Wagon’s two surviving door gunners and rear driver, before Carson could even think to turn round, kneel backwards in the forward driver’s seat and bring his assault railer to bear on them.

“Right, Master Bledsoe,” Carson said, sitting down the right way in the forward seat, studying its holodisplays,” open the door and let yourselves in.”

20 JANUARY, 2226 13:50:00 TAI

Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken twisted, hammered, pummeled and clawed her way through the enemy convoy roiling about in confusion, though bands of hyperspace also roiling in confusion, each of her ten 457-millimeter railguns, every single one of the two hundred tachyon- impregnated, 63-metric ton masses of monomolecular carbon they fired each objective second, finding a target to slam into at three and three-quarters million times the speed of light, assault transports, frigates, the few battlewagons still in it quickly, mercilessly dispatched into normal space as a shower of sparks.

Leaving the frigate’s forty-eight turreted Gatling-barrel ninety-millimeter railguns to hose local hyperspace and the UAVs and fighters carried by the hostile warbirds and transports with well over twenty thousand twelve-ton masses of tachyon-impregnated hyperdense monomolecular carbon, tachyar lighting up more enemy units inbound, from all over the map, most of the incoming warbirds frigates, on hickey duty same as they were, their fightercraft, UAVs and gobstoppers already entering the fray, the squadron’s Raptors and Ospreys altering vector to engage them, Stevie pumping more tachyons through the secondary Rittermark field coils connecting the generators with the AGAMs and AG drive, using their drive beams as hyperspace field conduits, accelerating the Unbroken towards the machines moving to pile on her, all guns blazing, pulses of tachyon-impregnated artificial grav flying from the forward beam emitters,enemy warbirds by the dozen falling back into normal space as fireworks lighting the night, Stevie working the astrogation and piloting holodisplays, turning them back round for another go, Prue releasing pulses from tailward, starboard and port emitters as the Commonwealth Forces frigate wheeled and twisted back round, loosing volley after volley from all her guns, as she slashed her way through the enemy’s ranks, smashing more of his ships into sparks littering the hyperspiatal bands before dropping back down to twinkle briefly in the eternal darkness of normal space.

Tachyar lighting up another convoy, a friendly one, Hammarskjolder Christina-class frigates, Horizon Talon-class frigates and Big Sky New Seattle-class frigates, their fighters and UAVs in escort formation all round, leading a convoy of military and civilian transports laden with more troops for the bloody fighting on Dis and Tartarus.

Unbroken and her squadron fighting and killing the ships meant to intercept it, the JMC convoy slipping through Proxima Centauri’s heliosphere unmolested. The one coming in after that wasn’t about to have the same good fortune, Prue shouting out warning of a half-dozen squadrons of enemy warbirds, three of Yankers, three of Frog Normandié-class frigates, converging on a convoy along their three-zero-four, escorted by four squadrons of Middie Polaris- class machines and another two of Australian Canberra-class frigates.

“All units from Unbroken,” Jami said over the link, no hesitation at all,”alter vector to intercept the new threat, same drill as before, close to gun range, fire as we bear, use your gobstoppers sparingly.”

“Altering vector,” Stevie said, no hesitation in her voice either, her sure, swift fingers playing over both piloting and astrogation holodisplays, thrusting them into the midst of the new threat, Prue stabbing at them with the Gatling 90s and the 457s, the ship’s Raptors and Ospreys streaking past their parent frigate towards the enemy’s own fighter, missile and UAV screen.

20 JANUARY, 2226 14:03:16 TAI

Wave after wave of King Cobra and Preadator UAVs came seeking her life, that bitch juking, jinking, weaving in and out of hyperspace amongst the frigates and battlewagons writhing about in confusion, fucking each other up just for a chance to take that Commie warbird out of their sky, the Unbroken fucked where it hurt the most, holed and dented, her shielding one big ugly bruise, her guts ripped open, five of her railguns knocked out, and, still she fought, long enough, hard enough for all those Middie scoutcraft, terraforming ships, icehunters and whatnot to make it into hyperspace, Rahman Deas and Hieronymous Cael trying to slip warbirds past her, only to have her duck into hyperspace and break out on top of them, SC-47s and 130s getting past her anyway, landing troops on that wreck of a terraforming station.

And, in the end, she’d cut and run away, the rest of Deas’ and Hieronymous’ forces swarming all over what was left of Bearclaw Station, the Terranova Media Syndicate show celebrating the twentieth anniversary of that battle sparing no detail of how His men had run down, stripped naked and tuned up all that stinky Middie pussy before loading it onto the transports outbound for Black Mountain.

Bradley told TMS’ Rachel English:

“I know what you’re thinking, but we showed ‘em a hell of a lot more mercy than they showed the people of Big Sky before we liberated the planet, and after the feminists subverted the lawful government of that world and assisted their Commie dommies with its final subjugation—“

Another big word, He observed to Himself, goddamn, he’s on a roll.

“That’s the problem right there,” Bradley then said. “You and the liberals you got doin’ your dirty work are tying our hands with your hypocritical notions like rules of war. Hell with that, the only rule there is in war is that the last man standing wins, and the losers just die…especially now, with an enemy who plays by no rules, has no compunction about killing our civilians and theirs…we men are fighting you tooth and nail for our lives, losing is the same as death, winning is the same as killing every last goddamn one of you, that’s the lesson we learned at Bearclaw Station, the lesson we taught all of you, the lesson lesbians in male drag, such as Micheal Bauer, insinuated into the highest offices of all our governments, taught everyone to forget, just when we had you on your knees at Tau Ceti….”

“…harden your heart, me boyo!” Uncle Roger snapped, glancing into the ten-year old boy’s eyes, those eyes narrowing on the twitching, pissing, shitting, screaming, whining, puling body of one of Witch’s Titty’s hardcore dykes, not wearing a goddamn stitch of clothes, flopping around on the floor of the VIP fuck tank like a chomper brought onto the deck of a g-skimmer, Guy’s thumb whitening on the buttons of the mouse, the little howler living up to her name, as the collar round her neck gave her the sex they all wanted, Uncle Roger telling,”that’s a good lad, you don’t show ‘em a bit of weakness, not the slightest hint of mercy….” “…they’ll use that against you, Bradley,” the Prime Minister of the Union half screamed at him, throttling the little blonde howler with his arm across her windpipe as he tore into that squirmy, stinky six- year old pussy,”use it to turn you into a weak little bitch just like ‘em, haven’t you learned….”

“…a goddamn thing I been tryin’ to show you, boy?!” Pappaw demanded of him, as he stood over Gilda’s naked body, stomping on her ass as she tried squirming away, grabbing her by her hair and shoving himself into his twin sister’s nasty pootie-poot, the seven-year old boy mashing the cooter down in the carpet to keep her from screaming her fucking head off in orgasm.

“That’s right, boy,” Pappaw told him,”that’s right, you don’t show ‘em….”

“…no mercy,” Bradley told that nasty, skanky pussy straight up.” That’s another milksop-weak liberal concept which has had us hamstrung ever since we defeated the Commies, their bitches and their Amercian World State two hundred years ago, this quaint notion of y’all’s that we’re supposed to love our enemies. That’s bullshit, pure and simple, and, it’s gotten us nowhere except them deeper and deeper infiltrated into our society, rotting it from within, using the equally outmoded, equally politically-correct, concepts of law, order, justice, equality—there’s a good one, right there, God made all of us equal…well, that ain’t what it says in my Bible…what He did say was something along the lines of He does the saying where men are concerned, and men do the saying over everything else, especially you females, who, if I’m not mistaken, God did warn us to keep on an especially short leash, cause y’all were the ones most likely to fuck everything up, which, as we all know, y’all did, right at the first beginning—“

“Sounds like a damn nigger,” His man spoke up. “’First beginning.’ ”

Matthew snorted his contempt at Bradley’s poor choice of words, the little piece of poot having the audacity to interrupt him, telling him they were running out of time and had to go to commercial, before promising the target audience they would wrap this all up when they came back.

20 JANUARY, 2226 14:05:16 TAI

There was a reason behind the Meat Wagon’s fourteen-fives.

That reason having entirely too much to do with the APC’s comp telling Carson,”hydrogen tankage low, cutting hydrogen feed to port and starboard weapons clusters,” in a voice entirely too much like a Wal-Mart self checkout’s for Carson not to want to reprogram the fucking thing with a few deuce and a halves driven through its hardcasing…the geniuses running Aries’ Heavy Vehicle Works Division— which made all the military vehicles for the Reggies, Toejams and Phooies—had decided to cut more than a few corners in submitting their bid to the Royal Nova Regina Army, installing a substandard AG shield jenny and an antimatter reactor half the size of his fist.

With a centerline hydrogen tank providing just enough fuel for precisely twenty-four hours of minimal performance, which meant shields, AG drivers, forward and rear turrets, nothing else.

With all systems powered up and all weaps reactors fed their necessary hydrogen for nucleosynthesis, the fuel supply lasted considerably less.

“Hydrogen tankage low,” the son of a bitch told him again, as it limped across the last bridge before the intersection of Terranova Highways 46 and 301,”closing down AG shield generator.”

“We’re fucked,” Jay commented over his link, Kimba remarking grimly,”even with its sorry excuse for a shield jenny up and running, we still would’ve been fucked.”

“Reducing maximum speed,” the APC said…its maximum speed being only a third of a War Pig’s, 1,300 kph, on a good day. Which this wasn’t, Carson cursing the lame-brain idea he’d had to ride this Reggie piece of shit all the way into Unionsboro…Kimba had to bypass firmware and hard-logic imperatives out the yin-yang for Carson to switch the squawk code on this thing with that of another Meat Wagon, and just barely in time for them to get the fuck out of Wal-Mart and onto 121 before the first signs of pursuit caught up with them; biofakers made them all look like Reggies, and Carson could even do a passible Ginnie accent.

If this ugly monocarbon barge thing crapped out in the middle of the fucking road, with the goddamn Blitzpolizei ass pirates—four heavily-armed, far-more-capable Volkswagen SKW.34 combat sleds’ worth of sausage smokers—all over that intersection, no deception would do any of them any good.

Any combat between them and the Meat Wagon would last maybe a second, perhaps two.

Perhaps no seconds at all…not with just the forward turret and the fourteen-fives left for armament and the Meat Wagon crawling into the intersection at half the speed of a fucking AG harness, sixty-four klicks and fading too fast, Carson just barely managing a left turn, howls of derisive, German- accented laughter assaulting his ears, one of the bastards wisecracking,”perhaps we give you a tow, ja?!”

More Teutonic belly laughing, Corporal Merirose Coughlin commenting,”it’s not that goddamn funny.”

“Corporal,” Carson said, the APC telling him the best it could now do, with four drivers powered up, was twenty kph,”if I were one of those gay ass pirates out there, I’d be having a good laugh at our expense.”

“This piece of shit’s just powered down the rear driver’s station,” Jay reported, Carson replying,”oh, goody, oh gee, why the fuck not, everything else is crapping out, might as well shut down the rear driver’s station too while you’re at it.”

“Hydrogen tankage critical,” was the APC’s only reply, Carson biting his tongue to keep himself from telling it to shut the fuck up, lest it take him up on his offer.

“Fuck,” he said instead, eyes and hands on the holodisplays,”there went the forward turret; now, we’re completely defenseless, thanks a lot, you fuckin’ worthless piece of crap.”

“You’re welcome,” the simple comp replied, Carson staring up at the ceiling and laughing out loud.

20 JANUARY, 2226 14:08:19 TAI

“Boss,” Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Genera Muncie reported, just after her wife drove 457s into the last enemy machine still in it,”we’ve got another enemy convoy along our zero-three-one, three squadrons of Yanker Freeman Lang-class frigates, three squadrons of Arab al-Husayn-class frigates, five squadrons of Sakuran Musashi-class frigates, two squadrons of DNSB von Richtofen-class frigates and squadron of Evergreen Portland-class frigates bringing up the rear, 336 assault transports—most of them Mountaindove Gudalcanal-class, the rest Californio Catalina-class—and five civilian commerical transports, big ones, Boeing 7-500s or -550s; transports have their FH-4s and 14s deployed in escort formation round them, enemy machines have fighters and UAVs deployed in a screen round the entire convoy; ETA at Tartarus, ninety-seven decimal four seconds.”

“Alter vector to intercept,” the commander of the Unbroken said for the third or fourth time in the past few minutes, her frigate already coming round to bear down on this new enemy, tachyar already lighting up additional enemy machines—a wing of British Margaret Thatcher-class machines two parsecs away—altering vector to bear down on her squadron even as it fell upon the convoy, all guns blazing, Jami consulting the command holodisplays, bringing up the schematic of her ship, checking the drop launchers underneath her nose…they still had forty-three hyperspace tactical missiles left, the Raptors and Ospreys still having their full loads of two and four missiles apiece respectively. “Leftenant,” she said to Genera,”launch all remaining decoys, vector them directly underneath our nose section before throwing them at the Brits; advise the EWOs on all the other frigates to do that same. All units from Unbroken, we launch five missiles and only five missiles per frigate at the incoming Brits on my command….” she glanced at the right-hand command holodisplay, as Genera deployed the decoys—45 of them—right underneath the nose section, ready to input the calculations which would make them look like gobstoppers as soon as Jami said,”…now!”

With missiles and decoys away and streaking towards the Brit wing at c times ten million, Unbroken ‘s commander returned her full attention to the convoy they were ripping through, her ship’s 457s pounding ten al-Husayns at once, hammering at ten more of the ragabones coming in on their brothers’ heels, the Gatling 90s taking care of Schimitar UAVs and Hashivvy fighters trying to attack Unbroken’s flanks, the point defenses also shooting down the gobstoppers from the few enemy machines who had time to think of launching them.

Shelli Krebs had been on the deck the entire time…of course, she had, she was a Commonwealth Broadcasting reporter, trained to go where the story was and to know when to duck, but Jami had had all her attention focussed on bringing her people through this and on destroying as many of the enemy as she could, she hadn’t been able to take notice of her voice behind her, of the veteran reporter reflexively gripping the back of the command conn, holding on for everything she was worth, as Unbroken twisted and slashed her way through the ranks of the enemy, pulses of artificial grav sweeping aside their incoming fire, most of it, the Gatling 90s and Stevie’s skill dealing with much of the rest, Prue reporting the Brit wing had been taken out, even as her hands continued flying blindingly across the weaps holodisplay, Jami nodding her head in acknowledgement, splitting her time between the master holodisplays and her own command holodisplays, a Mountaindove Gudalcanal-class assault transport directly in front of Unbroken now, the 27,790 metric ton ship opening up on the Commonwealth Forces frigate with his four forward fixed-mount 203s, ten quad 127 turrets along both sides of his waist section and fifty or sixty of the 240 Gatling 90 turrets scattered all along his fuselage, three of his running buddies joining their fire with his, their fighters arcing back to try and hit Unbroken from the stern, Prue loosing a long, rippling fusillade which sent those four Guadalcanals, one hundred seventy more besides them, twenty-five Catalinas and one of the civ transports—hastily retrofitted with shielding, quad 127s, Gatling 90s and hangarage for a fighter detachment—back down to Hell, Harms and Wraiths scattered by the tailward and starboard Gatling 90 turrets, Unbroken’s weaps officer cutting loose with another volley of 457s seeking the deaths of as many more assault transports as possible.

20 JANUARY, 2226 14:14:20 TAI

“…my Pappaw always said ‘democracy’s for dead Greeks,’” He watched Himself say to that nasty little skank Hannah Donner in CBS’ Early Show studios in Vargas. “If the Nine Years’ War has taught us anything, it’s that the majority do not act in their best interest, that they need men in charge who can see what is in their best interests and act upon it for them.”

“Amen to that, brother,” the Governor of the Union said, toasting Himself with the waterglass, refilled with more vintage Kentucky, as He told Hannah and the rest of the worlds,” The collective governments of the League are not democracies, were never meant to be democracies. They are republics, and thank God they are republics, each helmed by men who know and who will always act in the best interests of their citizens, who will not allow them to misuse the franchise we grant them to do harm to themselves, as the people of Big Sky did twenty years ago today, and as My own people would’ve done this past month, had it not been for quick, decisive action on My part.”

“And,” Hannah said, doing her lines like a good girlie,”just as men such as Jesse Ventura and Wellington Mara, over two hundred years ago, had to act, when the people of the old United States of America insisted upon voting themselves into appeasement with their sworn enemies.”

“That is the prime example of the failure of democracy,” He told her,” the misuse of the power of the vote and the necessity of the republican form of government…the American, European, Arab and Japanese people were more than willing to tolerate perversity, immorality, fear, intimidation, terror, more than willing to allow Hillary Clinton, her lesbian sex slaves Teresa Heinz and Condelezza Rice, and all their feminist co-conspirators to destroy everything and replace it with what can only be described as the Devil’s own design; had Jesse Ventura, the steward of his people, not acted in the best interests of that stewardship by seizing control of the United Nations, debarring, for all time, its Charter, the Masstricht Treaty and, worst of all, that archaic and dangerously misguided Constitution which had been nothing but a constant source of trouble and inconvenience for the former American government—a terrible hindrance, certainly, in their war against those animals who slaughtered so many innocent lives on the eleventh of September of 2001—had he not done what he’d done…it all would’ve been lost, Hannah, every decent, great, noble and wise thing that we have contributed to our race and its advancement in accordance with God’s own plan, it all would have been lost.”

“There,” He added, as He watched His man gazing upon His handsome face with rapt attention,”are other examples throughout history where either an attempt at democracy or the popular delusion of democracy have proven fatal to a people. The Greeks, as mentioned, had a democracy, a democracy which gave the people the delusion they could do everything they wanted, leading to the first Lesbians, and, consequentially, to female perversion overwhelming them, to the point where there are no longer any Greeks surviving into the twenty-third century. The delusion of people being able to act for their own good in the former Soviet Union led to one of history’s darkest empires, to the brink of Armageddon itself, an Armageddon Saint Ronald Reagan and his visonary leadership of a republican form of government prevented, as he singlehandedly overcame the democracy inherent in the Communist form of government.

Leni Riefensthal and her lesbian so-called lover, Eleanor Roosevelt, played upon the people’s misguided desire for democracy to create the Nazi Empire of the 1930s and 40s which saw so many innocents slaughtered in the concentration camps and a world cast down into utter ruin, before Douglas MacArthur, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and other strong men were able to throw down that tyranny of the majority.”

He paused, Matthew….

…recording his Pappaw’s speech on his holopad, same as all the others, the nine-year old boy sitting in the plush leather chair in his grandfather’s office in Kennesaw Republican Union University’s Zell Miller College Of Political Science and Terranovan History, watching the Prime Minister of the Union and former Chairman of the Executive Council tell the students in the advanced political theory class he taught :

“In our recent history, examples abound of the failures and pretensions of the democratic social expiriment; we won’t discuss either the Communist State of Cor Leonis nor the Fascist Federation of Midnight Sun,” his students all laughed at that comment,” the record of unsuccess on both their parts speaks for itself, louder and clearer than I ever could. Yes?”

A man in a yellow t-shirt and cut-off shorts got up from his desk in the middle of the first row and asked,”sir, what about the Three Governors’ War? Wouldn’t you consider that to be a failure of the democratic theory of government?”

The greatest man in Terranovan history, next to the Archangel himself, smiled slightly, telling the younger man,”boy, I sure hate it for any spoons you might happen to run across,” laughter all round, Pappaw then saying,”as a matter of fact, that was the example I was thinking about; to answer your question, yes and no, it was a failure of the democratic process, and, at the same time….”

“…a flagrant misuse by the majority,” He told Hannah, Matthew continuing to record His interview on his holopad, the Governor of the Union smiling at both him and Himself,”of the mechanism we provided for their input concerning who amongst us speaks for them and acts in their best interest; the majority, fevered by their passion for rule of, by and for the mob, brought about chaos when they ended up electing three good men at the same time, catching them up in their bloody civil war, a civil war which surely would’ve brought down our Union were it not for the republican system of government we, as Terranovans, enjoy; a mechanism of republican rule kicked in—as it was supposed to—when democratic theory turned to excess and violence, as it always does, Hannah, as it always will amongst those foolish enough to allow the lowest common denominator to dictate policy and codes of moral behavior—and we have overwhelming religious, scientific and law-enforcement sources telling us they are predisposed toward immorality.

Such,” He concluded,”being the case amongst the Communists of Cor Leonis and their innately- debased, utterly-depraved, willfully-ignorant fellow travelers.”

He saw Matthew nodding his head in approval of what his Governor had to say….

“…why did you even bother recording my lecture?!” Pappaw asked him, standing in the doorway looking down upon his grandson sitting in his chair. “You’re too weak, too worthless, too fuckin’ stupid to ever take full advantage of what I have to teach ‘em boys.”

“They,” he said,”are the hope for the ultimate success for our Work…all you are is disappointment, same as your damn Daddy, nothin’ but disappointment.”

Guy found himself reaching in the right pocket of his armorjack, forcing himself to look his Pappaw in the eye, forcing himself not to cry and confirm his opinion of his grandson.

“You have no part in the future of our race,” Pappaw said,” because you are a mistake of birth, and you have no business walking on my worlds, breathing my fuckin’ air! I have every intention of disinheriting you and your Daddy; neither one of you will be able to take advantage of my name to gain what is not yours to gain, the others know you are a mistake, a deformity, a weakness in my bloodline that must never be allowed any chance to ruin our Work. The machinery we have maintained will make damn sure you are kept down, and that you stay down, where you be—“

That was when….

…He’d used the nerve pistol He’d taken from His Daddy’s nightstand to make His grandfather scream with the passion of his Savior and the fevered desire of his whore…He’d watched him, smiling the entire thirty minutes He’d permitted him to suffer, before He’d finally given permission for him to die….

He exhaled in a single powerful breath, the He who was over all others still flushed and sweating with the memory of the day He’d begun taking what was rightfully His.

It had not been easy, Pappaw had been true to his word, nothing Guy could’ve done that day would have changed it…in the short term, He’d made things more difficult for Himself, his grandfather’s influence holding sway over the others, even now, five and a half decades after his death.

In the end, however, it had only meant He had to work harder for what was His, learning the ways of power and dominance from Roger Tarrant, until He’d surpassed His former teacher and lover and cast him aside, learning the way of true love and what it meant to be a man, to be over all men, learning it was His way to forge alliances with all those others meant to be used and disposed of by Him along the path He was meant to walk.

Pappaw and Roger both should’ve known His bloodline was not to be denied.

20 JANUARY, 2226 14:18:00 TAI

The AG drivers gave up the ghost altogether, Carson managing to squeeze enough power from the fading reactor to nudge this Reggie piece of shit off the road and into an empty, flooded field, before they crapped out for good, the holodisplays winking out after that. His suit’s scanners warning him of an approaching Volkswagen SKW.34 combat sled, one of the four they’d left behind at the checkpoint.

He was out of the forward driver’s seat, looking for any other way to open the troop doors, to swing out one of the fourteen-fives, finding the rest of his team were already on it, Meghan, Kimba, Marirose and Mary grunting at the levers until they came free and four of the doors slapped down into South Coast wetland, the spring air already thick with clouds of smallflies and rodans, Carson helping two of his people push and curse one of the fourteen-five cupolas out from inside the APC and into ready position, Carson jumping inside the cupola and gripping the weapon‘s twin firing sticks, as the holographic sights filled up with enemy combat sled.

With four enemy combat sleds, proving, again, the old axiom when it rains, it pours, Carson taking a deep breath—again not taking notice of the tightness in his chest—closing his fingers on both triggers.

Just as someone screamed over his link in German,”Es regnete als sie starb!” which Carson recognized as the first line of one of the most famous of contemporary German poems.

Fortunately for the Hans who screamed that out, Carson’s suit recognized that as a valid Mitteldeutsches Abwehrsstreitkräfte authorization passphrase, belonging to an entirely too young Oberleutnant in the MDASK’s Speigelsturmkorps by the name of Matthias Lynch.

“ ‘Harry Sullivan is an imbecile!’” Carson shouted back over his link, an eternal minute passing before young—Jesus God, he’d just turned sixteen, according to what his suit was telling him—Matthias Lynch said, in a slightly trembling voice,”Herr Oberstleutnant, if you would, sir, please stand down, I believe we are the ones you were supposed to make contact with.”

“All of you,” Carson, relaxing, swinging his feet over the railing of the cupola, meeting the fucking kid…kids, plural, forty of them, none older than Meghan….kids the JMC had sent to help him hook up with the ICLU workers still operating in Unionsboro,”are supposed to be my backup?!”

“Jawohl, Herr Oberstleutnant,” Matthias replied, climbing down from the lead SKW. “We were spacedropped not too far from here a few days ago und borrowed uniforms and equipment from some Blitzpoleizei Schweinhunden who did not miss them…any longer.”

He was the only boy amongst all those young women—apparentally using padding, hair barettes and voice modulators to hide their more sailent features from the enemy—most of them making nervous attempts at laughter, letting Carson know it was probably the first time in a hot zone for any of them.

“Fucking children,” Jay whispered to Carson on a private command.

“So were we both, once, mon frere,” Carson replied. “Some of us enjoying their childhood a little bit longer than others.”

“Leftenant,” he then said to Matthias,” why don’t we get down to business. JMC gave you the other half of my orders, correct?”

“Ja,” Matthias replied, starting to reach inside his suit, Carson holding up his hand, telling him,”not out here, Leftenant. Is there a place, other than the middle of 301, where we could sit and talk. One of the safehouses, perhaps?”

“JMC,” Matthias replied,” specifically ordered us to avoid contact with the ICLU workers in this area until after we made contact with you, Herr Oberstleutnant.” “I expected as much, Leftenant,” Carson replied, nodding his head. “However, I’m assuming your team managed a discreet recce of the area and staked out the locations where some of the new safehouses might have been.”

“Two,” Matthias replied ruefully. “All we were able to find, their relocation scheme is most ingenious, und even with these uniforms, we could not operate in complete freedom, so—“

“No need to explain, Leftenant,” Carson replied, nodding his head,”and, in all likelihood, if you guys spotted two of the safehouses, they’re both no longer safehouses, also the way they operate.”

“Still,” he added, turning back to watch the Reggie Meat Wagon sink slowly into the marsh,”they might have left a trail of breadcrumbs for us to follow at one of them.”

“I’m afraid,” he added,”Leftenant, you’re going to have to give us a lift into town.”

20 JANUARY, 2226 14:42:29 TAI

Unbroken rested inside the repair bay and Rittermark field of the Weyland-class mobile shop assigned to her squadron, the Grease Monkey IV’s techs replacing the gobstoppers she’d fired, reloading her Raptors’ and Ospreys’ drop launchers, refuelling the ship from its hydrogen tankage, getting her, the Vinnie and the Stalwart ready to go, the other nine frigates already on vector for Big Sky.

The commander of the Unbroken finished up the plate of ribs and bowl of chips she’d started on before the current round of engagements, a plate of turtle cheesecake Genera had made a couple weeks back sitting beside carnosaur steaks from the awards ceremony/wetting down on Lord Jim nearly a month ago, a pot of mashed potatoes, a bowl of giblet and onion gravy, dressing, remains of fried Thanksgiving turkey and takeaway pizza from one of the pubs in Sheridan…she couldn’t help it, her stomach was still growling at her.

The battle for Dis and Tartarus was far from over, too many more people dead on the deck all round, but none of them hers, thank God…all twelve frigates, all their fighters, all their crews, had come through the running battles alive and well, no comms to send home….

…what the fuck was she supposed to tell them…thirty dead on the deck, on her watch, and all those people she’d left behind…she swallowed, trying to bring moisture to her throat, trying to think of what words to say to the first of the families and loved ones she had to comm, her hands flailing uselessly, unable to work the the relief deck’s workstation terminal’s holodisplay….

…not today, thank God, because she still wouldn’t have known what to say to those left behind if she were to have gotten any of those under her command killed.

Her hands trembled as they held the last of the carnosaur ribs, Jami putting that down, reaching for the self-chilling bottle of cherry-flavored soda water next to the plate—Cryogenic tore up her stomach something fierce, and the way it was now, twisted all round and fizzing evilly, that was the last thing she needed—taking a sip, waiting for the queasiness to settle back down to a dull roar before gnawing on that last rib.

Her wife saying nothing, as she sat in the recliner across from the sofa, sipping a cup of Earl Grey she’d brewed up for herself, plate of dark chocolate sandwiches on her lap—that was a Firestar thing Jami still thought was weird, the way Stevie took baugettes and stuffed pieces of chocolate bar into them—the woman Jami Lanier considered herself lucky to have shared the last almost two decades of her life with smiling over the rim of her beaker, that smile still getting to her, after all this time.

Like the suns coming out to chase Judas from their sky, if only for a little while. Jami couldn’t help but smile back over the rib she was tearing into, Stevie whispering in her wife’s mind, it’s so good to see you smile, luv.

I can’t help it, baby, Jami thought back, stripping the rib down to the bone, putting the plate aside, pouring gravy over the mashed potatoes, digging in. You bring it out in me, can’t help but be happy with you around.

She sighed, spoonful of mashed potato and gravy a millimeter from her lips, thinking, you’re still getting me through the worst of it, same as always, and I have no way to even begin to—

I’m only being your wife, pet, Stevie thought back, being there for you like I promised, it’s—

It means everything to me, baby, Jami told her, nodding her head, finally taking a bite of gravy and potato, especially after the way I treated you, you had every right to give up on me, especially since I’d already done that to myself, and—

You keep apologizing for what wasn’t your fault, poppet, Stevie replied, giving her wife’s right knee a gentle squeeze, for what all that pain and confusion and fear drove you to do—

Still doesn’t make it right, Jami said, putting her free hand on Stevie’s.

No, Stevie acknowledged, smiling again, but, still, it wasn’t you…you were the one who came to me, when you realized you couldn’t keep doing this to yourself.

Part, she added, of what makes you a hero, in everyone’s eyes.

If you say so, baby, Jami, looking away from Stevie, at their hands together on her knee.

It is so, luv, Stevie told her.

It is so.

—endit—

Empty Chairs “If evil men can work together to get what they want, then so can good men, to get what they want.” Leo Tolstoy, War And Peace

“...Mama?!” the thirteen-year old girl screamed, kneeling over her mama, holding her hand...she was bleeding from the ears and the mouth, her chest was all crushed, legs bent out of shape...she wasn’t moving.

“Mama,” Jami pleaded, hearing the engine roaring, tires squealing as he turned around again, “ you gotta get up, now, please, he’s comin’ back, Mama, please, please, you gotta get up.” The roar of the gasburner’s engine grew louder, he had gotten up speed, Jami felt the headlights burning into her as he charged back down Long Street, horn blasting the first few notes of “Glory to the Union,” into the night, he’d be on top of them any second now, out to finish what he’d started doing.

“Mama, please,” Jami sobbed,“please, get up, please get up, please—”

Hot, burning white lights....

...flooded the astrogation deck, more alarms screaming in her head, goddamn Mountaindickhead and Yanker warbirds everywhere she looked in the flickering master holodisplay...they didn’t have one fucking chance in Hell of making it out of this alive....

“AG shielding reduced by 95%!” Stevie shouted from the fire-control station. “Primary and secondary electrical systems are trashed out, teritary electrical system 78% disrupted, AG drive severely damaged, no better than c times point three possible, both reactors running wild, AG containment destablizing, reaction rate now 320 microgrammes per second and rising rapidly, auto-repair system off line, railguns two, three, five, seven and eight knocked out, AG force beam forward and starboard emitters destroyed, electronic warfare subsystems destroyed, waist section and drive room both open to space, hangar and Raptor bays both destroyed...heavy casaulties, 21 dead, 27 wounded.”

“S.A.,” Micki’s bleeding holoimage shouted from the drive room,“ I know you want to save as many of them as you can, we all do...but—”

“All excess power to AG shielding!” the frightened senseless nineteen-year old girl now at the conn of this busted-up warbird screamed.“ Return! Fiii-re!”

“—you’re in command now,” that bitch of a chief flight engineer fucking had to remind her,“you have to think of your ship and crew as well...you’ve done all you can, you have to....”

“…Unbroken from Dauntless,” CAM Kaplan’s voice echoed in her link, Unbroken’s commander on her knees amidst the wreckage of her own deck, eyes fixed blurrily on the master holodisplay. “Unbroken, do you copy?”

“Commander, Unbroken,” the CAM’s voice repeated,”please respond.”

Commander…there was a fucking laugh…Sarah had been a commander, right down to the bitter end, when Jami’s stupidity had forced her to….

“…Antares, no, goddamn you, don’t—“ screamed the commander of the Unbroken, watching helplessly as a ball of fire lit up the night 1,500 klicks off her zero-three-six, John Keller’s warbird, what remained of her, hyperramming Roger Tyrant’s frigate, Jami’s shouted order coming too goddamn late….

20 JANUARY, 2226 17:41:19 TAI

…always too goddamn late, or out and out just not good enough.

Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier stood in the shade of an evergreen marking another of the graves in the grassy meadow the Mids had called Happy Valley, the crisp, clear, cold sky turning purple as Sirius C began setting, the wind rustling through the green needles of the tree under which she stood… terraformers giving life even in death, returning life to the earth which had given them life, each grave marked by a different plant, evergreens, apple trees, bogbushes, a few with violets, sacre coeurs, other flowers…they’d grown so much in the last ten years, all this beauty born of the ugliness of fucking Black Mountain, ugliness that had happened to them only because Jami Lanier wasn’t the legend everyone said she was. She wondered what kind of plant John Keller would’ve liked to have nurtured with his remaining….

She sighed, sniffling away tears, inhaling the scent of evergreen.

Someone was standing behind her.

She’d been there for some time, Jami turning to walk away, looking into the moist brown eyes of a light coloniel in the Army of the Federation of Midnight Sun, in her black and green dress uniform and medals, peaked hat tucked underneath her left arm.

The other woman’s eyes staring past the commander of the Unbroken, at the evergreen behind her, Jami nodding her head, turning from her, walking towards the next tree, the woman stopping her in mid- stride with a soft, tear-choked,”you did everything you could’ve done that day, I know that.”

It wasn’t enough, Jami thought, but didn’t speak aloud, never fucking enough.

I’m so sorry I wasn’t as advertised, I should’ve been able to….

Sighing a wet, trembling sigh, clenching her shaking fists, all the supposed Avenging Angel of Avalon could do now was just walk away.

She should’ve been able to do better than just fucking run like she’d done twenty years ago.

20 JANUARY, 2226 18:05:12 TAI

Any other time, Lieutenant Coloniel Carson Selkirk would’ve appreciated the irony.

Right now, though, too much to do, too much on his mind.

His fingers worked the workstation terminal’s input holodisplay to no avail; the ICLU workers running this station on the true underground railroad had blown out the plasma matrix, and there wasn’t a micro-mini optical disk anywhere in the former Sigma Chi fraternity house on Terranova Highway 301, not a trace anywhere that the ICLU had even been here, they’d must’ve bugged out when they saw what they thought had been DNSB SBSS-BP sniffing too close round the premises; the Mitteldeutscher Spiegelsturmkorps troopers who’d done the actual recce hadn’t been anywhere near subtle in their recce; this had been their first taste of actual combat, from what their leftenant had told him, all of them had gotten shipped here straight out of training on the Mitteldeutscher homeworld of Brandt.

They all were so goddamn young….

“Herr Oberstleutnant,” a German woman’s voice interrupted, Carson looking away from the terminal, a young, Teutonically blonde woman—sixteen, maybe, same as most of the rest of the Mitteldeutschers—wearing the grey and white camos of the Abwehrsstreitkräftespeigelsturmkorps instead of the gay ass pirate black S&M leathers of the Blitzpolizei, master sergeant’s stripes on both arms, was bringing him coffee.

“Danke schöne, Frau Meisterinfeldwebel,” Carson replied, nodding his head slightly, hoping to God he hadn’t embarassed himself with a command of German which was at least three decades old.

“Bitte schöne, mein Herr,” the German shield maiden replied, putting the coffee down on the table by the terminal’s right side, Carson’s nose picking up the smell of frying beef.

“They left the larder fully stocked,” the young woman explained, Carson commenting,”I’d wish they’d done the same to the plasma matrix on this damn thing, Master,” he looked at the name stitched across the left breast of her suit,” Haffke.” He powered it down, picked up the coffee, Master Haffke explaining,”none of your people knew how you liked your coffee, so I brought it to you black.”

“I like mine black, Master Haffke,” Carson replied,” as a matter of fact. Why don’t you have a seat, unless your leftenant has you doing something else at the moment.”

“Oberleutnant Lynch is the one doing the cooking at present, Herr Oberstleutnant,” Master Haffke replied,”und Oberleutnant Polk,” Carson’s second,”along with some of our people und yours, are standing guard duty round the house; the SKW.34s are parked in the woods behind the house, so as to minimize their chances of being spotted.”

Carson nodded his head, as he picked up the coffee cup, sipping it.

It was then Master Technical Sergeant Kimba Bledsoe burst into the room, telling him,”sir, we’ve found something,” handing him twelve jewel-cased micro-mini optical disks and a handwritten note saying simply,”These are for you. We’ll hook up with y’all shortly.”

“The disks and the note were in a ziploc bag stuffed into the drain in the kitchen sink,” she explained, Carson slotting one of the MMODs into his holopad to see what was on it,”Leftenant Lynch was trying to unclog the bloody thing, ended up having to open the pipe underneath the sink, and this pops out.”

“What is it?” Master Haffke asked, Carson nodding his head over the holoprojected data, replying:

“Nothing special, Master Haffke.

Only our way in.”

20 JANUARY, 2226 18:11:27 TAI

“I shouldn’t have come,” Michelle Krebs said to Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads, as the two women sat on one of the benches surrounding the Reflecting Fountain in the center of the city of New Seattle, capital of the Independent Planetary Republic of Big Sky.

“Gram sent you here to do a story,” Stevie replied, staring past the spray of water, to the black basalt on the opposite side, scanning the names carved into it ten years ago.

Her fraternal twin sister’s was the third one from the top of the fourth slab of wall, the rest of Incorruptible’s flight crew listed below hers…she would’ve wanted to have been buried next to Micki, except, of course, there hadn’t been anything left to bring back, save a black-corded Tricolor and a Black Star—Cat’s fourth and final one—Micki had….

The second in command of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken sighed, Shelli fiddling with her sensorshades, not knowing whether or not she should take the conversation back up.

“She blames herself for that too,” Stevie whispered. “For Cat....and, for Micki, ‘tho she should know better….”

“You’re worried about her,” Shelli said, not asking, knowing, her instincts as sharp as Gram’s almost.

“I always worry about her,” Stevie replied, nodding,”tho’, for her sake, I try not to let on too much.” “You’re afraid if she falls again, you’re not going to able to catch her,” Shelli remarked, Stevie telling her,”that’s just it, I didn’t catch her the first time, she caught herself, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone for almost twenty years now….

“…Stevie,” her voice, choked with tears, said from the other side of the closed door,”Stevie, I-i need to talk to y-you, p-please….”

Of course, she got up from her workstation and opened the door…Jami was standing there, vomit on her breath, shivering, eyes red and puffy from crying.

“Luv?” Stevie asked, trying to choke down her own tears.

“B-baby,” Jami said, her voice quavering,”baby, I’ve been mean and stupid, and I’ve done everything I could to h-hurt you ‘cause….’c-cause it w-was easier than me n-not being afraid of what I’ve w-wanted all along, w-what it might m-mean if I l-let myself t-try t-to….”

She trailed off, looking down at her feet, her hands flailing about of their own accord…God, she looked a fright, hair all matted and tangled, sweat pouring down her face, mingled with the tears she just couldn’t stop crying…she was cold sober, that explained the vomit on her breath, she’d must’ve started trying to get herself legless, like she‘d gotten in the habit of doing nights since the fall of Bearclaw Station, and…she’d stopped herself.

She’d stopped herself…some people reacted badly to purganol, Jami was one of those…usually, when she was off duty, she’d just drink herself into unconsciousness, crying ‘til she’d passed out on the floor or in her bed.

“I-i know,” she whispered, still not meeting her friend’s eyes,”I-i don’t d-deserve to b-be forgiven, I’m n-not gonna ask for that, I-i j-just w-want….”

Of course, Stevie had forgiven her.

Of course, she told her to come on in, sit down, luv….

“….including her,” Stevie finished, sighing.

If she wanted to, she could simply concentrate, pick up her unique scent drifting through this planet’s relatively thin air(one standard atmosphere, as opposed to her homeworld’s and her ship’s one decimal eight)pick up on the thoughts and emotions riding on those phermones…ever since the first time they’d made love, they’d been joined like this…so far, no limit as to how much distance between them; sometimes, it even worked in vacuum, when the air phermones were supposed to travel on didn’t exist, something she couldn’t explain and didn’t question….

She was tempted to try now, to try and reach out to her, deciding against it; as much as she was worried about Jami, she could no more violate her privacy right now than she could raise a hand against her —what some men had to say on that subject nonwithstanding….

Another sigh into thin, cold air…she had to be by herself right now, to try and come to terms with the ghosts of twenty years ago…Stevie simply had to trust her, to have faith in her strength to catch herself when she fell.

To be there when Jami needed her most.

20 JANUARY, 2226 18:30:00 TAI

Lieutenant Coloniel Celina Albright found herself rummaging through most of the information the late William Derreg had given them en route to the gallows at New Kyoto, her feet propped up on the workstation in Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken’s AI core…almost two months, and she still hadn’t gone through all of it, the war leaving little time for that…her wife had put some of that data to good use, synthesizing a cure for the Lindsey’s disease that had threatened to take their friend Carson from them.

Much of the rest she’d seen…Unbroken’s intelligence officer still couldn’t go to sleep without that coming for her in her dreams, on top of all the other nightmares thirty years’ of serving her Commonwealth had brought to her.

She turned over a small plastic square in her hands, about the size of an MMOD, but whose storage capacity—at least according to the label—was only a couple hundred meg, though, doubtlessly, it had been cutting-edge tech two centuries ago.

Finally, she decided to slot it into the workstation terminal, Unbroken telling her, “I can read it, it is a precursor of the micro-mini optical disk…the image quality, however, is rather poor.”

Two women, one with close-cropped hair, the other with shoulder-length hair framing a round face, both of them greenish-yellow like the surrounding countryside they were running through, were jumped by masked men in AWS military fatigues—or so close as made no odds—who’d proceeded to strip and rape them both repeatedly, alternating that with burning their naked bodies and the insides of their vaginas with lit cigarets before finally grabbing the woman with shoulder-length hair, forcing her onto her knees, the other one screaming,”no, no, God, please, leave Anne alone—“ one of the masked men slapping her across the face, telling her to “fuckin’ shut your blonde fuckin’ cooter head and watch!” before grabbing her hair, forcing her to watch her lover being garroted by one of the other masked men, one of his mates shoving his prick down her throat as the life was snuffed out of her.

Then, those sons of bitches did the same exact goddamn thing to her….

Celina was clutching the fucking thing in her fist after ejecting it from the terminal, trying to catch her breath, shakes tearing through her body…she’d seen worse, especially at fucking Black Mountain, but this was still pretty ugly….

She put the disk down, reaching for one of two ziplocked bags, both with the word “EVIDENCE” printed on them, a date—“12 APR 95”—handwritten along the top.

A Commonwealth Forces rank badge—normally worn on the uniform beret—inside, a single solid yellow bar painted across the blue-enamelled metal, the winged sword of the Aerospace Arm at the top of the badge.

Wing Commander, Celina remarked to herself, from the same date Jami was supposed to have shot Alexander Waters—neé Lamar—through his right shoulder….

She trailed off, picking up the other evidence bag, this one dated “28 JAN 86” according to the writing on it…a cylinder, which would’ve been the size of a roll of quarters—though, much heavier had it been fully charged—save it had been deformed by intense heat, scorch marks obscuring a bar code in the center.

But not the “M117”stamped into the front part of it…this was a Commonwealth Forces M117 carbon gas cannister, used by the Browning M2 rail pistol, M3 assault railer, M5 tribarrel and M6 assault carbine…found somewhere on Earth 240 years ago….

Celina put the ziploc bag to the side with the other and with the 25-carat flawless blue sapphire… these were headed straight for Intelligence Arm’s forensic laboratories on the Headquarters reservation back on Cor Leonis, just as soon as she could run them over to the Intelligence Arm mission at the Commonwealth embassy here…the labs back home could easily read the bar code through the scorching, find out just where that cannister had come from, though the veteran Intelligence Arm officer had a bad feeling she already knew.

She already knew how it had gotten itself in a position to be found nearly two and a half centuries before it had been made.

20 JANUARY, 2226 18:58:20 TAI

“Fuckin’ leave me alone!” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Marie Dixon snapped at her second, Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Rhiannon Moseley, as she sucked another Chronic Blonde to life, her third tumbler of José on the rocks—maybe it was her fourth, didn’t really fucking matter either way—sitting at her left hand, Ree just fucking standing there at her table, loud fucking music echoing in Ariel’s head, lights and the noise of the bar’s other patrons starting to make Unbroken’s chief flight engineer feel dizzy.

“You’re drunk,” Ree whispered, stating the very fucking obvious like it was some great fucking tragedy or something, Ariel replying by putting the ciggie in the ashtray and downing the entire tumbler of tequila in one go, banging her glass on the table for a refill.

“Damn skippy,” Ariel said, seeing, but not seeing Ree, chuckling, repeating herself, continuing to bang her glass on the table until one of the robowaiters whizzed by with a bottle of José Cuervo, hovering at her table, asking her,”ma’am, don’t you think you’ve had—“

“Why the fuck am I banging my fuckin’ glass on the goddamn table if I think I’ve had enough,” Ariel screamed, loud enough, apparentally, to cut through the noise,”you stupid, goddamn hunk of fuckin’ junk?!”

“I am,” the fucking mechanoid piece of crap insisted,”going to have cut you o—“

Looking Ree straight in her tear-stained face(what the fuck?!), Ariel snatched the bottle of José off the waiter’s tray, before the damn thing could stop her, popped off the top and drank the bitch straight.

Laughing at the annoying fucking bitch, barely feeling the tequila burning its way down her throat, the robowaiter making an annoying fucking beeping noise, two women, both in t-shirts and shorts, coming towards her, Ariel, staring dead into Ree’s red-rimmed blue eyes, taking another pull from the bottle of tequila, laughing in her stupid fucking face the whole time it bobbed, weaved and spun itself into darkness in front of her.

Her own laughter ringing in her ears the last thing she heard for a while.

20 JANUARY, 2226 19:18:21 TAI

She sighed, staring at the mug of evilly fizzing Black Star Red, shaking her head, thinking about just how fucking easy it was for her to feel so sorry for herself that she would actually go back there, throw away nearly twenty years’ sobriety…worse than that, put Stevie through all that hell again, just because Jami wasn’t the hero everyone, including Stevie, thought she was…..

“Ma’am,” the waitress said, as she came up to her, Jami still staring at her first and only drink,”I don’t mean to be nosy, but, you’ve been staring at that drink an awful long time…ever since you got here, as a matter of fact.”

“What time is it, anyway?” Jami asked her.

“Eighteen and a half after nineteen, ma’am,” the waitress—she’d heard some of the others in the bar call her Penny—told her. “Fuck,” Jami interjected…over an hour since she’d set foot in this little hole-in-the-wall biker dive off the main highway between New Seattle and New Helena….Stevie was worried sick about her, and all Jami could fucking think to do was try and shut her out again.

That was what that untouched mug of Black Star really was.

“You know,” she said to Penny,”I started drinking as just another pathetic attempt to push her away from me…by turning myself into the damn thing I hated most, I was hoping to make her hate me as well.”

“That’s pretty fucking stupid, huh?” she asked Penny, Penny nodding her head in reply, telling her “not one of the more intelligent reasons to start drinking, no.”

“Damn thing of it is,” Jami said, motioning the other woman to one of the chairs,” it got to be about more than running away from her…I found this,” she gestured towards the mug,” could help me run away from everything, when it got to be too much for poor little Jami to deal with.”

“So,” she added,” I thought at the time…either way, it didn’t work, no matter how hard I tried, she wouldn’t leave my side, wouldn’t take the hint….all I succeeded in doing was killing her bit by bit by trying to do the same exact goddamn thing to myself, and still, she….”

Jami trailed off, sighing heavily, Penny remarking,”sounds like she’s a good woman.”

“Too good, sometimes,” Jami whispered, another heavy sigh passing through her, as she repeated herself, fondling the wedding ring depending from the chain round her neck, feeling the ruby which was her wife’s birthstone set into the stainless steel which was supposed to last forever, pulling the ring and chain out of her Commonwealth Forces dress reds…she was supposed to be at the Reflecting Fountain another couple hours from now, to attend the services officially ending the Memorial Week holiday…last Saturday had been the twentieth anniversary of the attack on Bearclaw Station, and today had been eleven years exactly since JMC forces had invaded Big Sky in an effort to liberate its people…her wife was already there, Cat’s name was on the wall separating the fountain from the rest of the Big Sky capital, one of too goddamn many people who’d died in the eight and a half months it had taken for the Commonwealth and their allies to help the people of Big Sky take back their world….

Nodding her head, she told Penny,”thank you,” as she got out of the chair, pulling her wallet out of the pocket of her slacks, opening it up, Penny shaking her head, putting her hand on the arm of the commander of the Unbroken.

“I’ve got this,” she said softly, smiling at her.

“You—“ Jami started to say, sighing, telling her thank you, Penny, in turn, telling her:

“What you did for us twenty years ago…how much you paid for that….”

The waitress sighed, swallowing down her tears, smiling again.

“Baby,” she said, voice quavering as she spoke,”a couple bucks for a drink you didn’t even touch, a few minutes to listen to you talk…nothing at all compared to you showing my people that they could stand up for themselves, no matter what they were up against.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, giving Jami’s arm a gentle squeeze.

20 JANUARY, 2226 20:09:43 TAI

Cautiously, the four Volkswagen combat sleds made their way down Terranova 301, the Mitteldeutschers back in their DNSB gay ass pirate outfits, Carson, the members of his team and Jay Todman lagging about three or four car lengths behind them in the ’26 Ford Terranova Navigator Mark VIII Carson—pretending to be a Movie Board Security pay grade four—had “requisitioned” from the dealership across the road from the former ICLU safehouse, the Mid reporter gripping the firing triggers of the quad-mounted 90 grafted onto the sunroof of the 6x6 light recreational vehicle, his sensorshades tucked away in the pocket of his armorjack, Jay trying to look and act every bit like a piggish thug of a Movie Board security op who just wanted an excuse to kill something with the railguns he was using to cover everything moving along the twenty lanes of Unionsboro’s main drag.

Which meant he was training his guns on tanks, APCs, combat sleds, armed groundcars belonging to the members of the Inter-Fraternity Council Volunteer Security Force—the members of Terranova Southeastern’s various fraternities, or, at least they had been, before Zellner had disbanded the Ministry of Education and shut down all the schools during the Thanksgiving holidays—and a few unarmed civilian vehicles, most of those AG lorries thundering along at twice the speed of sound…immediately following last month’s recall election, Zellner had, amongst other things, imposed a total ban on civilian travel, not allowing any male in his peaceable kingdom to be on the streets unless he was headed to work or coming back from his mandatory twelve-hour workday.

Any man even thinking of going against his Governor on that would find himself twitching, crying, screaming, pissing, bleeding and crapping all over himself from the neural servo each and every Yanker had gladly had implanted in his medulla oblongata at Zellner’s command….

Jay sighed….madness, it was madness, but….

Another sigh, the Mid reporter not wanting to go any further with that train of thought, not able to help himself, going over what William Derreg had said to him just before he’d gone to the gallows, the confrontation he’d had with Deal in Vargas’ public cemetery.

The real reason Jessi had been murdered thirty-three years ago.

The real reason his brother had to trade his life for the lives of over a hundred thousand people a couple months ago.

“’March on, join bravely, let us to it pell-mell,’” he found himself whispering. “If not to heaven, than hand in hand to hell.’”

The real reason for all this…hung upside down everywhere he looked, meathooks shoved into their vaginas, bound hand and foot, whipped, burned, mutilated, his imagination—with ample source material from thirty goddamn years’ of expirience—all too eagerly filling him in on the God only knows what else that had been done to them…that bastard brother of Carson’s had been right when he’d told the worlds they hadn’t died quietly or with anything anywhere close to dignity, and, eleven years ago, this had been New Seattle.

Right down to the choking stench of shit, piss, infection, fear and death overwhelming his nostrils and watering his eyes the closer they drew to Terranova Southeastern University…they were at Intercounty Access Highways 25 and 301, both of which led to exits along Intercounty Highway 975—a spur highway connecting downtown Unionsboro with IC 75—at the fringe of the University campus spilling out along both sides of 301 and the access highways, blocking fields up along the boundary marking the University’s jurisdiction from that of the surrounding city, British Royal Military Police, Reggie Paramilitary Police and N.C.O. Raiders establishing roadblocks at the barriers of artificial grav, stopping traffic on the ten southbound lanes leading into the campus, sending forth squads to check the credentials of the people they’d inconvenienced.

Including the Mitteldeutschers and them, Brits already scanning the SSK troops and checking the IDs they’d taken off the Blitzpolizei they’d replaced, the sergeant commanding a squad of Raiders barking at Carson to “depolarize ‘em winders; you, hands off ‘em 90s, less ye wantin’ t’commit suicide, lessee that ID!” Carson depolarized the windows and opened the doors of the Navigator at the same time Jay handed the N.C.O. noncom the MMOD chip holding his fake credentials, Carson handing his fake ID and those of the others to him, along with another MMOD.

The sergeant and some of his men going for their IAWs the instant the windows completely depolarized and the doors opened wide to reveal eight women in Commonwealth grey, one of them interjecting “what the fuck?!” Carson, stepping out of the driver’s seat, holding up his hands, saying,”oy, oy, put those bloody t’ings away, will ye?!”

“If,” he added, that cockney accent of his so close to the real deal as made no odds,”we was Commies, do ye think we’d be so thick as to parade right past your beaks?”

“Our scanners,” the sergeant said dubiously, still not slotting the MMODs into his holopad, still not lowering his IAW a millimeter from between Carson’s virally-altered brown eyes,”say ‘em’s bitches ye got in there, son. Mind explainin’ that?”

“Of course they scan female, ya pillock,” Carson replied. “T’ey’re supposed to, Movie Board t’inks of everythin’, t’at’s why t’ey’re on top of the bleedin’ biz to begin wit’, mate.”

“Ye see, my son,” he added,” t’ey know you’ve got, um, ‘ow do we put it, ICLU issues—“

“Don’t fuckin’ remind me,” the N.C.O. sergeant groused sourly, the barrel of his IAW coming down just a bit, Carson finishing what he was saying,”t’at’s why we kitted ‘em out with biofakers, a little psyops against the enemy, as it were.”

“Go on, lad,” he prodded,”check our IDs, you’ll find everythin’s in order, that last MMOD’s got our orders, direct from Damien d’Souza ‘imself, t’at chip’ll uplink to ‘im via T-Star, ‘e’ll tell ye, everythin’s on the up and up, no funny business ‘ere, me boyo.”

One of the N.C.O. commented,”they some damn convincin’ drag queens,” Sergeant Shawn Gyllenheal speaking up, softening and deepening her voice, telling him,”well, lil’ boy, I do some femdommin’ on the side, a pay grade two don’t bring ‘ome shit these days…if ya wanna session after I’m done with this gig, just comm for Mistress Nightshade, ‘kay, luv?”

That performance left the N.C.O. nervously shifting his weight from one foot to another while his buddies had a bit of fun at his expense, the noncom growling for his men to knock it off, slotting the MMODs one by one into his holopad, eyes intent on the data holoprojected before him, waiting each time for the ID he’d slotted in to carry out its hardcoded imperative to link the holopad up to the T-Star in orbit, access the Movie Board AI network and verify that it was legit.

The IDs were quite legitimate, false as they were(Jessi would’ve appreciated the irony)the ICLU hack who’d whipped these up and left them for Carson to find knew what she’d been doing, the N.C.O. sergeant not even bothering to check the faked orders from the Movie Board Chairman, telling Carson,”y’all will find the rest of your peeper set up in the CommArts Building, that’s that tall-ass buildin’ over there,” he pointed to the thirty-story building poking out from what few trees remained, sumbitch bristling with antennae; just take Forrest Road, next one to your right, it’ll lead ye straight to it. I’ll comm ahead to let ‘em know you’re comin’.”

“Cheers,” Carson said, slapping the noncom on the shoulder, before getting back in the Navigator, Shawn taunting the N.C.O. she’d been feeding her lines to with a ”your legs are like mayonnaise, girlie- girl, and I want ya to spread ‘em!” causing the poor bastard to blush, his buddies to laugh their asses off and their sergeant to growl,”just fuckin’ go already!”

“Oh, my God,” Jay heard Carson remark, amidst chuckles, once they started rolling again,” Sergeant, that has to be one of the sickest things I’ve heard said in my time.” “Just staying in character, sir,” Shawn replied, more than a bit embarassed, Jay asking,”where the hell did you get that line from, anyway?”

“From the slob of a Movie Board pay grade two,” Shawn replied, embarassment replaced by barely-concealed anger,”who said it first.”

“You mean—“ 1st Lieutenant Meghan Polk started to ask.

“Not anymore,” Shawn replied, her voice tense.

“Not,” she repeated quietly, as Carson turned them onto Forrest Drive,”anymore.”

20 JANUARY, 2226 20:16:08 TAI

“Hey, baby,” Jami whispered, hugging Stevie, leaning her head against her wife’s breasts, Stevie hugging her back, holding on to her for dear life, not ever wanting to let go.

Letting go, holding her by her shoulders, looking into her pale blue eyes, leaning her head up against hers, smiling, the two women turning to face the flags, lit up by floods, blowing gently in the breeze as they flew at half-staff, the grey mountains on blue of Big Sky in the center, flanked by the Silver Bear of Midnight Sun, the Marist Cross of Avalon, the Rising Sun of Japan and the Horizon Starburst on the left and by the Jolian Key, the Russian Red Bear, the Australian Fighting Kangaroo, the white cross on red of the Swiss federal ensign and the Commonwealth Tricolor on the right…these had been the JMC members whose troops and spacers had shed blood to help liberate the planet…the Public Safety Committee—the planet’s governing body since gaining its independence ten years ago—had asked Jami to lay the memorial wreath on the wall this year, a great honor which her wife, of course, felt she could’ve done just as well without, would have, if the Defence Staff hadn’t made it an order….

People were pouring into the area round the Reflecting Fountain, including some of Unbroken’s flight crew…of those, only Stevie, Jami, Ryla, Celina and Harriet had been there that day twenty years ago, Prue having joined the ship at Magrathea Station, Genera after the fight at Morning Glory, all the rest— almost all the rest—replacements for good friends lost along the way…there was Ryla now, talking with Prue, Genera,Harriet and her wife, Kyra Spencer, whom they’d delivered—after a fashion—from fucking Black Mountain almost twelve years ago….

Sun was coming up now, Sirius C rising and setting roughly every twelve and a quarter minutes, Big Sky itself taking seven decimal three days to complete one orbit round it, its two-day long seasons not bringing much variation in the generally cool weather…that spot on the reddish-white sun, almost mistaken for an afterimage resulting from looking directly at it, was the Dysonian the Mids had started work on during the invasion of Big Sky to replace Bearclaw Station.

It bore her wife’s name, Unbroken had been there to dedicate it when it had come on line during the first Memorial Week observance, nine years ago, Jami had….

Stevie sighed, looking back at Jami, pale blue eyes reflecting a coal of fire in the endless night and eternal winter of space, tears running down her cheeks, her wife whispering, baby, I’m—

No, she then said, I’m not fine.

A mental sigh, before telling her:

I almost fucked up and threw everything away, baby, Stevie seeing an image of her in some dive, a mug of Black Star Red at her elbow.

An untouched mug of Black Star Red. Baby, Jami said, I’m so sorry.

Why? Stevie asked.

For being weak, Jami told her. For being so selfish, that I was almost willing to hurt you all over again, just so I wouldn’t have to….

Another sigh, as she trailed off, Stevie reliving Bearclaw Station, Black Mountain, all of that pain, through her, her wife giving Jami’s hand a gentle squeeze.

I should’ve been better than that, Jami whispered, should’ve been at least half the hero I am in your eyes.

You are my hero, Stevie told her point-blank. If you hadn’t been, you wouldn’t have left that drink untouched, you wouldn’t have been honest with me about it, wouldn’t now be asking my forgiveness for something….

Her turn to sigh now, before whispering:

We both knew, long time ago, this was something you have to keep fighting, and as long as you keep fighting, you are the hero all of us know you to be.

There is no doubt in my mind you will keep fighting.

I have faith in you.

Jami’s only reply was to gently squeeze Stevie’s hand back, the two women looking back up into the rising sun.

20 JANUARY, 2226 20:24:27 TAI

“Bitch,” the Movie Board pay grade eight looking at him through one swollen eye, threatened through what the barrel of an M2 had left of his bonesmoker,”when Damien hears ‘bout this, he’s gonna—“

“Shut the fuck up,” Carson—the cosmetic editing virus having worn off and restored his own face to him—replied, working the holodisplay in front of him in the production room of Terranova Southeastern’s HV station…frat fags had guarded the CommArts Building, sons of bitches better rapists than combatants, Carson’s team, Jay, the Mitteldeutschers and the ICLU workers blasting through them and taking the nearly-deserted thirty-story building almost without a fight.

Almost…Sidney Deal’s thugs might have been bullies, sadists and murderers, but they were some damn accomplished bullies, sadists and murderers, the best, in fact, Movie Board silver could buy, Carson and the others running slap up against a Movie Board Security standard infantry company on the twenty- seventh floor, where the studios were, a miracle none of them had been killed—though almost all of them had been wounded—but, Carson had no illusions that the alarm had not been given and more troops were on their way here to take back the building, any means necessary.

Which was fine…hopefully, by the time they got here, Jay and he would be finished doing what they were doing down here, and Kimba, the Mitteldeutschers’ techhead and the ICLU hack who’d done a first-class job of providing them with fake ID would be through with what they had to do to the building’s transmitters up top…and, the League forces in Unionsboro would have their hands full of JMC regulars trying to establish a salient within the enemy’s backyard…already, Third and Fifth Field Commands, the Avalon 22d Army and the Mids 11th and 19th Armies were moving from Dublin—the farthest the JMC had advanced along the South Coast—to catch the enemy between two opposing forces. The second opposing force was in hyperspace now, on vector for Terranova, assault transports carrying eight JMC armies, plus medships, ortillery control ships, mobile shops and ten frigate divisions.

And, they would all be within assisted telegate range of here…any time now….

“I’d stick my head between my legs right now, if I were y’all,” Carson said to the Movie Board crew,”’cause, either way this goes, it’s going to get noisy, and things might start coming down on top of you.”

“Master Bledsoe,” he said into his link,”I don’t mean to nag, but—“

“TGT devices have been spliced into the transmitter array and patched through to the controls in the production room,” Kimba’s voice replied. “All up to you now, sir.”

“Jay?” Carson asked.

“We’re linked up with the T-Star in orbit,” his old friend through adventure and hardship replied,”transmitters are continuing to upload live ‘casts from remote crews all over Unionsboro into the Net.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Carson told him, nodding his head.

“Herr Oberstleutnant,” Lynch’s voice said over the link, Carson hearing gunfire loud and clear,”I am afraid we’ve underestimated their ability to deploy troops in response to our—“

“You only have to hold ‘em off for a little while, Leftenant,” Carson replied, seeing the command to trigger the telegate targeting devices displayed and underlined in one of the control holodisplays.

“If you believe in Him, start praying to God now, Matthias,” he added, stroking the command, Kimba reporting over the link,”telegate targeting signals from all devices reading strong and steady.”

“Switching us over to local power,” Carson said, kicking the CommArtsBuilding’s secondary antimatter reactor just barely ahead of the University’s physical plant cutting power from the main reactors, the gunfire outside getting louder, Carson hearing 90s trading punches…Kimba had humped two TGT devices—the radar and ESI scanners in each covering 180 degrees of arc, each with an effective range of twenty-five klicks—with her from Dublin, the Mitteldeutscher tech had been carrying her two the entire time she’d been dirtside, the ICLU providing the remaining two, allowing them to send the first six armies through from hyperspace.

“Mathematical conditions matching 100% on all target points,” the Mitteldeutscher reported, Carson hearing 203s, 127s, Gatling 90s and Gatling 25s joining in the firefight, as well as a great deal of small arms fire,” they‘re coming through, Herr Oberstleutnant!”

Fuck!

The building shook, Lynch shouting out over his link that Avalon, Norddeutscher and Mitteldeutscher heavy suits were pouring through multiple spacetime rifts all round the building, followed closely behind by Lynxes, Tiger IIs and Leopards with standard infantry spilling out of their bellies like baby spiders bursting forth from their eggsacs, self-propelled artillery platforms behind them, moving into position to shell enemy forces elsewhere in Unionsboro, the whole fucking city shaking, the building feeling as if it would drop like a house of cards at any time, the frigates escorting the invasion force, their fighters and UAVs driving gobstoppers, 127s and 457s into every military, economic and government target in Bulloch County.

“Six down,” Carson said, the gunfire outside fading to echoes in the distance,”two to go, resetting focus.” 20 JANUARY, 2226 20:30:13 TAI

One last squeeze of Stevie’s hand, before the commander of the Unbroken picked up the memorial wreath, Jami sighing, as the sun began setting, and Harriet Mangione began piping “Amazing Grace” into the cold winter air.

Slowly, in time with the music, everyone in uniform round her snapping to attention, she marched to the wall holding the names of all those who’d died during the attack on Bearclaw Station two decades ago, at Black Mountain nine years later, and during the fight to take this world back two months after that, Jami squaring her shoulders, trying not to struggle with the wreath, composing herself as she marched past where the New Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra were set up, arriving at the center of the wall just as Harriet was almost done playing “Amazing Grace.”

Sirius C had set, the bagpipe’s final notes fading away into the dark—the floods illuminating the flags not yet having snapped on—the commander of the Unbroken snapping to attention and saluting after she’d laid the wreath in place, everything just so still and quiet.

Stayed that way for some time before a slow drumroll came from the orchestra, followed by the passionate opening strains of “Le Marseillaise” and a series of slow, measured BOOM!s, that giving way to string instruments raising the flag of Big Sky all the way up to the top of the tallest of the ten flagstaffs, brass instruments and every bell tower in New Seattle saluting that flag as it fluttered in the wind.

A final blast of “Le Marseillaise,” giving way to the driving rhythms of “God Save the Tsar,” as two by two, the flags of the JMC nations who’d fought to liberate this world went up their flagpoles, the BOOM!ing starting up again, slow and steady, the Silver Bear of Midnight Sun and the Commonwealth Tricolor being the last two flags to be raised to full staff, the floods lighting them up for all the worlds to see, ten flags flying high as the bells tolled one last time and the music faded away to echoes of itself.

Her wife taking her hand again, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Thank you,” Jami whispered to the woman she would always love.

“You did all the heavy lifting, luv,” Stevie whispered back. “I was just…there.”

Jami leaned her head into her wife’s shoulder, giving her hand a gentle squeeze.

“We’re done here,” she whispered,”for now.”

“For now,” Stevie repeated.

“Why don’t I,” Jami said,”take you out somewhere for dinner, dancing, whatever you want to do, doesn’t matter, as long as….”

She trailed off, Stevie whispering back,”that sounds good right about now.”

—endit—

Who Are Hated As Being Of Our Kind “So Chalk did not fight for revenge; in her own words, ‘Tough girl, me. Big. Strong. Good fighter. Didn’t want to be. Had to be. How I lived through what they did, me. Fought, me. Never stopped fighting. And lived through it. Now I fight so other girls don’t have to fight. Get to be girls,them. You follow? Only two ways to stop me: Kill me, or show me no girls have to fight.’

Mace understood. No one should have to be that tough.” Matthew Stover, Shatterpoint

25 JANUARY, 2226 08:45:12 TAI

“Fire in the hole!” screamed 2d Lieutenant Calandra Calloway’s voice over her link, Lieutenant Coloniel Priscilla Lovett hitting the deck, firing her Midnight Sun Arms M2140 rail pistol and M2166 assault railer full-bore, the heavy-weaps platoon of the company of Midnight Sun standard infantry she personally commanded ripping into the advancing Phooie Ghurka troops with a hailstorm of twelve-ton, hyperdense, monomolecular carbon projectiles spat out of the barrels of their eighty 90 mm Gatling-barrel man-portable artillery systems at the speed of light.

A pretty damn good likeness of her voice screaming for her people to get up off their asses and fucking charge those sons of bitches, the AG harness built into her suit of FedArmy blacks propelling her towards the surviving Ghurkas—charging at her people in the muddy, flooded snowrice field, waving those damn knives about—at about 130 kph.

Which meant, of course, she was going bayonets and rifle butts with the little brown-skinned bastards, all of whom were reaching through her shielding, clawing at her suit, trying to rip it open, trying to fucking strip her naked and do what they would to her before killing her, the veteran FedArmy officer pistolwhipping, riflebutting, headbanging and kicking the sons of bitches every which way in reply, spraying those who she’d knocked far enough away for her to open fire on them, screaming the entire time she bulleted through the ranks of the enemy, though the snowrice field.

Through stalks of Caledon indigo to be brought up short by a scene she was not ready to see.

“P-please,” stammered a young woman—a freakin’ kid—on her knees in the silt, naked except for smears of dirt, the marks of straps which cut into her soft flesh, bruises….and bleeding welts left by the lasewhip in the hands of the…the…the…goddamn thing standing over her, a pair of grey hipster panties and a tank top distorting its features even more than she/he/it had done to itself.

The fucking grotesquery, what was female in the eyes of their enemies, laid into its victim’s breasts with the lasewhip in its hands, screaming,”you stupid, fuckin’ cunt, don’t fuckin’ tell me ‘plea—‘”

A single shot from the M2140 in Priscilla’s right hand took its head clean off, others of its deformed, depraved Gollum-esque kind turning towards her, some dressed as it had been, still others wearing the long, split up the ass, khaki dresses, black G-string panties, knee boots and riding crops of the Hell Star’s infamous matrons.

It was one of those who had the gall to ask Priscilla,”whatsa matter, swee—“ All of them were dead before Priscilla had thought to pull the triggers on both weapons, the carbon gas cannisters in the pistol and assault railer flinging themselves into the flooded field to sizzle in the filthy water in which the young woman knelt.

Sobbing out the words,”I-i thought s-she l-loved m-me,” as all Priscilla could do was just fucking stand there, mute, drained of even the motivation to reload her weapons.

Blinded by tears of her own.

25 JANUARY, 2226 09:34:00 TAI

“Positive acquistion on target,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ian Lethbridge reported over Commander Robert Brakenbury’s link, the commander of Hong Kong Republican Military Starcraft Entkedu seeing the shift in the stomach-turning reddish grey of hyperspace indicating the target for the Wu Lung-class frigate’s detachment of twleve Gryhphon hyperspace fighters,”all missiles away.”

“Stand by on our gobstoppers, Leftenant,” Brakenbury said to his weapons officer, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Claiborne Chiles,”and those on the UAVs, just in case the fighters miss the target.”

“Sir!” Chiles replied, Brakenbury turning away from the master holodisplay to the tachyar telemetry on his command holodisplays, the latter using the ship’s AI to translate its data into images more bearable to eye and stomach…their target was the Drumbeater early-warning satellite over Big Sky, to be taken out at a range of ten parsecs from the Sirius system, after which Entkedu, its twelve fighters and twelve IS.3037 unmanned aerospace vehicles sticking close to the ship, were to scarper and rejoin the bulk of the League Mobile Force now bearing down on the planet on a vector from Witch’s Tit…without the Drumbeater, Big Sky would have no warning of the strike from hyperspace, no way to defend itself against armies of troops gated into New Seattle, New Helena, Lanier Station and all the other strategic points on planet and in system.

The forces defending the planet would have no chance in Hell of stopping the League and the man who was more unquestionably at its head than Roger Tarrant ever was from taking back what was rightfully theirs and punishing those who’d dared rise up and take it from their masters in the first—

“Oh, bugger!” the unwelcome scream of Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Chris Middenhall tore through his commander’s link, twenty-four pinpoints of bright white puncturing the reddish-grey, Entkedu’s weapons officer, electronic warfare officer, fighter commander and tachyar all warning Brakenbury that five hundred eighty-eight distinct contacts were bearing down on the ship at c times three million and upwards, all guns blazing.

Those 588 tachyar contacts being 432 Mark III Raptor UAVs, 144 Mark IV Osprey-class hyperspace fighters…and their parent craft, twelve Commonwealth Forces Mod. 3 Dauntless-class frigates.

“Leftenant, launch—“ Brakenbury started to scream, Chiles already firing off the twelve gobstoppers carried by the IS.3037s and the ship’s own 25 hyperspace tactical missiles, pulsing the output of the AG force beam generator through the forward emitter array and firing thirty-six of the ship’s forty- eight turreted Gatling 90s in an effort to fend off all those 90s, 127s and 457s coming his way.

More white pinpoints in the grey haze, tachyar telling Brakenbury some of those pinpoints had been the Entkedu’s fighters and UAVs going up in a blaze scattering their mortal remains across the totality of superspace, Chiles screaming “bollocks!”at the top of his lungs, feverishly returning fire with all ten of the fifteen-thousand ton frigate’s 406-millimeter railguns.

A single Commie machine pulling away from her squadron mates in a burst of a.h.v., tachyar analyzing the distinct characteristics of her Rittermark field geometry. Entkedu’s second in command, Senior Astrogator Harold Granger, whispering a word beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet, as he saw the same data his commander did.

25 JANUARY, 2226 09:36:02 TAI

“We’ve got this dicksucker,” Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier said over her link, her wife and second, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads, driving Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken right down the throat of the Phooie Wu Lung trying his damndest to blast her out of hyperspace in a scattering of blue-hot sparks,”y’all fan out, start looking for his friends, do what has to be done.”

“Ma’am,” the holo of Commander Willie Jordan, Commonwealth Forces Ship Formidiable’s command astrogator , replied, Jami adding,”that means you too, Sky Dancer. Leftenant, have our Raptors assist the rest of the squadron in the hunt.”

“Got it, Boss,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson replied, even as she was pumping 457s from the ship’s ten primary railguns, anticipating her commander’s next order by replying,”comm drone away, on vector for Big Sky.”

“Thank you, Leftenant,” the commander of the Unbroken replied, Prue tightening the pattern of fire round the desperately twisting, juking, clawing Phooie warbird, Stevie’s sure, swift fingers flying across the piloting and astrogation holodisplays in front of her, her eyes on the master holodisplay itself, not even glancing at the commands she was inputting, not needing to, more born for the role she’d chosen for herself than Jami could ever be….

“…shielding reduced by 95%!” Stevie shouted from the weaps station. “Primary and secondary electrical systems are trashed out, teritary electrical system 78% disrupted, AG drive severely damaged, no better than c times point three possible, both reactors running wild, AG containment destablizing, reaction rate now 320 microgrammes per second and rising rapidly, auto-repair system off line, railguns two, three, five, seven and eight knocked out, AG force beam forward and starboard emitters destroyed, electronic warfare subsystems destroyed, waist section and drive room both open to space, hangar and Raptor bays both destroyed...heavy casaulties, 21 dead, 27 wounded.”

“S.A.,” Micki’s bleeding holoimage shouted from the drive room,“ I know you want to save as many of them as you can, we all do...but—”

“All excess power to the AG shielding!” the frightened senseless nineteen-year old girl now at the conn of this busted-up warbird screamed.“ Return! Fiii-re!”

“—you’re in command now,” that bitch of a chief flight engineer fucking had to remind her,“you have to think of your ship and crew as well...you’ve done all you can, you have to....”

…for the role thurst upon her twenty years ago.

“Not this time, damn you,” she whispered to the enemy machine fighting for its miserable bitch of a life, pale blue eyes shifting from it to the tachyar returns on her command holodisplays, searching for any sign of the enemy force….

...swooping down upon Bearclaw’s shattered, slowly tumbling body like tiger birds descending upon a nest of Satan’s helpers… she just had to direct the view tailward, have one last look at all those people who were consigned to Hell or worse than Hell, because they’d depended upon her for their salvation.

The fingers of her left hand blindly flew across the astrogation holodisplay, the Rittermark generator whining as it took the mortally-wounded Unbroken into hyperspace.... “…not this time, you bastards,” she whispered, 63-ton hyperdense masses of tachyon-impregnated monomolecular carbon stabbing out and down into the bands of hyperspace, drawing closer to the enemy machine Unbroken meant to kill.

25 JANUARY, 2226 09:37:42 TAI

“All right, boys,” Captain Pax Judas Rabwin, commanding the fighter detachment assigned to Mountaindove Republican Starcraft Silver Falls,”it’s party time.”

Rabwin screaming his exultation, kicking off both of Eve’s hyperspace tactical missiles, watching them streak towards the Middie terraforming station at way over c times ten meg, the rest of the twelve FH- 14 Harm IIs under his command following his lead, twenty-four cocks on their way to stop up the mouths of the over quarter meg Middie dyke bitches inside the Dysonian they’d named after that black-hearted lesbian sex k—

“No, no, no, no, no, no!” Rabwin screamed in protest, all twenty-four missiles going up, tachyar howling out warning, the veteran Mountaindove Aerospace Force spacer’s fingers doing the walking across Eve Of Destruction’s piloting and astro holodisplays even before his AI got through telling him twelve Commie Ospreys were coming in hot and thirsty for his blood.

Rabwin cursing some more, the goddamn driver code for the Harm’s artificial gravity attitude motors and its Rittermark jenny riddled with bugs, bitches could not write fucking code, the Harm tumbling first wing over wing, then ass over tea kettle in hyperspace, 90s and 127s streaking past him in all directions, his guys screaming like little bitches over his link as the rounds coming to take them out smeared them all over two spacetimes, the ship telling him it had IDed one of the Commie fighters engaging his detachment.

Rabwin only half-hearing it, as he finally got the Harm back under control, angling it straight towards the little Commie piece of pussy who still hadn’t gotten it through her slimy fucking taco that he was the better pilot of the two.

25 JANUARY, 2226 09:39:05 TAI

That Mountaindickhead Harm finally straightened his ass out, coming straight for Senior Astrogator Khryste Pollard, the commander of Unbroken’s fighter detachment working the astrogation and piloting holodisplays without even looking at either one, juking to avoid the incoming 90s and 127s at the same time she stabbed down on the master fire control and returned fire with Sky Dancer’s six 127s and the two forward-mounted Gatling 90s, shouting out orders for her Bravo fighter combat team to take on the incoming enemy King Cobra UAVs and the Mountaindove Vancouver-class frigate they were screening, searching for Unbroken’s own Raptor IIIs, finding them, sending them a command to pile on the Mountaindove warbird, while her Alfas and she continued engaging the remnants of his fighter detachment.

Sky Dancer whispered in her ear that she was able to ID that Harm by analyzing everything which made up his unique Rittermark field geometry, Khryste telling her fighter never mind, it didn’t matter who he was, he was trying his best to kill them both, that was the only thing which meant a damn at this moment, the commander of the squadron’s fighter battalion putting her ship into a tight spin at c times three and a half meg, raining 90s and 127s down on the bastard, the bastard sweeping them aside with pulses fired through his forward emitters from his AG force beam jenny, stabbing at her with his six 127s and the two Gatling 90s fitted into hardpoints underneath the wings, twisting and turning his ship to minimize his chances of being blasted out of hyperspace as so much hot freakin’ junk.

Her own AG force beam jenny fired pulse after pulse through Sky Dancer’s forward emitters, sweeping aside much of the incoming fire, Khryste dodging the rest…only just…AG shielding didn’t work in hyperspace, switching it on destablized the Rittermark field geometry, one direct hit from even a 90, at the massive kinetic energies hyperdense objects had travelling FTL, would scatter little pieces of her all over the totality of superspace. So, she did everything in her power to not get hit, taking only the slightest notice of Commonwealth frigates, fighters and UAVs streaking past her to take on the opfor coming down on the Sirius system at c times six or seven hundred kay, their fighters and UAVs already out in front, assault transports down low, hugging the lower bands of pale blue and darker green as they closed to either assisted or unassisted telegate range—entirely possible the enemy had recondos or ops of their own on Big Sky, planting TGT beacons, wiring them up to the T-Star to allow those transports to gate troops through hyperspace….

That also didn’t matter, not right now, not with her sweating inside her suit, feverishly feeding in corrections to stablize Sky Dancer’s Rittermark field geometry, disrupted, as was local hyperspace itself, by the violence taking place all round her.

The Mountaindick wasn’t as quick, or as good as he must’ve thought he was, a volley of 127s bracketing him, close enough to tear hyperspace and his Rittermark field to shreds and send him spinning back into normal space.

Khryste then altering vector towards the enemy force on vector for Big Sky.

“…fuckin’ tell me what you are, bitchgirl!” Mistress screamed, shoving Her fist into her twot, holding her by her hair, head still bent from where She’d bitten her and drank her blood in front of all those men watching Her dominate her girl slave, throwing down twenty-, fifty and hundred-sterling notes as fast as they could peel them off.

Her world flashed white, Mistress shoving Her fist in all the fucking way to her stomach, holding the naked, whipped, beaten, collared and chained fourteen-year old girl up on her tiptoes by that red- leather gloved fist in her.

“Tell me what you are, goddamn you!” was Her shrieked order.

All she could do was blub like a fucking baby, Mistress spanking her arse hard, screaming to her girl that her crying bullshit didn’t fucking work, not on one of her own….

25 JANUARY, 2226 09:54:30 TAI

“…mother-fuck!” the Boss screamed, hitting dirt as fast as thirty-odd years of expirience could move him, everyone else scattering, taking cover, Sergeant Shawn Gyllenheal’s Browning M6 assault carbine spitting out fifteen 2.5-millimeter hyperdense masses of monomolecular carbon at the speed of light, a bright blue line disintegrating everything in the back lot that either had not or could not evade, the Boss himself coming up on one knee, vectoring deuce and a halves from his Browning M3 assault railer towards a barrel of monkeyboys pouring out the back door of what a garish bit of holography told the ten Commonwealth Forces recondos and one Midnight Sun reporter was “CLUB LESBOS,” the hologram also showing the naked backside of a woman on her knees to another woman.…

…grabbing her by her matted hair, forcing her to lick Her twot, girlie gagging, almost puking right there on the floor of the cage, Mistress shoving her face and mouth in it, nothing she could do but lick and swallow that nasty fucking shit coming out of it, tasting and smelling like the worst possible distallation of bad fish and rancid….

…for Gawd’s sake, I’m supposed to be a bleeding Commie Forces recondo, she swore at herself, even as her intergral AG harness had her moving through the bloody, greasy spray which had been a good baker’s dozen worth of monkeybones, into the back room of the club proper, I ain’t got time for—

Fuck…. They were bringing in the morning’s “entertainers,” some for stripping, some for the lesbian shows, some for waiting tables, the poor things chained together, huddled, trembling, eyes down—God help ‘em if they looked up, or, worse, at one another—teeth biting down into lips, lasewhips tearing into them, the men wielding them screaming obscenities mixed in with commands to fucking move.

That is, before the last bit of carbon gas in the M6’s cannister made dogmeat of the lot of them, the nineteen-year old Commonwealth Forces sergeant drawing her Browning M2 rail pistol, reloading the carbine single-handed, keeping up the firing as she drove on through to the main part of the club.

Bouncers, breakers, queens, patrons, the poor things they all used and distorted for their kicks and their damn lies, all scattering and hitting the deck, Shawn sweeping into the room, firing at any of them she could lock on to, not stopping until all of them, all of them, were smears on the lavender-painted ferrocrete floor.

One of them almost getting away, the drag queen son of a bitch, wearing a long, flowing red wig, a tight studded leather bustier, a studded leather skirt split up the arse on both sides, knee boots and nothing else, on top of a blonde girl, not much younger than Shawn, not a bloody thing on but a pair of G-string knickers, a suspender belt and a pushup bra, the queen grabbing her by her hair, firing up a fag….

“…you need a woman to make the pussy right, dontcha, lad?” Mistress Nightshade asked the grey suit and goatee, watching Shawn prying her lips apart, screaming for her to fuck herself with the fag in her shaking right hand.

Sliding Her skull-studded tongue across Her black-painted lips, Mistress said,”of course ya do, all ya blokes is too weak and soft-‘earted to treat us bitches like we deserve to be treated.”

Lighting up another vintage Newport, Mistress expertly sucked it to life, taking a puff or two, before shoving it straight up her bottom, mashing the butt in the fifteen-year old girl’s rectum.

“You,” She told her, pulling on her hair,”were given an order, slave girl, that was punishment for disobedience!”

Handing girlie another fag and a laser lighter, Mistress commanded her to “light it up, now, slave girl.”

Trembling, girlie had little alternative but to comply, Mistress prompting her:

“Go on, suck on it, bitch, like I know you wanna, you’re a capital one for suckin’ things, girlie- girl, I know you are, cos I’m your own sub’uman fuckin’ kind.”

Still shaking, girlie sucked on it, choking on the bloody thing, Mistress striking her bottom squarely, telling her….

“…don’t fuckin’ pretend you don’t want it, pootie-poot,” the black queen screamed at its victim, still holding her captive by her hair, “’cuz, I fuckin’ kn—“

It fuckin’ didn’t know shit, not one goddamn thing, Shawn screaming as much at it even as she sprayed the black son of a bitch all over that club, the girl dropping down onto the floor, curling up into a ball, bawling and trembling and whimpering “please,” over and over, as someone touched Shawn gently on her shoulder.

25 JANUARY, 2226 10:01:00 TAI

And, that was just about all Lieutenant Coloniel Carson Selkirk could do for her, put his hand on her shoulder, trying to let her know that, as much as he could, he did understand. And, he had no right to fault her for opening up the first time he’d put his hand on her shoulder, outside this miserable hole just half a klick from the main gate of Fort Stewart in Hinesville, eighty-five klicks south and east of Unionsboro.

The last line of an old German poem running through his head, he patted her lightly on the shoulder, sighing, as he moved past her, towards the front of the club, the rest of his team doing what they could to comfort the inmates of this….

Even after spending his adult life fighting this, he still didn’t have the words.

“Most of the ones who were in back have scattered,” Jay Todman said over his link, Carson’s friend of over three decades of adventure and mostly hardship joining him near the front doors, next to the exploded, decapitated body of a bouncer whose tiny brain had figured out a bit too late he’d best bring that M32 he had in hands to bear on Shawn,”probably ran like hell when their handlers got splattered all over the deck.”

“Proba-bly,” Carson replied distractedly, cursing whoever had padded the front doors with black leather, forced now by this circumstance to rely entirely on what the scanners in his suit of Commonwealth grey were telling him…it was given the firefight had alerted every commando, military policeman, pissboy, Blitzpolizei, TSID op and citizen militaman in the whole sleazy fucking town to their presence, the fucking TSID ran every brothel, strip club and such in Terranovan soil, even the drag queens were their ops, and all the motherfuckers had panic buttons, one of them was bound to have triggered his before he got taken out.

“How long do you think we have, sir?” 1st Lieutenant Meghan Polk, joining the two men, asked.

“Depends on who answers the call, Leftenant,” Carson replied,”but, I’d say no more than five, ten minutes.”

“We’ll take them with us,” he added, in answer to the obvious question on his second’s mind. “There’s an airstrip inside the Fort Stewart reservation, where the Liberty County Command used to base their aviation company; MiniPriz used to use it for secure prisoner transfers ‘til late in the 9YW; we’ll comm for a special delivery, and pray they can come through on that.”

Another sigh.

“Sir?” Meghan asked, nervous. “About Shawn….”

She trailed off, Carson turning round, looking at Shawn just standing there, both weapons still smoking, her eyes….

“When she’s ready to talk,” Carson replied, facing his second now,”she will…if she doesn’t….”

One more sigh.

“Either way,” he told her,”she’s one of us; we will look out for her, same as if this never happened.”

“All,” he said, nodding his head,”we can do.”

25 JANUARY, 2226 10:10:24 TAI

Bradbury’s hounds bounded towards them at a blinding pace, slaver trailing from monomolecular carbon teeth like the white fire blazing in their bioplastic eyes. Behind them, Yanker Army Ranger Light Infantry were laying down fire from the Gatling 25s and 90s on board their Scorpio combat sleds, otherwise hanging back ‘til the hounds had done their work, two companies of Mountaindove Army standard infantry taking up firing positions all round one of the compounds holding the prisoners worked to death in the fields of the Hell Star’s ag section.

That compound being AG shielding and electrified fencing walling off hundreds of women and girls chained by their necks and forced to lie facedown, ass up in stinking sewage, the stench of waste, infection and misery making her eyes water through the filters of her suit.

She drove on, her assault railer white-hot and starting to deform in places, same with the rail pistol in her opposite hand, a line of spent carbon gas cannisters sizzling in the silt behind her, Priscilla not remembering when she’d reloaded, or that she had reloaded, she just knew she was able to continue firing and killing the enemy.

All that mattered.

She walked both weapons across the murderous, relentlessly advancing rank of mechanoids, exploding them as she kept moving forward, one, two, three pairs of the bastards making that final leap before they bit down hard and burned out her cerebellum with the virus in their slobber.

The enemy, twenty years ago, had used these on the ones left behind after Unbroken had been forced to run for her life.

She’d never meant anybody any fucking harm, why the fuck did they have to—

The scream was inhuman, and the part of her who’d grown up in a peaceful world where no one hurt anyone like those bastards had hurt Lisa wondered if that scream was really hers…the rest of her didn’t fucking care, the only damn thing that’d mattered outside this uniform had been stolen from her by jealous cowards like the ones hiding behind mechanoid killers and heavy weaps…hounds lay burning and exploded nearly in half all over the place, a Scorpio going up, its occupants screaming before they went to Hell to scream some more, Priscilla landing on top of another one, almost bouncing off its shielding, the dicksuckers inside wondering what the fuck to do when she let them have it at point-blank range, driving trucks through its deck, into its hydrogen tankage, bulleting past it as it blew up and sprayed junk in every direction.

Bolts of blue stabbed up from the muddy ground between her and the Mountaindoves firing at her from behind the deadline, the thirty-five year veteran of war and pain dodging the kinetic-kill devices as they went off, watching the matrons and the inmate overseers spill out of the housing area built for them, the drag queens posing as inmates wearing the grey hipster panties and tank tops made infamous by God only knew how many movies the Phooies had made about this fucking place, along with AG shield belts, matrons and “inmates” alike armed with Palmer/Walker IAWs and RP35s.

Behind them, Movie Board Security thugs, a platoon of standard infantry assigned to protect the production crew assigned to this compound; she could see the Argus spaceplane being loaded down with gear by the real inmates, whipped by other matrons and inmate overseeers into working harder and faster….

She was through the deadline, Mountaindicksuckers exploding as she kept pumping truck after truck into their sorry wetback asses, chopping up drag queen pieces of shit, as she kept on going, seeing, but not even feeling the deuce and a half, misshapen from having to punch through her shielding, tear through her chest, the FedArmy soldier spitting out teeth and shards of clearcarbon from her shattered helmet, darkness shading her view of this part of the rockball core of the planet Tartarus, reddish-brownish- bluish gases swirling just above the AG field which kept a breathable atmosphere in the ag section.

She hadn’t even the first clue as to what she should’ve said to Jami Black Star five days ago in Happy Valley…to her, Lisa had been just another person she could not save, more guilt dragging behind her like chains of her own making, but it hadn’t been her fault, she and her ship had stood up, fought a knock-down, drag-out with twelve thousand enemy warbirds, lost over half her crew, came this fucking close to losing the other half, ship was battered all to hell, miracle the five-thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate had been able to go NGE…she’d saved 6,500 people from ending up in a place like this one, that was what her people chose to remember, what mattered to Priscilla most, what would’ve mattered to Lisa as well, if only….

“Goddamnit, they’ll get to ‘em bitches any moment,” one of the matrons screamed, blackening the Mid soldier’s shielding some more with two bursts each from her IAW and her RP35, “we gotta take care of ‘em, now, before those Middie bull dykes get their ha—“

He was gone in a cloud of blood, bone, grease and bioplastic, another jackbooted matron, this one with his jet black polymer hair flowing down his back, lashing out at her with his lasewhip, bleating out some kind of war cry before a deuce and half struck his Adam’s apple squarely, sending him tumbling down into the silt with his head hanging by a carotid artery from the rest of him.

Another one of its subhuman kind—dressed as an inmate—screaming,”bitch, I’m gonna make ya pay for what ya did to Mistress,” as it scissored her neck between its legs, slashing Priscilla’s face with its implanted Wolverine claws, the Mid officer not hesitating to blow its fucking head off with a shot from her rail pistol, throwing the rest of it off her, as she drove on towards where most of those poor things were mired in filth and their own hopelessness.

Some of the matrons and other “inmates” were amongst them, getting off on hearing their victims beg for mercy, before fucking cutting their throats, raping them with dildos at the same goddamn time, Priscilla, with one last inhuman cry of rage, vaulting herself into the middle of them, kicking, pistolwhipping, rifle butting, shooting the bastards, grabbing one of them by the scruff of his neck, angrily pulling him out of a trembling, bruised, filthy, bleeding, emaciated, hideously distorted, disfigured woman pleading for her frail life, hurling him into another grotesque parody of a woman, splattering them both with a burst from her pistol.

“Motherfuck,” a matron said in his own voice, an “inmate” standing next to him snapping “voice, goddamn you!”at him, before they both went to Hell in fury of hyperdense masses driven into them at light speed, Priscilla turning from that to bring her weapons to bear on several more of the drag queen sons of bitches who hated women so goddamn much they were willing to act out the ugliness they wanted to believe her people capable of, so they wouldn’t come across as the murdering cowards they were for inflicting ugliness upon her people.

Upon Lisa…what happened was their goddamn fault, their goddamn fault, not Jami Black Star’s, she’d done everything humanly possible and then some, twice over, to try and save her, she shouldn’t have to pay the price over and over and over for what these sons of bitches had done to all of them.

The she-he-its coming at her from all directions couldn’t pay the price for their evil, they were all worthless to begin with, becoming even more worthless with every life they took, every good and decent thing they profaned, with every person they left behind to bleed, they didn’t feel one fucking thing for the evil they’d done except justification and satisfaction, nothing to fucking give to balance everything they had stolen.

Howling and sobbing, she stood there amongst their victims and poured it on, hurting too badly to feel her weapons blistering her hands through the gauntlets of her suit.

25 JANUARY, 2226 10:29:04 TAI

“Shit!” Granger spat, as Entkedu was spat out of hyperspace, reddish-grey giving to black in the master holodisplay, the fifteen-thousand ton frigate spinning end over end until his senior astro had collected enough presence of mind to fire the AGAMs full on, Brakenbury screaming over his link,”drive room, fuckin’ get us back into hyperspace!” “Am unable to comply, sir,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Onslow Feng-Zhou’s voice replied,”Rittermark generator, AG drive motor and the infinity driver are all burned out, overloaded from trying to compensate for that last volley from Unbroken disrupting hyperspace all round—“

“Fuck!” was commander Entkedu’s sole reply to that, Brakenbury ignoring the rest of what Feng- Zhou had to say about replacing the whole works, how long that would take, looking at the master holodisplay, at black lit up by bright bluish-white shards which had once been League warbirds, his ship drifting deadstick through them, more popping out of hyperspace back into normal space by the nanosecond…it would all be over with by the time the drive room got everything working again, all Brakenbury would be able to do then was to slink back to Zellner’s World and hope He would be in a mood to have the MiniPriz AI on board His Capitol give Entkedu clearance through the System-Wide Minefield.

Hope that He wouldn’t decide to activate the neural servo the commander of the Entkedu had willingly had implanted in the base of his brain…he would submit, if that were His will, he understood discipline must be maintained or they would lose the war against the enemy, that those who showed weakness before them must be used as them, so that their fellow men would not make the same mistake…if it were His will that Brakenbury serve as an example, a warning to his race not to falter, then, so be it.

So be it.

That was neither here nor there, of course…for now, all he could do was to watch the sparks which had been ships twinkle into being all round the inert mass of the Entkedu, absently looking at his command holodisplays, at neutrino radar telemetry telling him those sparks were monocarbon, tachyons, photons, van Gripstra particles, radiation from 457-millimeter, 63-ton shells striking home with astronomical kinetic energy on a scale on which all of the ancient engines of mass destruction measured as mere pinpricks in comparison….

Brakenbury nodded his head, looking back up at the master holodisplay.

25 JANUARY, 2226 10:31:04 TAI

She’d forced the Phooie warbird from hyperspace with a volley of 457s.

Now, Unbroken charged deep into the enemy’s formation, driving more 457s into frigates and battleships, blasting them back into normal space, Stevie’s fingers a blinding grey blur over her holodisplays, the five-thousand ton frigate accelerating, tachyons streaming through the drive beams of AG drive and AGAMs, giving the ship more thrust, more manuverability and a greater a.h.v. than direct manipulation of the Rittermark field could, and she needed every bit of speed and manuverability she could get, the enemy machines hammering at her with their gobstoppers, Gatling 90s and 406s, Prue returning their fire, using the ship’s own point-defenses to knock down any incoming fire the pulsed AG force beam hadn’t swept aside.

Jami just sitting there, eyes on the master and command holodisplays, the commander of the Unbroken having no more orders to give, battle was well and truly joined, everything the JMC had at Big Sky grappling with the whole of the League’s Mobile Force, trying to stop the bastards cold before they could come within striking distance of the Sirius C system, fighters from the planetary-defense battalions diving down on the assault transports, coordinating their strikes against them with the Homesteader Nightwing gunships dispatched by the Albion to take those transports and their troops out, Albion herself adding her organic firepower to that assault.

Big Sky Security Authority had sniffed out the Mountaindove FALCON unit sent in to plant TGT beacons planetwide, a quick and bloody engagement between the two resulting in two Security Authority enforcers and all the FALCONs killed; cooperative security nailing the ha-Satan ops who’d infiltrated Lanier Station for that same purpose, according to the JMC’s intelligence datastream—upoloaded via the T-Star in planetary orbit to the Unbroken—that same datastream letting her know that JMC forces at Hammarskjold, Horizon, Topaz, Edge and Fianna had beaten back counterstrikes against those worlds, sending as many ships as could be spared to help prevent the Mobile Force from taking Big Sky.

They were coming now, Hammarskjolder Christinas, Horizon Talons, Sadat Federation al-Sadats, Coolie Cormacs, Donovanian Kira Donovans and Zapho Starstrikers, all bearing down upon the League warbirds from all directions, their fighters and UAVs surging ahead of them into the fray, some of the newcomers firing their gobstoppers, most of them holding back on those until it was absolutely necessary to use them, the commander of the Unbroken continuing to study the command holodisplays, alert for the merest hint that Zellner had ordered his technological terror of a capital into hyperspace to lob torpedos at Sirius’ three stars, just in case the invasion wasn’t going to work out.

She doubted he would, though, replacing those torps every time they got used up was probably prohibitively expensive in manpower and materials, he couldn’t afford to use them to turn the tide of every battle in this war in his favor.

Not even time to think about how much it frightened her that she could think like he could, nor to reflect on just what that had meant for Kara long time ago, what it would probably mean for her after she’d helped win this war for her people.

Just how much war to the death changed those fighting it.

25 JANUARY, 2226 10:38:31 TAI

“Goddamnit,” snapped General Clarence D. Braxton, commanding the League’s Mobile Force, as his flagship, Republican Union Starcraft Lockwood, shook, alarms howling in his helmet, the Legislator Larry Walker and a couple of Californio frigates blown away right in front of him, the master holodisplay nothing but points of blinding white in the queasiness of hyperspace, Braxton instead looking at the tachyar returns in the command holodisplays, focussing on the Commie Dauntless blasting her way through the League formation, the telemetry telling him all he did not want to know concerning the identity of that ship.

If he’d been enough of a man, she wouldn’t have happened, the veteran Terranovan Republican Aerospace Force officer had time enough to observe bitterly, as Brad Selkirk’s little blonde bitch took out a half dozen of the TRAF Galactic North Command’s dwindling stockpile of Governor-class battleships, four more of her 457s striking home against the fuselages of DNSB Bismarcks , blowing ‘em sausage smokers away without even giving them a chance to defend themselves.

“Weaps,” Lieutenant Coloniel Patrick Axleby, commanding officer of the Lockwood, said,”recall all our Preads and War Eagles, have them—Jesus Christ!”

Axleby’s assuming the Lord’s name in vain coincided with more League ships going up in a blaze, Lockwood’s ten 406-millimeter railguns furiously banging away at the Unbroken as she relentlessly bore down upon them, like she’d come down upon them twenty years ago, knowing she couldn’t win, fighting anyway, even after they kicked the crap out of her, and any sane person would’ve cut and run, but not her, hell no, not her, she just kept on swinging, burning down League warbirds left and right just so those Middies could escape what they had coming to ‘em.

And, Braxton reminded himself, just when the memories of that day had started overwhelming him, she still didn’t get ‘em all, we finally made her show her stinking ass and run away into hyperspace, made her give some of them up to what they deserved for being females in the first place.

That’s what I’ve got to keep in mind, he added, watching her come, watching her blow away more of the ships under his command, Lockwood stabbing back at her with his 406s, sweeping aside incoming fire with pulses of tachyon-impregnated artificial grav, stopping those shells that still got through with his 48 turreted Gatling 90s, Lockwood’s senior astro just barely evading the 457s which had passed through that firestorm unscathed. Too many around him weren’t as fortunate, Braxton painfully clenching his jaw, watching DNSB von Richtofens, Liberian Tubmans, N.C.O. Olmstead-class battleships, Reggie Drummonds and two or four ragabone al-Husayns blind the murky greyness of hyperspace, before falling back into the night as so many blue-hot sparks, that bitch still coming, still hellbent on fighting them, in spite of everything they’d done to her, everything they could think of to break her and make her hate the goddamn thing she was…her ship swept aside Lockwood’s fire, his senior astro starting to retreat in the face of the enemy, his weaps officer desperately continuing to try and pound her with 406s, her AG force beam and Gatling 90s stopping those cold, her 457s killing more League ships, like she’d done at Avalon all them years ago, he had more than enough warbirds for two frigates, so he’d thought, but she’d just kept on coming, soaking up everything he could throw at her, should’ve been killed ten times over, and she still—

No, Braxton ordered himself, trying to get his breathing under control, do not think about that, do not think about—

“Major,” Axleby demanded,”why the fuck are we retreating?! Weaps, where the hell are those Preads and War Eagles?!”

“All shot down, Coloniel,” Captain Chris Egan replied, lightning flashes echoing in the shifting grey sky of the master holodisplay.

25 JANUARY, 2226 10:47:00 TAI

An Azanian Chaka Zulu-class battlewagon fell apart under her guns, its company of forty-eight Assagi fightercraft coming straight at her, gobstoppers flying from underneath their wings, Khryste’s fingers flying across the astrogation and piloting holodisplays, loosing a pulse of artificial grav from the forward emitters, juking up and over the missiles she could not sweep away, closing rapidly to knifefighting range, swooping down into the midst of the lead enemy fighter detachment, firing the AGAMs full on to set her spinning, stabbing down on the master fire control at the same time, twelve Assagis raining hot junk down into normal space before her thinking caught up with her doing.

She corrected her spin, yawing into the second enemy detachment, firing the entire time, eight of the twelve enemy machines blasted to little pieces, the other four breaking formation and returning her fire, Khryste returning theirs, watching the two remaining enemy detachments hanging back, breaking formation as well, another twelve Assagis and a half dozen DNSB Wespes joining the fray, lobbing hyperspace tactical missiles straight at her, a quick pass over the piloting and astrogation controls of her ship ducking her down and away from the incoming gobstoppers, some of the Azanians she was engaging taking the missiles meant for her instead.

She was firing the tail gun before she even heard the radar alarm blow off and warn her of the six- pack of enemy fighters climbing her ass, four hundred twelve-ton masses of hyperdense monomolecular carbon already slamming into the fuckers at c times ten and a half meg, the forward Gatling 90s and the 127s tearing into a Californio John Frémont-class warbird who’d blundered into her gunsights, taking out his Wraiths and Coyotes before they even cleared their bays, the commander of Unbroken’s fighter detachment checking her tachyar, sparing as little time as possible to check and see where the rest of her people were, how they were doing, still mindful of the fact that she was being fully engaged by half the fucking League—least, it seemed that way to her—bearing down on her little Mark IV Osprey from all over hyperspace, Khryste loosing pulses through all four sets of emitters at once, firing forward and tail guns, juking and moving for all she was worth, all at the same time she saw that the other 143 pilots under her command were in similar straits to hers, but still holding their own…the new girl—a freakin’ first-year cadet, what the fuck were the Defence Staff thinking—was holding her own, in spite of being mobbed by fighters, frigates and battlewagons from all directions.

Susan Watson’s daughter, her second oldest, Khryste remarked to herself, even as she blew away four or five mick fighters trying to get the drop on her, only a couple of years younger than me…or, have I forgotten that I’m only eighteen years old…. She trailed off, no time to complete her self-reflection, one hell of a lot more enemy where those five Banshees had come from, 127s thudding into Evergeeked FH-18 Hornets at the same time her forward Gatling 90s blew away a half dozen Yanker War Eagles and her tail gun was scrubbing hyperspace clean of Johannesburg-class frigates and more Assagi fightercraft, hostile machines rapidly closing in all round to take their place.

“…stupid bitch!” Mistress barked at girlie, standing there trembling, the tray of wine and cheese shaking in the twelve-year old girl’s hands, one of Her regular slaves, hands bound behind his back, naked save for a corset and a collar, lying facedown, ass up at Mistress’ booted feet, Mistress glaring at girlie, spitting at her, screaming,”well, you worthless piece of pussy, put the tray down on the table!”

Girlie complying, putting the tray on the small table in the corner of the dungeon, Mistress then ordering Her other slave to “stand up, and dominate this,” She jerked a leather-gloved hand at girlie,”thing for Our mutual amusement!”

“It will be this girl slave’s pleasure,” the regular said, standing up, walking over to where girlie stood,”to do as her Mistress commands.”

With that, he grabbed her hair, forcing girlie down….

25 JANUARY, 2226 11:31:04 TAI

…no, goddamnit, Shawn said over and over to herself, her head a roar of pain from her clenching her jaw and gritting her teeth ‘til they ground against one another, hands hurting as they crushed her M6 between them, red Judas and blue bolts wavering in her field of vision, as she looked up into the night sky…first sunset, or was it second, had occurred hours ago, it was hard to keep track of all the sunrises and sunsets on this miserable hole of a planet; there was that much to growing up in Vargas, only one sun, one sunrise, one sunset for an entire day, not ten of the bloody things at once….

“Here it comes,” the Boss said over the link, the Commonwealth Forces Nightengale medevac spaceplane already touching down on the tarmac at Wright Field before she could see it coming in, medicos coming down the tail ramp, M3s and M6s at the ready, the Boss snapping orders to the four recondos and Mid reporter with him to cover the inmates of Club Lesbos being hurried onto the medevac bird, Shawn dryswallowing, weapon starting to shake in her hands, as she gritted down on her teeth even harder, cursing herself for being so fucking weak at a time like this.

Her suit‘s passive scanners let her know the other half of the team were making their way back to the airstrip from having limpeted KK devices onto everything they could…the Boss would lead his half of the team out next, the five of them and Jay Todman shedding their load of kinetic-kill devices by planting them in motor pools, supply depots, power stations and whereever else would do the command base of the 25th Shock Army the most damage before the four JMC armies battling their way south reached Hinesville.

“All right, y’all,” the Boss said, as the last of the women made it onto the Nightengale, “fall back, now!”

Shawn falling back, taking cover behind a Yanker Gnat ACAG-137U5 Spectre IV gunship just barely in time, the Nightengale not even ten meters above the ground before it went NGE, showering the entire Fort Stewart reservation and the surrounding city of Hinesville with tachyons, photons and van Gripstra particles, the night air split by dozens of sirens and lit up by dozens more blinding searchlights, her passive scanners lighting up with attempts to scour the reservation using active and passive sensors.

The searchlights passed over the field, missing Shawn altogether, the nineteen-year old Commonwealth Forces sergeant moving out, ducking between buildings, looking for something to blow up.

25 JANUARY, 2226 11:38:16 TAI Carson took off the instant the searchlight had stopped shining his ass, the veteran Commonwealth Forces officer running like hell for the alley between two of the hangars, overgrown with tallgrass…for the moment, that should do, till he decided just where in the hell he should go next.

Even with his backpack’s AG field negating the weight—1,500 kilos’ worth, including Terranova’s gee and a half—of the KKs inside it, the forty kinetic-kill devices still had mass—a metric ton total—and that mass slowed him down considerably…if he hadn’t needed them so badly for this mission, he wouldn’t be humping the damn things in the first place, viral and antimatter charges were a hell of a lot more portable, and usually, just as effective.

He did need the fucking things, however, most of what they wanted to take out was AG shielded, which antimatter charges not measured in the gigatonnes of yield wouldn’t crack, and treated to resist synthetic viruses designed to eat inorganic materiel…having to lug the KKs wasn’t his real concern, nor was the fact he could only wring about sixty or seventy kph out of his AG harness with all that extra mass.

He was thinking of Shawn Gyllenheal…the look in her eyes when she’d opened up on those tarbabies in the back of that club….and after all the shooting had stopped…all he did know was that she’d been born and raised in the goddamn biz, Jay had told him horror stories enough about it to not have to wonder what she’d been through growing up, but he knew what he’d heard hadn’t even scratched the surface of what she’d had to endure, not even close.

And, no way he could find out, her medfile was sealed against him, only his med tech, Mary Blagg, could override the lockout, and only if she was satisfied there was a damn good reason for her to do so, the Articles spelling out exactly what constituted a damn good reason.

So far, Carson hadn’t had one…not even her opening up on those bastards and exposing her team qualified, since Carson would’ve given the order for them to hit that club anyway—they were Commonwealth Forces, that was what they did, mission or no mission—alerting the enemy to their presence even if she hadn’t fired first.

This, Carson reminded himself, making his way through the tallgrass, assumes she even got counseling during basic training, she didn’t have to, you know, it’s her choice, the Articles say so, and she probably has as much use for headshrinks as I do….

There…he put all thought of Shawn out of his mind for now, as he cleared the tallgrass and found himself alongside an electrified, barbed-wired topped chain-link fence backed up by AG shielding and turreted Gatling 25s, set in ferrocrete posts just behind the fencing, which would cut him to dogmeat if he tried to use his AG harness to climb over the top.

If he cut through, alarms by the bushel would go off, and those Gatling 25s, with their twelve contrarotating barrels apiece, would still make bloody hash of him before he even got close enough to lighten his load by a kinetic-kill device or two…M51 Powell main battle tanks sat gleaming in the Judas light, enough for an entire armored battalion, with mechanics swarming all over thirteen-meter tall M80C heavy infantry combat suits off in the distance, a battalion’s worth sitting off at the extreme end of the compound…he’d stumbled onto the motor pool for an entire regiment, he could see the SPAPs of its artillery companies and the Mulroney APCs over by the back fence…a single KK could obliterate this entire place, but he had to get in there first.

He’d cracked tighter cribs than this, his suit’s array of ECM gear would make this entirely too easy…at a voice command from him, the holodistortion generator kicked in, the cold of a spring night in the South Coast absorbing its heat, the suit’s computer adjusting its light values, Carson rising in the air, hopefully looking and scanning like a flock of war eagles—smaller, less garishly decorated than the tiger birds with whom they shared a common ancestry, as well as a taste for snakeflesh—flying low over the compound, looking for a nest of Satan’s helpers to snack on before retiring to their nests in the few remaining bogbushes in this part of Basseterre. The computers controlling the 25s must have been fooled by his deception, as he was still alive to continue deceiving them, Carson descending amongst a cluster of hydrogen tanks in the center of the compound, walled off by fencing and shielding of its own.

Ten and a quarter meters of bright metallic purple, vestigal bat-winged, huge-headed, serpent lashing out at his ankle quick as shit, when he touched down…Brad and his little friends used to dump girls naked into nests full of the bitches, getting off on them being bit over and over, shaking in the grip of the hallucinogenic properties of Satan’s helper venom, unable to keep those bastards from—

This one caromed off his shielding, his strike had been too quick, the snake shaking his head, his long, thin, needle-like fangs dripping the potent and fatal hallucinogen which was one of the primary ingredients for the drug known worlds-wide as rapture, ghost dance, H. and jimmy hallelujah.

Reptiles were renowned for their limited brain capacity, but this motherfucker apparentally hadn’t read any biology texts, cos he recoiled himself and undulated a little bit more slowly, almost hypnotic in the way it tried to slip through his shielding to inject him with its venom.

Carson taking his head off with one flick of his laser lance, the body still fucking twitching, bat wings flapping about uselessly, blood, venom and other body fluids pumping out into a puddle round Carson’s boots, as he limpeted a kinetic-kill device onto the hydrogen tank next to him, linking its detonator to the same commband as all the others, mentally rechecking his calculations, deciding one was still all he needed to level this entire compound.

Carson again making like flock of war eagles, as he lifted from the tankage area.

…Lisa’s brown eyes danced with the reflected light of the terraforming lab; she was sitting on the workstation, her long, brown hair down round her face, almost to the small of her back…she was laughing softly, her holoprojected hand reaching out to stroke her wife’s cheek from twenty-seven light years aw—

She sat bolt upright in the living room of their house in McPhail, the all-too-familiar sound from too many years of soldiering going through her like a burst from an assault railer, her wife’s hand abruptly replaced by snow the same instant as the roar which had come through the speakers….

25 JANUARY, 2226 12:04:16 TAI

…Priscilla awoke screaming her murdered wife’s name, a woman in Commonwealth grey taking hold of her flailing arms, shushing her, the veteran Midnight Sun soldier’s breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps, her mind struggling to come to grips with where she was now.

That being in the post-operative ward of a Commonwealth Forces field hospital, Priscilla hearing the ripping and chattering of railguns just outside, explosions rattling the prefab building’s bioplastic walls and windows.

“—had to replace your heart and your right eye, Leftenant Coloniel,” the Commonwealth medico was explaining to her,”amongst other bits of you…you were pretty shot up when the medevac team got to you—“

“My people,” Priscilla asked,”what about—“

The medico—a captain, according to her rank stripes—lowered her eyes, sighing, looking back into the much more-senior officer’s dark eyes.

“Fifty-three dead,” she whispered, going on in spite of Priscilla’s whispered obscenity,”all the rest wounded, a couple as bad off as you…the rest of your battalion didn’t fare much better, I’m afraid…I’ve made some enquiries for you on that score…118 dead overall, 312 wounded, either in field hospitals all over Tartarus, or upside, on one of the medships.” Priscilla whispered the first and last names of a false god in vain, as she stared ceilingward, shaking her head slowly.

Another explosion rattled the building.

“They’re still trying their damndest to kill those poor things,” the young woman explained, not needing to,”our security forces are engaging two companies of Yanker Ranger Light Infantry, plus another two or three companies of Schwarzbrüders and God only knows how many Special Forces Command and fedayeen…we’ve already lost eight people, four other surgeons, three med techs and one of the wounded— not one of yours, ma’am, she was a recondo—lost eight people to suicide bombers that got past the security perimeter and all the way into the compound…had one charge into the O.R., had antimatter in a containment vessel no bigger than a…it was implanted in his heart, he detonated it with a tooth switch, would’ve taken all of us out if Belinda hadn’t knocked him down on the ground…it went off when she was on top of him….”

Priscilla looked back down into the other woman’s eyes…running over with tears she attempted to wipe away with the sleeve of her suit.

“Close to you?” Priscilla asked, the other woman shaking her head, sniffling, swallowing hard, telling her:

“We were going to get married…we’d been close since we were both in Academy together…was supposed to have been….”

She trailed off, sighing wetly, Priscilla nodding her head sadly, biting down on her lip.

Shutting her eyes tightly, as her tears spilled down her cheeks.

—endit—

I Think I Know What’s Wrong “I woke up this morning, grey dawn, with a prayer on my breath. I think I lost something precious, God’ll save me from losing myself. I think I know what’s wrong, I think I know what’s wrong.” Indigo Girls, “Pushing the Needle Too Far” “…commencing our run,” he said, pushing the F-4’s stick as far forward as he could, putting the bird into a steep dive over the Indochina pennisula, his RIO talking to him, telling him the scope was clear, as if they had anything to worry about in the first place, just like all the other runs.

He levelled off at about five, six hundred feet off the deck, still doing about Mach 1, as he flew over all those villages with names that all sounded like two cats fighting, his RIO shrieking Jesus’ name over the radio, adding,”Cobra and Hogs are poundin’ the shit outta ‘em already.”

A moment later, adding,”sunnavabitch, they’re pulling out all the stops,” a pair of the new AC- 130s circling overhead like buzzards, hosing down the gook village which was their objective, the F-4 nosing its way further down onto the deck, RIO letting him know there were slicks inbound on the opposite bearing, taking the Lord’s name in vain again, remarking something about the buzzing rays of red-hot metal pouring out of the AC-130s, punctuated by the 105-millimeter cannon in both those birds booming like the last part of the 1812 Overture, the Cobra gunships and the Huey Hogs shooting the jungle and the village full of 2.75 millimeter rockets, 7.62-millimeter bullets and 40-millimeter grenades—a mix of frag and willy pete—gooks running all over the place down there, trying to avoid what they had coming to them.

“All right, gentlemen,” he said, levelling the bird off just above the trees the daisy cutters and the Agent Orange hadn’t cleared from the surrounding area,”we do this in one pass, give ‘em everything you got!”

He whooped that order out with no small amount of enthusiasm, flipping the switches which sent the ordinance—a mixture of napalm and high-explosive— falling away from the two inboard hardpoints underneath the wings, the outboard two and the one underneath the centerline holding gunpods—four 20mm Vulcans, counting the one underneath the nose—which he triggered by crushing down on the firing button on his joystick, burning up his ammo, watching all those rounds rip them yellow-skinned, slant-eyed pieces of pussy apart.

Imagining he heard them screaming as they burned or were blown apart, pulling up and away from what had been called My Lai, the slicks so many little specks of green and red as they set down in the clearing surrounding the village on all sides….

26 JANUARY, 1986 20:04:01 EST

…Commander Francis Richard Scobee finding that he still felt no small amount of enthusiasm for what had been done all those years ago.

Sighing, he looked down at the tumbler of straight Evan Wilson he held in his hand, shaking his head, instantly disgusted with himself for still feeling what he felt for what he knew even then had been as wrong as two boys fucking in church.

He drained the tumbler, pouring himself another from the bottle the bartender had left at his elbow…he wasn’t supposed to drink, certainly not two days before he was scheduled to lift off and do his part in perpetrating the colossal fraud which was the American space program, but neither he nor anyone else at NASA gave a runny shit, just as long as he did do his part in perpetrating that fraud.

He’d been flying F-4s off the ‘Stal, when Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins had all lied to the American people, had fed their delusions of being the only ones capable of going where no man had gone before and all that crap…when they had lied to him, and he had so eagerly wanted to believe in that beautiful lie, to believe his race were the only ones who could reach for the stars, when the whole fucking program had been nothing but good TV while it had lasted, degenerating from there into overpaid truck drivers dumping defective satellites and military weaps platforms into Earth orbit.

And, occasionally good TV…two days from now, when he pushed his one hundred tons of butt- ugly winged brick so-called spacecraft into orbit, two women would be on board…of course, Sally Ride had been there first, three years ago, once round the planet to prove women really were equal and the fem libbers could all pack their tents and go home, the war was over….

He snorted his contempt over the lip of his tumbler, not giving a damn if the two OSI pricks watching him like a pair of buzzards heard him…the bitches couldn’t form thoughts of their own, let alone read any of his….once round the planet, then, they did everything they could to slap her ass down and keep it down, for all mankind, as the counterattack shifted into high gear, the tiny gains they’d made under the previous administration being ruthlessly, cynically, utterly wiped out….

It was easy to portray Ride as the exception to his people’s rules of engagement, she had a Ph.D. before she’d been selected for the program; therefore, it had been just as easy to deal with the threat she had represented to them…Judy Resnick…there had been rumors flying round Kennedy of her being a lesbian, despite her hiding herself from the world, not much imagination at all for them to tell one another stories of what they thought that meant, her liking other women….

Still, she was trained for this, it would be just as easy to dismiss her as just another exception to their rules.

Christa MacAuliffe, on the other hand….

He sighed again, staring at his glass…she was a schoolteacher, selected to be the first citizen in space, another lame-brain PR idea of NASA’s…whether NASA had fucked up in selecting her or this was just another propganda stunt, either way, she could have been an astronaut, if only….

He knew entirely too well they couldn’t have that…she wasn’t trained for this, wasn’t a scientist, just a schoolteacher, same as a secretary or a maid or a housewife.

A woman who was, in all respects, the rule.

If she could dream of reaching the stars….

In one quick motion, he drained his drink, and poured himself another….

…imagining he heard them screaming, as they burned or were blown apart, pulling up and away from what had been called My Lai, the slicks so many little specks of green and red as they set down in the clearing surrounding the village on all sides….

“…what the fuck do you think you are?!” Daddy screamed, standing over her, stomping down on the eight-year old girl, as she stupidly tried to crawl away from him, picking up her model PCS-4, the one Nana had bought for her, hurling it against the wall, shattering it into a million pieces, telling her:

“It fuckin’,” he stomped on her again,”ain’t,” and again,”this, that’s,” and again,”for damn skippy!”

”And,” he said, finding her book of poetry—the one Mama had given her, when he hadn’t been looking— picking it up off the workstation, throwing it against the wall, stomping on her again,”it sure as hell ain’t this!”

Bending down, he grabbed a good handful of her hair, snatching her up off the floor, up off her feet, right in his face, where she could fucking smell the goddamn liquor on his breath as he screamed,”we’re gonna take a little ride, you and me, over to Bull n’ Dee’s, and, by God, you damn sure gonna learn just what the fuck you….”

27 JANUARY, 2226 01:01:05 TAI

…are. Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier woke up drenched in own sweat, her long, blond hair matted with it, her wife curling her up in her arms and legs, Stevie—fast asleep—softly whispering in her mind that was okay now, it was okay, she was here , and as long as she was here, Jami would not have to face her demons alone.

Kissing her gently on her forehead, the commander of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken whispered to her wife and her senior astro,”I’ll be all right, baby, just go to sleep, ‘kay?”

Letting Stevie’s long auburn hair fall through the fingers of her left hand, lightly brushing her cheek, she whispered,”please, baby, just go to sleep, “ as she uncurled herself from the woman she’d loved so goddamn much, kissing her one last time on the top of her head, as she fumbled about the floor of Stevie’s quarters for her boxers, her t-shirt and her socks—she’d left her housecoat in her quarters— thinking, baby, I’m not shutting you out, please don’t think I am, I’m not that stupid, not anymore, it’s just….

She sighed, blinking back tears, laying her hand on Stevie’s right knee, Stevie whispering back, I know, luv.

Go to sleep, love, Jami whispered back. Go to sleep, be good to you for a change, all right?

‘Kay, poppet, Stevie said, already falling deeper into sleep, Jami feeling warm, goosepimply all over, flushed, suppressing the urge to giggle like a little kid was supposed to….

She banished that train of thought, squeezing Stevie’s knee, pulling on her t-shirt first, then her boxers, and finally her socks, padding out of her wife’s quarters, down the corridor of HabOne—its lighting muted for night cycle—heading for the hatchway leading down into the belly of the five-thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate, everyone else either asleep or—in Ree Moseley’s case—on the astro deck, running solo watch….

She sighed again, carefully climbing down the ladder, shaking her head…she’d heard about what had passed in New Seattle six days ago, Ariel drinking with one of Daddy’s favorite fucking men, because she so stupidly thought it would push Ree away from her…she’d heard in spite of Ryla—who’d helped Ree bring her back on board ship and sober her up in time for the wreath-laying ceremony—and Prue both trying to keep it from both Stevie and her, Stevie finding out anyway—she wouldn’t have been much of a second in command if she hadn’t known about it—telling Jami in spite of her first instinct not to….

The commander of the Unbroken still not knowing what to do …things between Ariel and Ree were at their worst ever, the two of them communicating using the shortest possible amount of words….

Like that doesn’t sound familiar, she remarked bitterly to herself, hopping off the ladder onto HabThree, heading forward…the ship’s gym wasn’t much, but it served its purpose, that being to give the crew and their commander a place to play, work out, do a little target practice and generally release tension and frustration.

The door to the gym slid open for her, Jami observing it was still set up for basketball…the flight crew—excepting Ariel, who’d been on solo watch at the time—had played a couple games earlier in the day, Jami leading one team, Prue the other, something to liven up a quiet day in hyperspace, that quiet day coming after a day of having to drive back a League counterstrike against Big Sky.

She sat down in the middle of the deck, legs spread as far apart as they could, Jami bending and stretching over the right one first, then the left, then the right again, holding it…even a cybernetic limb needed limbering up, bioplastic tendons and muscles stiffened just as much as organic ones did…she locked her arms together, stretching them both behind her back, hearing it pop, Jami going through the rest of her warm-up exercises, dropping into her ready stance, as the ship holoprojected the image of a man opposite her, also in ready stance, a sneer on his face as he looked her up and down, ready to strip her naked right there and then, like almost every one of the fuckers she’d ever encountered in her lifetime.

They circled one another, each waiting for the other to make a move, the commander of the Unbroken studying her holographic opponent, seeing herself reflected in his icy-blue eyes, bastard feinting at her with his hands, trying to distract her, Jami knowing better than to buy into that sh—

Son of a bitch!

She almost didn’t see the laser cutter he had in his right hand, bastard slashing out at her as she pivoted inside, grabbing his arm, putting the entire weight of her body into snapping the bitch in half, before turning….

…kicking him in his throat with as much force as she could muster, smiling as she sent him flying into the far wall, not giving him a second to recover his wits…even with one arm broken, he could still fuck her up bad if she let him, and she’d be damned if she was going to let him, Jami on top of him instantly, slapping his eardrums hard,grabbing his hair, driving his face into her knee, firing a ridge hand into his throat to fuck up his breathing some more, slamming his head into the wall one, two, three, four times, busting him in the mouth for good measure, bastard reaching behind him, inside his sweatpants.

For what, Jami didn’t feel like finding out, instead whirling round on her right foot, grabbing his left arm, the cybernetic one, twisting it up behind his back and pulling hard enough to force the monomolecular carbon shoulder joint from its organic socket, her uncle screaming in pain, shrieking,”enough already, goddamnit!” as she forced him down onto his knees, her breathing ragged, as she noticed just what he was trying to reach for.

A set of knucks, matte-black handle and rings ending in a curved monocarbon blade on either end…he could’ve punched and slashed her in one go, if she hadn’t been paying attention.

Angrily, she jerked on his arm again, screaming,”next fuckin’ time you pull that crap’s gonna be the last fuckin’ time you pull that crap, get me?!”

“I think,” Uncle Dunstan replied painfully,”I do….”

…the holo ignored the simulated pain of his broken and dislocated arm, coming at her with blood in its eyes and a second laser cutter in its good hand, slashing at her at the same time he kicked out, Jami avoding the slash but getting his foot full in her face…it hurt, the holo had full sensory data and 6DOF programmed into him, real enough for purpose intended…her uncle had set up the programming, so she could practice on it instead of him, she went too far in her sessions, it wouldn’t have done to have crippled her security forces commander just because he’d been trying to keep her on her toes.

The holo chuckled at her, turning the activated cutter over and over in his left hand, as he circled her, trying to either find an opening or force her to give him one…Dunstan and Unbroken had programmed her holographic opponent to get better as she got better, so she actually had to use everything she had to beat the son of a bitch into bloody—

Shit!

She almost didn’t see it, sure as hell wasn’t expecting it, she’d broken that arm at the elbow, but adrenaline did wonders…his right hand sported a set of Wolverines, black beams slashing at where she had been, Jami narrowly avoiding the cutter’s graser beam as it came at her from the opposite direction, her holographic opponent charging her like a bull carnosaur crunk up on anasazi for the amusement of the Mountaindickheads who’d paid boocoo bucks to see some idiot in a gay-ass outfit risk his neck slicing the dumb SOB up for steaks. She went low to the deck and charged him, knocking his feet out from under him, turning…she didn’t expect he’d go down, and he didn’t, he gained control of his tumble, landing on his feet opposite her.

A lirpa in his hands.

“What the fuck?!” wondered the commander of the Unbroken out loud, shaking her head.

“If both survive the ler-pah,” an old woman’s thick-as-steam-table-grits Russian-accented voice came out of the holoprojected man’s mouth, the hologram morphing into that of Commander Houck’s, bioplastic Voltan ears and all, the character who’d killed Leonard McCoy’s “acting” career twirling that damn thing round in his hands as he got all psycho and shit, ”combat will continue with the anh-woon.”

She couldn’t help herself, Jami laughing uncontrollably, tears in her eyes, missing Dunstan for only the nth time in the last couple months, but….

She sighed, catching her breath, wiping her face, still smiling even as she kicked the living shit out of Dirk Jameison’s pointy-eared bitch.

“Thank you, Uncle,” she said softly, sniffling, watching the holo wink out, sighing again as she headed back upside.

“…you all know by now,”Mister Spiers said to the student body,” Meredith Wallace was a lesbian, a female who wished sexual intercourse with other females...this is abnormal and can only lead to tears...God created man, and then, from his rib, he created woman to serve man, and those women who think it is natural to disobey this most fundamental of God’s rules and love, if you can call it that, love other women, will end up either killing themselves, as this affliction of theirs wars with their innate femininity, or, like others we know of, will completely abandon their innate femininity for their own grotesque parody of....”

“…He said, dance, you spoiled, goddamn little tramp!” Daddy shouted, hitting her exposed midriff with his belt.

“Get the hell up, you stupid, fucking bitch!” he added, hitting her with his belt again. “Get up and do your nasty little dance, like I know you want to!”

The living room was all shimmery now...Ariel struggled to her feet...everything was white for a few seconds....

“Stop your goddamn crying, you horny little piece of trash!” Daddy shouted, cracking his belt in his hands after he had hit her across the face with it. “I know you’re just pretending, like all you goddamn women pretend...I know you like making us watch you take your clothes off and play with your titties and your stinking,. fuckin’ snatch...you’re all the fuckin’ same, all the fuckin’ same! Now, do it! DO IT!”

“House!” he shouted, “Give Daddy’s little shit some music to dance to!”

As the house computer played Lee Green’s “My Baby Comes From Terranova,” Ariel, trapped, helpless, hating her father, her boss, herself, started taking off her clothes....

“…doing a strip-tease, like that bitch in the Showgirls movies, playing with her snatch, shaking her ass, letting Felicia burn joints on her titties...then....“

Madame Marshall looked their way for a few seconds, before turning her attention back to the blackboard.

”Then, what, sno’,“ Antonio whispered,” then, what?!“ ”Then, Felicia spanked Meredith’s cute little ass,“ Nathaniel whispered,”and Meredith walked over to the bed, spread her legs, while Felicia ….“

…strapped Mistress’ dildo onto her, Mistress forcing it down her throat, grabbing double handfuls of her hair to keep her from pulling away, the men all round the cage tossing twenty-sterling notes inside the motherfucker, screaming for Mistress to show Her little girlie what being pootie was all about, Ariel….

27 JANUARY, 2226 01:33:18 TAI

…struggling to breathe, fighting the covers, as she woke up in her quarters on board Unbroken, slamming her head up against the top of the bed, the ship‘s chief flight engineer’s breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps of air, as she tried to remember if she was here, or back in that living room, or listening to Nate Duncan telling his classmates about when Meredith had gone to Felicia’s house, or back in that cage in Teezers Pleezers, choking as Mistress had shoved that fucking—

Only sound in the room was her fighting to breathe normally, as it echoed in the dark and the blur, Ariel fumbling about the nightstand for her glasses, everything coming into sharp focus….

“…what the fuck is wrong with you?!” the S.A. had snapped at her, looking like she wanted to snatch Ariel out of that bed and shake some sense into her.

She shook her head instead, Ariel hearing the tears in her eyes, as she asked,”can’t you see just how you’re….”

….killing her to have to dumb herself down, act like she really was into MHVid and trashy romance novels and skimpy-ass halter tops and hoochie shorts and men putting their hands all over her.

Even with Liz Gassett.

Even with….

…her best friend.

She had gotten up, walked over to the workstation, everything in its place, a holo of Ree standing there, in dress reds, a master tech sergeant’s chevrons on her sleeve, turning a dart over in her hand before throwing it at the pic of Guy Zellner which seemed to plaster every dartboard in every pub in Commonwealth soil…this one in particular had been a favorite of T-school trainees, this had been from graduation night, Ree and some of the others had gone out to celebrate while Ariel had stayed in her quarters, studying tech manuals, trying to bone up so she would measure up to being part of the drive room of the pride of the Commonwealth Forces.

She sighed, turning away from that holo, laying her hand flat on the scanlock on the workstation, a holo appearing from the wall just above her, Ariel filling that in with asterisks, a part of the wall that had been flush with the rest of her quarters opening up…it was turning yellow now with age, it had been eight years, how Aunt Shirley had managed to hold on to it without anyone knowing…but she had, slipping it into her niece’s hands when she’d been on T-nova a couple months ago with Squadron Leader Lanier.

She didn’t want to take it out of the wall safe, didn’t want to open it up, but she had, carefully smoothing it out on the workstation, reading it slowly:

”Ariel, I wouldn’t have done those things they said I wanted to do to you...I wasn’t looking at your butt, or anything like that...that’s what guys would do to a girl...I wouldn’t have done you that way...you’re special...oh, dear God, I wish I didn’t feel that way, I know you must hate me...it’s written all over my face, ‘I LIKE GIRLS,’ and ‘I LOVE ARIEL....’ I try so damn hard to look away before you notice me staring at you, and you found out I was like that, and you hated me...why shouldn’t you, if everything they’re saying about Felicia’s true...I wouldn’t have done you like that, but everyone says that’s how girls like me are...now with everyone saying Felicia and her girls ganged me in the bathroom, that I liked it, that I went over to her house...I don’t even know where she lives...it’s not a secret anymore, everybody knows what I am...you know what I am, and you probably hate me right now, think I’m some sort of sick fuck...that’s what I think about me, that I have to be sick to feel the way I do about you...but, it’s so right, more right than it is to feel that way about a guy....I can’t live like this....I just wanted you to know how I feel...and, that I’m so sorry....“ rereading it, sighing wetly, swallowing hard.

Finally, closing her eyes, not making a sound, as she cried.

27 JANUARY, 1986 02:27:00 EST

It was such an ugly piece of shit.

Scobee stood on the grass just in front of Pad 39 Bravo, floods lighting up the bloated tank of liquid hydrogen, the two vaguely-phallic booster rockets on either side, and, riding atop both, a stubby- winged, blunt-nosed vaguely jetliner-like thing calling itself a spacecraft….

That was a good one…in its current incarnation, Challenger and the other three shuttles in the fleet couldn’t get any further up than LEO, not at all what the originial designers had had in mind in the administration before Ronnie the Populist and his Three Mesquiteers had come to power, but Reganomics specified budget cuts for every space program not directly dealing with SDI, and that included the Shuttle, approved in its present form only because it was cheap, it could park satellites and SDI platforms like the (highly-classified)one Challenger had in its cargo bay, and because, as always, it made for good TV… Enterprise was so many spare parts now, originally a capable spacecraft…at one time, it had even had trans-atmospheric capability and range enough for that trip to Mars which was supposedly NASA’s next objective after convincing the world it had put three men on the Moon for all mankind.

This nigger-rigged piece of…his sigh blew cold smoke into the star-shot winter sky, as he made out the forms of NASA techs scrambling all over the sumbitch…they’d replaced the O-rings on the booster rockets yesterday, after finding cracks bigger than the one in Tip O’Neill’s fat ass in the ones they’d installed to replace the gaskets from Challenger’s last mission…if the American people had any idea just how much of a shoestring operation the official space program in general, and the Shuttle program in particular, really was….

They’d just deny it to themselves in the effort to believe that only their race was capable of going up into space, when they had about as much intention of actually going anywhere beyond Earth’s orbit as they had of letting that schoolteacher get away with shattering their delusions of being the only ones capable of any achievement, of any kind….

He saw her now, standing by the countdown clock, looking up at Challenger and the stars up in the sky, Scobee sighing again as he saw her…once round the planet, play with the ant farm some schoolkid had sent along for the folks back home, then, after they’d set down at Edwards…they told such scandalous stories about (female)schoolteachers to begin with, it wouldn’t be hard at all to turn her into another Pamela Smart, probably throwing in a photo shoot in Playboy or Hustler and a bisexual S&M expirience or three to make it all that much worse when they crashed and burned her down….

…the Air Force one-star faced the pilots in the ‘Stal’s ready room, not taking long to come right to the point. “Gents, we got ourselves a big fuckin’ problem…seems there wus a BBC camera crew down there that recorded t’whole goddam’ thang, and they didn’t wanna play nice with us.”

“Fuck,” he heard Hammer whisper, the Air Force one-star looking him in the eye, telling him,”fuck is raht…they’s already put it on t’air, whol’ goddam’ oparation, Pentagon’s doin’ whut they kin damage control wise, but it’s gonna take some doin’ t’come up with somethin’ everaone kin believe… Westmarlan’s already talkin’ ‘bout they’re gonna have t’ask some of those involved t’take one up the ass fer t’team…none a y’all, acarse, y’CAG’s gone t’t’trouble of makin’ up orders an’ such that put y’all somewheres else other than My Lai today, n’ that’s t’story y’all are t’stick to, unnerstan’?”

“Sir! Yes, sir!” the pilots and RIOs all said as one, the CAG, Captain McCain, telling them, “your F-4s were hunting for North Vietnamese SAM sites along the Trail today, weren’t they?”

“Sir! Yes, sir!” he and the others all replied….

…he and the others would have to tell Dan Rather and the rest of the “liberal” media just much of a fuck-up she’d been when the time came, orders he was reasonably sure Smith, McNair and Onizuka would be more than happy to obey…he wasn’t so sure about Jarvis, Resnick…she knew what would happen if she didn’t pretend she wasn’t jealous of McAuliffe, didn’t slag her down like she was supposed to.

And, he knew what would happen to him, if he decided not to play his part…Hammer and Captain McCain had been hotbunking for years, but when Hammer’s conscience had gotten the better of him, and he went to run his mouth to Dan Rather…his and the CAG’s F-4 had left the ‘Stal, and only the CAG’s had come back, they’d run foul of Gook MiGs north of the 17th Parallel and Hammer, in saving the CAG’s hide, had taken an Atoll right up the tailpipes, no time for either him or his RIO to eject….least, that was the official story, and everyone knew better than to contradict it, especially now that the CAG was calling himself Senator McCain these days….

Nodding his head, Scobee looked away from her looking up at the shuttle and the starry night, turning his back on all three, as he walked slowly to his quarters.

27 JANUARY, 2226 02:52:19 TAI

Still couldn’t sleep.

Jami sat at the workstation in her quarters, feet up on the desk, re-re-re-reading a book of poetry from the early twenty-first, one of the few which had survived the fire of the American World State’s Office Of Political Correctness Containment, sighing as her finger traced the lines of the most passionate love poem in the last two hundred-odd years, written by a woman named Tabitha Kirkland, who’d lived too long and had died too young fighting for what should’ve been so goddamn simple….same story repeated infinity times over the last couple centuries….

…the six-year old girl was curled up in Mama’s lap, Mama softly reading to Jami, rocking her in the rocker Nana had given to Daddy, the big book of poetry in her hands, trying not to make too much noise, burning a candle, not even chancing switching on the lamp behind them…if they woke Daddy up….

…and beyond, though no one would ever know the true history of what had passed before the dark days of the American Empire and its successors.

She paused, picking up the Winnie the Pooh mug of black Garde Bien coffee, hot chocolate mix and Yanker bug juice, sipping it, closing her eyes, the lines of the poem forever in her memory….

“ …Six years ago,” she whispered, trembling as she stood on the astrogation deck, Stevie standing in front of her, gently holding the hand onto which she had slipped her ring,” I felt an irresistible force pulling me to you/ Schwarzschild radius, nothing escapes, not even light—you/ I tried to fight this gravitic tug on my heart, threatening to/Drag me to your singularity—yes, I, like ignorant men of times/Coiled and looped, as the mobeius, tried to debar the law of nature./ Do not judge me harshly for my defiance of Newtonian law—it was/Time, coiled and looped as a Danforth’s rope, cutting all wind from/My voice, strangling me, as I struggled to tell you what should be so/Simple—it should be no fear in saying the words, feeling them, but/ Time, coiled and looped, as bonds which held la demoiselle d’Orleans/ Staked for her sin, for her sein, forbade me to say what I know as/ Immutable truth.”

She paused, sighed, stared up at the ceiling, meeting her hazel eyes, finding voice enough to tell her:

“The event horizon which surrounds our singularity are the arms which/ Comfort us, protect us from the hatred of normal space—one/Is a continuum unto ourselves—I no longer fear(yes, I do, but I must move/past it)This infinity which bleeds you into me, myself into you, all/Time, all space into us, gravity crushing all into one shining/Point of mass which is all I am, all you are, all at once—“

“That,” she finished, tears running hot and wet down her cheeks, and it did not matter, not to her, ” is a law of nature.”

“I know,” Jami then told her, brushing a tear from Stevie’s cheek, shivering a bit as Stevie smiled at her,”I haven’t been very good to you…you offered me what I wanted all along, and I fought against it, hurt you, ‘cause I was scared…I’m so sorry, baby, I wish I hadn’t been so stupid, that it hadn’t taken….”

She trailed off, Stevie’s turn to brush a tear from her cheek, her wife swallowing, taking Stevie’s right hand in her left, slipping the stainless steel band with the blue sapphire onto her middle finger with her free hand, telling her,”I love you, and I want to share everything I am with you, for as long as you’ll let me, for as long as it lasts…I will do right by you, I promise, I….”

…she sighed wetly, smiling as she looked away from the book, towards the holocube on her nightstand, showing a different scene of their wedding day almost twenty years ago, the two of them cuddled up against one another, sharing what her heart and soul would’ve probably called a proper snog, had she been there in the room with her, everyone who’d mattered to both of them cheering.

It was a proper snog, her wife’s voice tickled her brain, and it felt good, well worth everything we’ve been through to get to that point, everything since then.

Jami half-chuckled, smiling, still gazing at the wedding holo.

It was, she thought back, wasn’t it? I forget that sometimes, baby, it still scares me a little, even after all these years.

I know, Stevie replied, Jami remarking, I thought you were supposed to be sleeping.

I am sleeping, Stevie said, dreaming of the two of us, somewhere, away from this ship, no war, no worries, no pain, just….

She trailed off, Jami telling her it was a good dream, smiling some more, as her wife shared it with her.

27 JANUARY, 2226 03:18:25 TAI

She’d changed back into her greys, getting as far as the relief deck, before stopping, deciding she needed a cup of coffee instead, pouring herself a cup from the pot between the sink and the fridge, dumping she didn’t know how many spoonfuls of sugar into it, walking over to the sofa, standing there, sighing, pacing round the coffee table with the cup in her hands, taking a sip, cursing as it scorched her lips, her tongue and all the way down, her heart seizing up the way it did when something that was too hot went down. She began sweating, from nerves or the caffeine or the nerves and the caffeine, she wasn’t sure, any more than she was sure this was a good idea…she’d hurt Ree bad, no guarantee she was going to do it again, all because she was scared out of her mind, and didn’t know what the fuck….

“…who fuckin’ said you can stand up, you worthless goddamn piece of fuckin’ pussy?!”Suzanne screamed at her, before she wrenched one of her arms behind her back, bending her over the railing, another of her girls pulling her panties down, Suzanne fisting her in her ass, shouting for her to shut the fuck up, bitch, shut your fuckin’ cooter head, shut it, using her free hand to pull her arm even further out of her socket, shoving her other fist into her twot, crotch rubbing up against her bare ass, humping her, telling her,”maybe this’ll show ya, what we’re all about, lil’ girlie….”

…an ugly bruise on Yolanda’s right eye, and a cut on her lower lip...she was crying...oh, God, Yolanda said Tracy was secretly lesbian...maybe she...oh, God, oh—

Tracy gently brushed a tear from Yolanda’s cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered,“ if I knew your coming out would make him do this to you, I—”

“He woulda beat me anyway,” Yolanda replied softly,“ and worse...he always do, always say it was my fault, ‘cuz I’m too outspoken, too smart and I forgot that I’m just a ho,’ and....”

“Girl, ” Tracy whispered, running her hand along Yolanda’s arm, “don’t you ever let anyone get away with calling you that...not even me, not even as a joke, ‘cause you dam’ sho’ ain’t no ho’...you are a beautiful person, Yolanda, you have no idea....”

…what she was supposed to be, let alone where this would end up.

Another circuit round the coffee table, another, larger, swallow of coffee, this one not as hot, still making her sweat…all she had to do was seal up her suit, walk through the inter-section connector, step onto the astro deck, no one there but Ree, working the astrogation, command and piloting holodisplays at the astrogation station—everyone used that station when running a solo watch, no one dared sit in the command conn, that was no one’s place to sit except Squadron Leader Lanier’s….

That simple, just seal up and step through, just….

Another sigh, as she paced round the table instead, taking another sip of coffee…wasn’t sweet enough, Ariel going back over to the counter, spooning in more sugar, tasting it, pouring in a little more coffee, spooning in one or two teaspoonsfuls’ more sugar, tasting it again, nodding her head to let herself know she was satisfied, turning towards the inter-section connector between relief and astrogation decks, taking a step towards it.

Finding herself pacing the room again, sipping hot, sweet coffee, sweating, biting down on her lip, unable to take those few simple steps, no matter how many times she made up her mind to do it.

…screaming, as they burned or were blown apart, pulling up and away from what had been called My Lai, the slicks so many little specks of green and red as they set down in the clearing surrounding the village on all sides….

Not all the screaming was in his head…it rang in his ears, above the whine of the two J-79 turbojets trailing smoke as they drove the bird back to the flattop in time to catch to go-go girls shaking their asses in the wardroom.

His screaming and that of his RIO’s….

27 JANUARY, 1986 04:18:28 EST …woohooing it all the way back to the ‘Stal, their exultation still ringing in his ears seventeen years, ten months and an odd number of days and sleepless nights after the fact, three hundred thousand women and girls—the lucky ones—butchered in the initial assault, the rest split up between the strip clubs, whorehouses, lesbian shows, S&M bars, porn studios and “POW” camps Uncle Sam and Mister Charlie ran between them, while the hippies back in the fucking World pretended they were against the war, claiming to want peace and love, when the only fucking thing any of those bastards had wanted was all that free weed and shit “those VietNam baby killers” could send home to them….

Furiously, Scobee got up from his bed, went to the bathroom, gulped down a glass of water from the faucet, looked at himself in the mirror…a night with one of his favorite men, and he still couldn’t get to sleep…he used to be able to trick himself into unconsciousness just by getting drunk as fuck…hangovers the next day were a bitch, and it was all still there, but he had some respite from himself and the world he’d helped make.

He got tired of looking at himself in the mirror, walking out of the bathroom, back into the quarters assigned him ‘til after the mission was over and done with…his house in Cocoa Beach was just as empty as this, only bigger, his wife the Millie to his Montag, and he’d made her the way she was, though, he’d have to say otherwise while out in the world, lest he….

He couldn’t help but chuckle, finishing the thought, lest I end up setting that world all ablaze with one misspoken word, one misbegotten thought, but it’s already too late, isn’t it?!

He sighed, pacing the common area, going from there into the kitchenette, leaning against the sink as he tried to figure out what he wanted from the fridge, arriving at the conclusion he hadn’t been as hungry as he let himself believe, he was just looking for something to do besides think.

The TV was out, all of local stations had gone to bed by now, and NASA wasn’t about to spring for cable…only a couple of AM stations were on the air now, and he didn’t feel like listening to whackos preaching doomsday and vast left-wing /Trilaterial Commission/UN conspiracy theories…he didn’t want to go back out, the O-club was already closed for the night, and he couldn’t leave the base….

He found himself sitting down in one of the stools at the bar separating kitchenette from common area, looking at a pic of an astronaut playing golf on the Moon—he’d forgotten and didn’t really much care what Apollo mission that had been—sighing, shaking his head.

It seemed thinking was about all he could do.

…she held on with every ounce of strength she had, cradling her wife in her arms, telling that rotten knobguzzler father of hers, he wasn’t going to get her, not this time, by God, not this time....

27 JANUARY, 2226 06:18:02 TAI

…never fucking again, if she had anything to say about it.

Kissing her wife lightly on her forehead, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads reluctantly uncurled herself from Jami, smiling as she looked at her, finally sleeping somewhere close to peaceful, Stevie brushing an errant strand of blond hair from her face, before getting dressed…her turn to run solo watch, Jami would relieve her in eight hours, after she’d gotten her kip, she’d run herself down trying to take care of everyone, if someone wasn’t round to take care of her…she shouldn’t have told her about Ariel getting herself legless on Big Sky, that was just another bloody thing for her to worry about, knowing there wasn’t anything she could do….

Unbroken’s senior astro sighed, pulling on her suit of Commonwealth grey, pausing as she was about to seal it up…she had no choice, she couldn’t keep anything from Jami, she didn’t want to, that wasn’t the way marriages worked…and, she shouldn’t have gone ice-hot on Ariel, she couldn’t help being scared, alone and hurting, but it had—

Opened up old wounds, her wife whispered in her mind, still feeling guilty for what she couldn’t have helped all those years ago.

It still hurts, though, doesn’t it? Jami asked.

It still hurts, Stevie replied, sealing up her suit, buckling on her equipment belt.

But you’ve more than made up for that, luv, she added softly, you don’t have to keep apologizing for having been hurt, alone and scared of yourself, and I know, if you could’ve done it differently, you would have.

Now, she admonished her, go to sleep, okay, poppet, go to sleep, please.

Okay, baby, Jami said, Stevie taking one last look at her wife, sighing, still smiling when she stepped out of her quarters, walked down the corridor of HabOne, stepping through the inter-section connector onto the relief deck.

Ariel was passed out on the recliner, coffee cup dangling from her fingers, about to spill all over the carpeting, Stevie taking it from her hand, putting it on the table, finding a rag with which to wipe the drool running from the corners of her mouth….

…they ganged her right there and then, not bothering with dragging her to the tank, Suzanne and her crew taking turns ramming their dildos into every orifice on Ariel’s squriming , struggling body, the blond one slapping her bottom hard, grabbing onto her hair, forcing her to suck the toy strapped round the waist of a skinny redhead at the same time the blonde viciously rammed Ariel, right up her arse, spanking her again when her screams echoed up and down that frozen hellhole of Witch’s fucking Tit....

…Stevie turning away, shaking her head, realizing she had come down too hard on Ariel, it wasn’t anywhere close to being easy for her to sort things out, and not a bloody thing she or Jami or even Ree Moseley could do to make things any more clear for her.

Biting down on her lower lip, Stevie stepped through the inter-section connector on the other end of the relief deck, stepping onto the red-lit astrogation deck, all stations unmanned except for astrogation, command and weaps holodisplays floating free between the piloting and astrogation holodisplays the ship’s second flight engineer was working as she stared straight at the master holodisplay.

“Oh,” she said, disappointed, over her link.

“I thought,” she whispered,” it might have been her, S.A.; she’s been pacing round the relief deck most of the bloody night, trying to work up the nerve to come in here, face me, apologize for the way she’s been acting, though, I shouldn’t hold it against her, not really, she’s just been through so much, and it hurts so bad…I’m not sure I’m up to it, I’ve never known what she’s had to know, I….”

She sighed, Stevie standing in front of the command conn, not daring for a second to sit down in it…this wasn’t her place, her place was in front of her and at Jami’s side, she belonged here, no matter how much she believed she didn’t, no matter how much she blamed herself for Stevie’s first cousin being gone….

Nodding her head, she patted the younger woman on her shoulder, working the piloting and astrogation holodisplays, as she stood behind her, Ree unbelting, climbing out of her seat, out from under Stevie’s arms, Stevie, fingers still dancing across the holodisplays, sitting down at the chair Ree had just vacated, not knowing what to say, certain she knew what Ree was going to do. What Stevie had always done for the woman she loved…simply hang in there, believe in her, no matter how bad she clawed and scratched her way free, no matter how much it killed her watching her destroy herself.

Hope she would find her way out of the darkness.

Sighing, Unbroken’s second in command stared into hyperspace, hands working the displays in front of her of their own free will…Jami was right, it was supposed to be easy.

It was supposed to be easy….

“...show ya what we’re all about, lil’ girlie!” Ariel screamed, rubbing her crotch against her best friend’s bare ass, fisting her at the same—

“I-i’m not like that,” Ariel said over and over, something just like her laughing, telling her,” sure you are, lil’ girlie, you’ve got to be, you’re a sick fuck who likes—

27 JANUARY, 2226 06:33:16 TAI

…girls.

Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Rhiannon Moseley sighed, helplessly watching her best friend toss and turn on the recliner on Unbroken’s relief deck , as she sat down at the edge of the coffee table…all she’d seen from inside her head before she’d shut it off, shut Ree out same as she always did, when all she wanted to do….

Unbroken’s second flight engineer stared up at the ceiling, swallowing hard, unclenching the fists she hadn’t even known she’d balled up ‘til they’d started hurting like hell.

Way Ariel was hurting her, but it wasn’t her fault, it really wasn’t her fault, every bloody thing she’d been put through on that hole, on Witch’s Tit, in that club where the Boss, the S.A., Dunstan Selkirk —God rest his soul—and the rest of the crew had found her…how the hell would Ree have measured up against any of that….

And, just what the fuck could she do for her friend, to make it all better…how in the name of God could someone who had two parents who loved her possibly do for a woman who’d never even had the fucking chance to….

Another sigh…self-pity definitely wasn’t going to help…all she could do right now is just hang in there, no matter what Ariel did next to drive her away…somehow….

Ree nodded her head, as she looked back at Ariel fitfully sleeping on the chair in front of her.

Somehow, she resolved to herself for only the nth time.

Somehow.

—endit—

In Man’s Dwellings “But, in Man’s dwellings, he became a thing Restless and worn, and stern and wearisome, Drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipt wing, To whom the boundless air alone was home: ” George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 3

27 JANUARY, 1986 12:31:00 EST

Lieutenant General Freeman Zephaniah Ezekiel Lang, commanding general of the Air Force Special Operations Command, trailed his Secret Service escort into—for many Americans—a place considered Holiest of Holies, made that way again by the man who usually sat at the other end of that mahogany desk.

What was ours is ours again, Lang remarked to himself, the door opening and closing behind him, saluting the man in charge.

Vice-President George Herbert Walker Bush—his Daddy Matt’s old running buddy—ignored his salute, as he sat down behind his erstwhile boss’ desk .

“Sit down, Freeman,” he said abruptly, concern twisting his weaselly little face.

Lang complied.

“The President has just been given his medication,” his adopted uncle said without preamble, “that dried-up old whore of a wife of his is in the Linclon Bedroom getting banged by that greasy fucking dago, and George Schultz, Ed Meese and Don Regan are all off having martinis for lunch again in Alexandria. The rest of the staff’s still out to lunch right now, which leaves the servants, a couple of jarheads and some Secret Service goons guarding the place.”

“For all intents and purposes,” he added, getting up to pour himself a drink from the sidebar,“the two of us are alone.”

He looked back at Lang.

“My manners,” he said,“ are lacking, as usual, Freeman. I forgot it was lunchtime. Go ahead, help yourself to a drink.”

“Thank you kindly, Uncle George,” Lang replied,“ don’t mind ifido.”

Getting up, he walked over to the sidebar, scanning all the bottles lined up along the counter.

“Ron doesn’t like Jack Daniels too much,” Uncle George said.“ He thinks it’s for poor people.”

“Whutse like,” Lang asked nastily,“ one of ‘em wussie Yankee conocctions like Scotch n’ water?”

“He calls it Scotch and soda,” Uncle George replied,“ with more soda than Scotch these days.”

“Whut the hail’s the point of drankin’,” Lang asked,“ if you’re gonna pour water in y’drank? Might as well jest stick y’glass under the kitchen faucet and fill it fulla water if y’gonna call that drankin’.”

“He’s weak,” Uncle George observed coldly,“ and feeble minded, which was why I picked him to play the President’s part in the first place...it will be a miracle if he lives long enough to make it to 1988.”

“Under the bar,” he added, “next to my bottle of José. Just be sure to put it back...he’ll raise all kinds of hell if he finds one of the ‘props’ out of place.”

Lang found the bottle of Jack Daniels, poured himself a tall glass, no ice, before replacing the bottle underneath the bar. “I cain’t believe,” Lang said, returning to his chair,“ that he thanks it’s all jes’ a movie, and he’s jes’ playin’ a role...I thought that was jes’ somethin’ that liberal Jew Lorne Micheals made up fur his show.”

“Senility, Freeman,” Uncle George replied,“ in someone else, can be a wonderful thing. He thinks he’s back in the good old days at RKO...his brain is so damn vegetated he doesn’t even fucking know six years have already passed since the elections.”

“Naw,” Lang said, sipping at his drink. “Now, you’re pullin’ m’leg.”

“He doesn’t,” Uncle George replied, propping his feet up on the desk. “He thinks we’ve only started shooting this ‘movie’ a couple of weeks ago....told Sam Pierce at the last Cabinet meeting, ‘nice to meet you, Mister Mayor,’ and that damn nigger’s been running HUD into the fucking ground since we’ve been in office.”

“Whija even use him atall?” Lang asked. “You had enough brains to be the President all by y’lonesome.”

“In a way,” Uncle George answered, “Freeman, Presidential elections are stage productions...simply put, he had the look, and I didn’t, same reason why Dick Nixon used that dope- smoking, good-for-nothing fucking mick as his figurehead back in 1960.”

The Vice President sipped at his tequila for a few seconds, before adding:

“I didn’t bring you here to discuss Ron, though.”

“I didn’t figger y’did, Uncle George,” Lang replied. “So whut kin I do fur ya?”

Uncle George smiled briefly.

“You are your father’s son,” he said softly, before the smile disappeared.

“At least,” he added coldly, “I hope so.”

“Somethin’ t’do with that pieca pussy goin’ up in the shuttle Tuesday, don’t it?” Lang asked.

“You are your father’s son,” Uncle George replied.

“And, yes it does,” he added, taking a bigger gulp from his glass this time.

“The idea to shoot civilians into space was one of that fucking redneck peanut farmer’s bad ideas we couldn’t kill,” he said, disgust twisting his featutres,“ and NASA had already gone ahead and started training that slut to be on one of the first shuttle flights.”

“I would’ve thought,” he added, hissing,“ we had done everything possible to keep that fucking cooze-licking shit’s little feet firmly on terra firma. I mean, when she was in school, talking all that BS about wanting to be like Neil Armstrong, I thought her daddy did a real fine job of fucking her out of that idea, and, if not him, all those other boys, especially during that week in Huntsville...we did everything we could to discourage her from wanting to be an astronaut, and, when she decided to give that up and major in astrophysics, we did everything in our power to change her mind there too, make her think she actually did want to be a teacher...that was a harmless thing for a woman to be, don’t you think, Freeman?”

“I would’ve thought so, Uncle George,” Lang replied. “She would be teaching our values and our truths to her students,” Uncle George said,“ caged in by pre-approved weekly lesson plans, principals, school board members, PTAs, preachers and politicians, unable to spread her wings, muzzled, hooded—”

He had risen from the desk, pacing to and fro behind it.

And the flat of his hand came down hard on the surface of the desk.

“But that still didn’t work, goddamnit,” he shouted,“ it still didn’t work! She’s going up there,” he pointed one of his fingers skyward,“ and, by going up there, she is going to pose the single greatest threat to our way of life, Freeman, our very way of life!”

“Christa MacAuliffe,” he added, after a pause to let the color drain from his cheeks,“ is telling the world that women have the same dreams, the same courageous hearts, the same desire to touch the sky, the same spirits as men do...and, that a woman’s spirit might even be greater than a man’s...she’s not a hotshot fighter jockey, not a test pilot, not even a physicist, but a schoolteacher, a goddamn schoolteacher, as mundane as you can get without being a housewife.”

“Just,” he whispered,“ a plain, ordinary, average American woman, without even any known feminist ties...do you have any conception, any idea, Freeman, just how much of a threat she is to our way of life?”

“I do,” Lang replied, not needing flashcards for this particular lesson.

“How,” he asked,”y’want this handled?”

“Quietly, quickly,” Uncle George replied, pausing, before adding the last three words:

“In mid-flight.”

“In mid-flight,” Lang repeated, nodding his head, not even daring question his adopted uncle’s decision, misguided though it was.

“Yes, sir,” he said to Uncle George, already putting into motion just how it was going to be done.

…her model PCS-4, the one Nana had bought for her, slamming into the wall, shattering into a million pieces, Daddy….

…picking her up like she was nothing, when she screamed for him to leave Mama alone, hurling her up against the wall, hard, everything flashing white, hurting, Daddy calling her a goddamn, fucking little bitch as he picked the three year old girl up and threw her into the closet, Jami trying to get up, couldn’t, it all hurt too much, her face wet and sticky all of a sudden, Daddy’s voice echoing as he told Mama to shut the fuck up, bitch, his slaps across some part of her echoing as well.

Daddy picking Jami up again….

…stomping hard on her back as he threw her down onto the floor, Jami hearing the snap and the zipper on her shorts giving way, her panties tearing, Daddy grunting as he stomped on her again, plastering her into the carpet.

“What the fuck is this, you rancid goddamn piece of fuckin’ pussy?!” he demanded again, the eleven-year old girl hearing him unzip his pants….

…his laughter howling as they howled, all those empty chairs whipped round in a malestrom of fire, as she just…. 27 JANUARY, 2226 14:01:08 TAI

…clawed and fought her way out of the bedcovers, Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier almost cracking her head open again on the top of her wife’s bed, the commander of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken getting her breathing under control as she got her bearings.

The terminal on Stevie’s workstation was bleeping its wake-up call, she had to get ready to suit up, relieve her wife at astrogation, run solo watch for the next eight hours, or until the war hotted up in their corner of hyperspace, whichever came first….

The commander of the Unbroken popped her neck, as she got out of bed, walking into the washroom, stepping into the sonic shower, still popping and stretching bits of herself as the sonics cleaned her up and got her ready to face the day…more hickey duty, trying to intercept enemy reinforcements inbound for Tartarus, trying to keep them from intercepting JMC reinforcements, the fighting on the infamous Hell Star almost four days into its second month, the death toll mounting all round…Dis had been overrun, at terrible cost to the JMC forces carrying out the final assault, Commonwealth and allied troops using it as a staging area for further offensives on its brown dwarf parent.

And, as a medevac center for all those poor things liberated from that fucking place, them and those of their liberators wounded in the attempt…she had to check the JMC intel datastream to know just how many exactly had been killed or wounded in the fighting thus far…she didn’t have to check it to know that number was too goddamn many already….

The sonics cut out, and she walked back out, picking her underwear and her greys up off the floor, getting dressed, sealing up her suit as she walked out the door, down the corridor of HabOne, through the inter-section connector onto the relief deck.

Ariel was curled up in the recliner, face working of its own voilition, the commander of the Unbroken tensing up as she caught a piece of what was tearing her chief flight engineer up inside.

Her second flight engineer, the only friend Ariel had let herself have in the four years she’d been on Unbroken, was sitting on the edge of the coffee table, fighting sleep herself, as she laid her hand on the arm of the recliner, trying to comfort Ariel best she could.

“Boss,” she said, her voice distant, Jami acknowledging her as she crossed the relief deck, stepping through the inter-section connector onto the astrogation deck, pausing just in front of the command conn, watching her wife deftly working the astrogation and piloting holodisplays, her fingers a grey blur across both, her warm hazel eyes staring into the master holodisplay directly ahead of her.

“Hullo, luv,” Stevie whispered over the commlink, her voice inside Jami’s head, asking sleep well?

“As well as could be expected, baby,” Jami replied, walking up behind her, working the controls that kept the five-thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate in hyperspace and on a circuit covering the immediate volume of superspace surrounding the Proxima Centauri system…ship and astro had to work together to feed corrections and vector information to the Rittermark generator, or they’d snap right back into normal space with little possibility of finding their way home again, necessitating this dance every time the solo watch got changed out.

Ree says she’s been there all night, Stevie replied in answer to her wife’s question, pacing the relief deck, trying to work up the nerve to go talk to her.

Sounds entirely too familiar, Jami thought sadly, taking over the controls altogether, as Stevie unbelted herself from the astrogation station and slipped out underneath Jami’s arms, Jami then sliding effortlessly into the seat, its automatic systems snapping the belts and g-web into place round her body. It takes what it takes, luv, Stevie thought back, warming her wife up with the gentle touch on her right shoulder.

I know, baby, thought the commander of the Unbroken sadly, nodding her head.

I know.

27 JANUARY, 2226 15:00:00 TAI

“…the feminazi influence over Microsoft’s Wal-Mart Stores Division,” Fox Savage said,”was insidious that not even the Terranovan Security and Intelligence Directorate’s Lesbian Sex Crimes Unit had any idea of the cancer eating away at one of the oldest companies in human space until it was far too late.”

He paused, Sunni Pate looking at a parody of herself in the background behind the veteran Viacomm Headline News anchorman—that parody abusing a parody of Randy’s stepsister Kim, the image looking entirely too much like one she’d seen in The Flynstboro Telegraph a couple months back—Savage waiting till everyone watching had gotten a good eyeful before continuing:

“Even before the Glassboro trial, the feminists exerting a stranglehold over Wal-Mart’s board of directors had sunk their talons deep into the rest of the Microsoft corporate empire, eventually assuming control of the entire board of directors in New Redmond following the infamous sex discrimination lawsuit filed by them—through female associates they cynically used and just as cynically threw away—ten years ago in the Yukon County Superior Court in New Whitehorse, resulting in a settlement so ruinous to Microsoft, it left Sunni Pate, the feminazis for whom she worked and the lesbian sex killer who owns her even now, in complete control of the largest and most powerful megacorporate enterprise in all of human space.”

Another pause, and Savage told the worlds:

“Sunni Pate, acting on orders of her dominatrix and her Communist State, did everything within her power to destroy that great corporation, to corrupt it into an instrument serving her agenda and that of those who owned her body and soul, while at the same time, siphoning off massive amounts of Microsoft’s money to line her own Swiss bank accounts.”

Behind him, the holo from one of all too many unfortunate incidents that had taken place during Thanksgiving blitz played, Savage remarking:

“Under her control, honest, decent men and women were turned into greedy, avaricious, selfish creatures desiring material wealth over all else, even life itself, thinking nothing of trampling a woman to death, smashing her dead, brutalized body underfoot, until it was no longer recognizable as human by the time Wal-Mart management finally thought to call in the Mountaindove National Police, Pate using the resources under her command to make sure her grieving husband and children were discouraged from filing any sort of lawsuit against Microsoft or its Wal-Mart Stores Division—“

“Ooooh,” Annesha Griffin’s voice said facetiously from behind the couch Sunni was sitting in,”you a evil woman, Sunni.”

“Guess I am, baby,” Sunni replied, reaching out and gently squeezing her friend’s hand, watching the background footage dissolve to that of two old women beating the crap out of each other with the very last g-deck left on the shelves at some other Wal-Mart, a bald skinny black man wearing a black Wal-Mart logo polo shirt stepping in between them, two boys in orange t-shirts standing a little bit back behind him.

“Skeeter,” Annesha said, one of the old women opening up the front of Skeeter’s bald skull with the g-deck in question, sending him spinning into the two cart pushers behind him, ”was always looking for a reason to scrap with somebody.” “How you been doing?” Sunni asked, glad to have her around.

“Best I can,” Annesha replied, coming round the couch to sit down on the table in front of it,”trying to coordinate ICLU operations on planet, helping the Governor rebuild everything, dealing with the few fools and their citizen’s volunteer militias still trying to kick up sand inside our ZOC.”

“Worrying ‘bout him,” Sunni observed, putting a hand on her former relief manager’s flailing pair, Annesha snorting, smiling, remarking:

“That’s a full-time job, you know that, just more so since he hooked back up with the Commie Forces and got sent down into the South Coast to stir up trouble there…losing old Ben didn’t help matters, he still blames himself for that—“

“Baby,” Sunni said,” there wasn’t a damn thing he could’ve done different, you know old Ben, once he made up his mind to do something—“

“I know,” Annesha said, sighing as she spoke,”Carson does too, but….”

A longer sigh, as she trailed off.

“So,” she then asked,”how you’ve been doing?”

“Half and half,” Sunni replied, her turn to sigh, adding:

“I talked to Maria today, before you came here...she’s still got a long way to go, before what that bastard brother, her fucking daddy and that miserable North Coast faggot son of a bitch all did to her… physically, she’s healed up just fine….”

She fell silent with another sigh…she’d made a point of comming her surviving daughter at least once a day, ever since Jami had commed her, let her know her oldest girl was safe and (more or less)sound on Cor Leonis, trying to live through everything that had been done to her in her short life…she figured she could do that much for her daughter, not having been able to keep her from being hurt in the first place, like a mother should have.

Like she should’ve been able to keep Shelby from being killed….

It was Annesha’s turn to squeeze Sunni’s hand.

“It’s never easy, baby,” her friend told her, her voice starting to crack,”especially when you think you’ve let her down, because you sat there and let it happen, and there wasn’t a damn thing you could’ve done to keep him from doing that to her.”

“You,” she added,”probably even ended up hating her—both of them—just because that was easier than hurting and feeling guilty over them.”

“She does understand,” she told her, giving Sunni’s hand another squeeze.

“Believe me, I know.”

27 JANUARY, 1986 22:00:20 EST

A waning gibbous moon, Christa MacAuliffe thought as she stared up into the winter night sky, at the shuttle poised for launch on Pad 39B, sighing cold smoke as she stood by the countdown clock, trying not to cry again…it still felt like a dream, and she was afraid of waking up, finding herself trapped in that classroom, forced to watch another generation of girls have their wings clipped, chained and hooded in unholy matrimony and all the other things they had to keep them beaten down into submission. Like she’d been beaten down, for the dreams she’d had of one day being up there…they were supposed to have won the war, the offering brought inside the gate, the army sent home to do what Greeks do best…and, because the Trojans had won and Athena propitiated, everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, inflation, the trillion-dollar national debt, drugs on every corner, terrorists in every backyard, Commies behind every bush….because they’d won, they were now free to be the nasty, perverted, horny, drug-crazed darkies Mister Victor Charlie had said they were all along, and it had become even more paramount than before that they whip out all twelve inches of their well-hung white man’s burden on them before it was too late….

She chuckled bitterly, thinking about that…the first female EPA director was being burned at the Congressional stake for policy she had fought against all along, while the first female candidate for Vice- President…dear God, the “liberal” media had gone out of their way to crucify her, before they’d turned round and blamed her for being a distraction to Mondale’s campaign, as well as the reason why he‘d come across as less of a man to the American people.

The niggers had won, all right…Judy Resnick was lesbian—least that was the rumor going round and round the Cape faster than the Millenium Falcon could fly—though Christa didn’t know for sure, didn’t dare ask, not if she didn’t want more grief than the successful conclusion of this mission would already give her…there’d been a time—three, maybe four minutes during the mid- ‘ 70s—where a woman could openly love another woman and not be afraid of the consquences, and that was what the enemy had attacked first, with an endless slew of antilesbian horror stories running the gamut from lesbian convicts preying on the new fish—like Pam Smart was supposedly doing up in New Hampshire, again, according to the “liberal” media—to the merest hint of what a female housebreaker would do to any wife or daughter that happened to be home, playing on the fears men had put into them in the first place….

Resorting to the older methods when that didn’t work…Judy kept to herself, didn’t go out, didn’t say a word, just did her job, and that was it, always watching her back, and she shouldn’t have had to….

She shouldn’t have had to think about the consequences of her finally having a chance to fly…not that she’d have much to do except play with the ant farm and other expiriments her sixth graders had come up with, mug for the cameras, generally provide Johnny Carson with grist for his monologues and all too many right-thinking, red-blooded American men with source material for their daily rants to their editors and dirty jokes round the water cooler…not to mention the hell she’d catch from the “liberal” media during the mission, because she was up there playing with fucking ants, and, after, after she was firmly on the ground again, the bands through playing for her, the politicos through shaking her hand for the cameras… they told such stories on teacher, she had little doubt they would say those same things about her, at the same time they redoubled their efforts to keep her earthbound….

Goddamnit, she shouldn’t have to think about any of that, she was finally where she’d wanted to be all along, she was going to have her chance to ride fire into space, she couldn’t let anything ruin that for her….

The moon wavered in her field of vision, Christa sighing, more heavily this time.

Couldn’t even break the bonds of earth in her dreams.

28 JANUARY, 1986 00:18:28 EST

“Some people say,” Lieutenant Commander Micheal Smith shouted drunkenly over Jimmy Buffett on the jukebox,”that there’s a wo-man to blame. And, there is[But I know.]. It’s all ‘em bitches’ fault[Hell, it could be my fault.].”

“Will you shut the fuck up?! Some people are actually trying to listen to that shit!” Captain Robert L. “Bruce” Crippen snapped back at him, holding onto the bar in the Canveral Air Force Base’s Officer’s Club to keep from falling down on the deck, the pilot of tomorrow’s mission favoring his superior officer with a one-fingered salute.

“He ain’t worth the effort,” Commander Francis Richard Scobee said, restraining Crippen’s arm, Smith spinning a sad tale of some poor slob being gypped out of child support and alimony by his scheming bitch of an ex-wife, who was now slurping it up with some biker dyke out in Cali, Ellison Onizuka, Richard McNair and Gregory Jarvis all listening as attentively as their altered states would permit, as Smith added the part about the biker dyke banging the ex-wife’s box with a strap-on Scobee knew was coming(and Smith’s audience probably did as well), McNair asking, “you think that what she does.”

“Resnick?” Smith, whose last posting before NASA had been with the NIS up in Annapolis, asked.

“Oh, hell yeah, blood,” he replied, slapping the black man hard across his back, McNair too inebriated to even mind,”just like ‘em upperclassgirlies were bangin’ the hell outta their little plebettes up in Annapolis; see, what they do is roust ‘em outta their racks at five in the morning during Hell Week, strip their pretty little asses naked, march ‘em all out in the quad, then, they scream and shout and whip the little bitches into shittin’ down each other’s throats and lickin’ each others’ nasty fuckin’ asses right there in front of—“

“Just which issue of Hustler did you get that from, bitch?!” Crippen, shrugging off Scobee’s hand, shouted at Smith.

“Bitch,” Smith spat back, the two OSI fuckers sitting at the table behind Crippen and Scobee tensing up and getting ready to react to whatever the commander of the very first Shuttle mission did or said next,”I was fuckin’ there, in the NImotherfuckin’ S, havin’ to go in there and bust ‘em fuckin’ dykes up; their little Family—that’s what they call their organization, in case you didn’t know, jefe—“

“That’s Captain to you, Lieutenant Commander!” Crippen snapped, advancing on the much younger man.

“That fuckin’ used to mean something!” he added, everyone else in the O-club, including the OSI agents assigned to surveil Crippen, not knowing whether to shit or go blind.

“Yeah,” Smith replied, standing unsteadily on his feet,”it did, before y’all let all the fuckin’ dykes run round loose, stinkin’ up our motherfuckin’ Navy, slurping each other up on the lower decks, flyin’ Tomcats and bangin’ bitches like they were the fuckin’ Top Guns.”

“Kinda fuckin’ sad,” he added, getting in Crippen’s face,”when the only real man the Navy’s got’s Tom motherfuckin’ Cruise…fuckin’ dykes done made Dagwood-munching faggots outta the rest of us, fuckin’ gave our country to the goddamn Commies and their liberal pinko fuckin’ bitches!”

He glanced over to the side, turned to face Crippen, snorted at the older man and his nominal superior officer, shaking his head, sitting back down.

“You ain’t even fuckin’ worth it,” he told him, Crippen about to go for him—and probably get his ass kicked by the much-younger man—when Scobee grabbed hold of him, Crippen spitting fire, cursing his old friend, before finally letting himself be led back to the bar.

All the air went out of him, Crippen leaning into the bar, pouring himself another shot from the bottle of Evan Wilson the two aging zoomies were sharing between them, Willie—very appropriately— singing “Whiskey River” in the background. “Been thinking awful hard,” Crippen said,”about getting the fuck outta this, Dick; Jim Lovell did, had the good sense to parlay his expiriences up there into more fuckin’ money in a minute than I ever fuckin’ made in my lifetime.”

He sighed, looking into his shot glass.

“You and I both know damn well what’s gonna happen to her, Dick, the same exact fuckin’ thing I had to help do to Sally Ride…y’know, I liked her, she was actually there, ‘cos she wanted to go into space, not because she was looking for a hard-on like those dildos over there,” he jerked his head in Smith’s direction, the two OSI agents raising their eyebrows, Crippen saying what he was saying loud enough for them to hear.

Knew it too, for he turned round and told them both to go fuck themselves, asked them how they liked that, turning back round in his barstool, pounding the whisky down his throat, pouring himself another shot, whispered, his voice choked with the tears streaming down his cheeks:

“Same exact motherfuckin’ thing I had to help do to her, ‘cept, probably worse, she isn’t trained for this, she’s their average little hausfrau…they tell such stories about schoolteachers, buddy, y’know that.”

Scobee merely nodded his head, Crippen rambling on, telling him,”I can’t do this shit anymore, getting too old, too tired to see the fucking point of it all; they had the upper hand, they always did, they deserved to, we weren’t meant to—“

“Goddamnit,” Scobee warned him,”watch—“

Crippen merely slapped his old wingman and fellow astronaut on the back, chuckled.

Shook his head.

“Does it really matter anymore?” he asked. “We both know this fucking program’s the biggest fraud…Capricorn One…Capri-corn One…G.H. Christ, if those fuckers only knew…they achieved spaceflight first, used it to get a few of them the fuck away from us, and it’s stuck in our craws for the last four decades, we had to pretend we were capable of the same thing, though we weren’t, all we can fucking do is stick Death Stars in orbit for the evil Emperor and his black-clad fucking Titans to nuke and sizzle fry any hint of rebellion out of existence, to lock down the prison and fucking throw away the key!”

“Bruce,” Scobee said, tugging at his arm, aware of every pair of eyes in the room on the two of them,”I think we’ve both had enough.”

“No,” Crippen replied, downing another shot, refilling the glass,”no, I haven’t, Dick, I still know why we concoccted this farce, this self-deluded, ridiculous fucking joke we call NASA, accent on ass… they wouldn’t do as they were told, wouldn’t fucking die off like we told ‘em to, and we fucked up, started falling apart, had to have something to distract ourselves from ourselves, a vision of a good future, where niggers in go-go boots and minidresses obeyed Massa Spock and his pointed Vulcan cock, while at the same time, creating a little Star Trek of our own, for real, just to prove we whiteys can make it happen if we tried, when we had no fucking intention of ever seriously going anywhere except straight to Hell!”

“Did you bitches hear that?!” he asked, turning to face the OSI pricks and everyone else. “If we ever get off this planet, it’ll be in spite of ourselves, not because of it, and two, three hundred years down the road…gonna be the same shit, different fucking planet, different fucking day, jus’ gonna take a little longer to fuckin’ die!”

“On that happy note,” he added, staggering off the barstool and onto his feet,”I think I have had enough.” And, he walked out of the O-club, Neil Young wailing,”keep me searchin’ for a heart of go- hollld. And, I’m gettin’ old….”

Aren’t we all? Scobee thought bitterly, getting up and following his friend out the door.

28 JANUARY, 1986 04:04:08 EST

This wasn’t the way he would’ve done it, but he had his orders, and those orders had come from the heir-apparent to the leadership of the others…from his own uncle.

If Lang had had a say in the matter, he would’ve waited till the mission had been a success, then arrange for both ‘em sluts to be kidnapped and banged by drag queen lookalikes of each other while someone snapped a few photos and sent them off to either Flynt or Guccione…then let all hell break loose, as his buddy Dan and the rest of ‘em liberal media elitist Jew motherfuckers had their fun making this into a scandal even worse than when that black bitch had tried to expose the Miss America pagent for what it was three years ago…much worse, since they’d been convinced schoolteachers were some sick fucks, what with that dyke Pamela Smart and that other dyke up in Jersey, Margaret Kelly Whatsertits, being set up for fucking little girls and murdering their husbands…whatever that bitch might’ve done in space, they would all soon know she was nothing but cunt, like all the rest….

Now…fuck, she was gonna be some kind of fucking martyr, last goddamn thing he or any of his race needed, but, that was Uncle George for you, always overreacting, same as he done in ’79, when ‘em bitches over in I-ran started feeling liberated and kicked ol’ Muhammed’s sorry ass out…he didn’t have to fuckin’ stick the goddamn Ayatollah fuckin’ Homo in his place, knowing the bastard was good at going overboard, knowing he was gonna have a buncha fuckin’ frat boys take over the Embassy, he just had to put settling accounts before the Work, like Uncle George should’ve known he would….

And, the less said ‘bout where Jimmy Hoffa really was, and what he was really doing for the others, the better…true, the situation over there needed a quick fix, they really had been getting out of hand, but that useless-as-bull-tits dago motherfucker hadn’t been the man to do it, they were gonna have to send in troops over there to help him keep them under control more sooner than later….

Lang sighed…fuck it, then was then, now is now, and right now, he was out on the flightline at Eglin, checking over the ordinance slung underneath the hardpoints of his personal F-15C Eagle fightercraft…Ralston had pitched ten kinds of bitch when he’d asked for all the expirimental sat killers… low-tech, just a gyroscope and a rocket motor inside an otherwise-solid tin can, relying on kinetic energy to kill anything upwards of a hundred miles above the Earth’s surface, designed to be launched from either an F-15 or an F-16 at their maximum ceiling…just the lower end of the real space program, one designed to make damn sure they never, ever got that far again, not when things were finally beginning to get back on track in regards the Work.

Lang refused to allow himself the luxury of remembering how things had gone wrong after the war which was supposed to have been the end of them, about the failures of leadership coupled with excesses of personal ambition which had cost the SoCon and his beloved Texas their independence, forcing the Yankees to take them in and rewrite the History, before the ink had even dried on the motherfucker, tell themselves lies about niggers getting whupped and pussy what was doing the whupping(instead of the other way round), then making up lies about Indians on the reservation when the rebellion at the Wounded Knee facility had made the international news….

Goddamnit, he said he wasn’t going to think about that…it had taken them three decades to get everything close to being right again, still had a long way to go before they were anywhere near as beaten down and contained as they’d been at the end of the war, but his race were making progress on that end.

Lang completed one more walk around his fighter…Ralston had said it would take just one to bring that ugly-ass bird down, Lang insisting on all of them, just in case one didn’t do the trick, he was a positive believer in planning ahead…he’d fly the mission himself, couldn’t trust this to subordinates, no sir, buddy, had to do the dirty work himself, just like he done back in ‘Nam, ‘specially after MyLai had threatened to blow up in all their faces…he still owed Bill Calley a debt of gratitude for volunteering his ass for the sling, even helping to sort out the details of the story which had hung the blame for all of it squarely on his well-defined shoulders, Lang not knowing what he would’ve done without him…he was running Al Gharib right now, Hoffa’s right-hand man, helping him break bad little girlies of wanting to slurp up cooze before he let them die, motherfucker was an artiste, when it come to that sorta thing….

Nodding his head, the head of Air Force Special Operations nodded his head, satisfied that everything was in order on his end, walking back towards the staff car at the other end of the tarmac…he had about six hours left before the mission, plenty time to have a little talk with Mister Jack Daniels, maybe even have some liver and eggs while he was talking with him.

It was going to be a long day, and he had to have as much fortifying as possible.

28 JANUARY, 2226 08:20:00 TAI

Jami hmmmed and stretched herself in the workstation chair, as her wife deftly, gently massaged her neck and shoulders, letting her head rest gently against Stevie’s middle, looking up into those warm hazel eyes of hers, as she smiled down, Jami flushed and sweating, wanting to giggle, settling for a smile back up at her heart and soul instead.

The fingers that could manipulate a Rittermark field and dodge a sky full of enemy fire were more than adequate for kneading muscles and taking the tension from them, Stevie working her way up, unknotting the muscles in her head and jaw, stroking her hair at the same time, Jami letting go, putting herself completely in her hands, slowing her breathing down to a steady rhythm, eyes closing of their own accord.

This is the way I’d like seeing you, luv, Stevie’s mind whispered in hers, relaxed, content, no tension, just—

Happy, Jami whispered back, grinning now. With everything that’s been going on, I’ve forgotten, almost, just how good it feels to just let go and fall back in your arms, let you hold me, for as long as….

She sighed softly, trailing off, all the tension and stress of the past couple months bleeding away from her, if only for a little while, Jami reaching out behind her, stretching her arms, holding Stevie by the small of her back, just above the waistband of her boxers, fingers making a gentle tattoo through the weave of the t-shirt…this was what it meant to make love with another woman, sharing everything, letting her take care of you from time to time, doing the same for her, cos it had to go both ways, or it wasn’t good… the sex was…the sex was important too, but it wasn’t everything, there was more to lovemaking that what went on in bed, she’d realized that just….

…as she’d came for the first time in her life, the two of them lying leg over leg over leg, curled up in one another, her member brushing Stevie’s and Stevie’s brushing against hers, it felt like she was being tickled with a live wire and a feather at the same time, all over her body, Jami coming again, laughing softly, because she had finally decided to trust Stevie and herself, because it felt so damn good to lie here naked and vunerable with her, to not be scared and nervous anymore, because they’d both come to this without planning on it, they’d started out just cuddling on her bed, Stevie being beautiful and sweet and trying to reassure Jami she didn’t have to if she didn’t want to, that she’d waited two years, she could wait a little longer, or a lot longer, however long it took for Jami to be ready.

Most of all, though, Jami laughed because she’d realized Stevie and she had been making love all along, even in the worst of times, it had all begun with that smile.

Now Stevie was laughing softly…inside her head, and she didn’t care, it felt so warm and good…. …her fingers traced their way up Stevie’s spine, Stevie stroking her wife’s hair, massaging the muscles of her head and neck, still smiling down at the woman she loved in spite of herself, Jami stopping at the middle of Stevie’s back.

No matter how many times I tell you how much I love you, baby, she thought, I don’t tell you enough, I don’t….

Stevie’s only reply was gentle laughter in her wife’s mind and a smile that would always light her way through the dark.

28 JANUARY, 2226 09:13:11 TAI

“…as a slush fund for their various antisocial and terrorist activities,” Hannah Donner said on HV, Sunni not listening, just standing there, face against the sliding glass doors, watching the rain come down hard…to where she couldn’t see beyond the door, let alone across Davis Drive.

They were still talking about Wal-Mart, about how she supposedly turned it, the Moot House and the rest of Microsoft into her own personal evil empire, when she hadn’t even been on the fucking board of directors…shit, that lawsuit ten years ago, Microsoft had settled it out of court, told the worlds it had mended its misogynistic ways, changing Wal-Mart’s paycodes around to make it look like they were seriously considering the idea of giving everyone a fair deal.

Before laying off three-quarters of Wal-Mart’s associates, including nearly all the plantiffs, severely cutting back on hours for the hourly associates who’d survived the purge, imposing a hiring freeze to make sure those surviving hourly peons were too overworked and exhausted to ever have time to file a lawsuit.

At the same time, Rogers had cut the salaries of its support managers, assistant managers and co- managers by thirty percent, raising them back up for those who’d met certain qualifications.

Of course, it hadn’t been a retaliation…the richest division of the richest megacorp in human space had just had a bad five and a half years was all, and they simply didn’t have enough money to pay out all those wages and raises, while, for every one of those five and a half years, David Glassboro, Sam Walton III, Robson Lee and all those other members of the board had kept telling their shareholders and the select handful of hourly associates attending the annual stockholders’ meetings, “future’s so bright, y’all, I gotta wear shades!”

Sunni sighed, shaking her head, thinking about Jonni, thirty-five lightyears away, her and Albion in the thick of it round Tartarus…she’d commed four days ago, when Albion had been at Big Sky, the two of them talking well into first sunrise, neither one of them wanting to discomm, finally having to….

Another sigh…she was still more than a little apprehensive, but she couldn’t fight what she felt every time she was with her, she was in love, for the first time since she’d let herself feel that way towards Jami….

She smiled, thinking about her…about Jami as well, hard not to think about her, so much left unresolved between them, so much she blamed herself for, when if it had been anyone’s fault….

A final, heavy sigh, Sunni only vaguely aware of her face being wet, as she stared out into the rain.

28 JANUARY, 2226 09:49:04 TAI

Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon reached out to brush away an errant strand of dirty blond hair from Ree’s face…. “.. you ain’t shit,” she screamed at her, as she whimpered underneath the fat, drunken weight of Ariel crushing her windpipe, going at her, driving that fucking dildo into her,”you ain’t a goddamn thing, but what I fuckin’ say you are, goddamn fuckin’ little whore!

“And, that,” she wheezed,” ain’t a....”

…goddamn you, Ariel, drawing her shaking hand back from her friend, stop it!

That’s what we girlies are, ain’t we?! part of her mind whispered back to her. C’mon, baby, you can’t deny that, girlies like you did you good back in Witch’s Titty, not to mention how Mistress tuned that tight little pussy up and made it do ri—

I said shut the fuck up! Ariel screamed inwardly, struggling to breathe, fumbling for her pack of Chronic Blondes, stopping herself…Ree didn’t smoke, wasn’t right for her to….

…burn her titties with a lit cigaret, screaming for her to play with her skank-nasty self while she reached down in her brown chino pants and….

…knocking down Senior Astrogator Khryste Pollard in the rush to get the hell out of there, Ariel stammering,”I-I’m sorry, ma’am, I-i….”

“’Sall right,” the commander of Unbroken’s fighter deatchment, pulling herself up onto her feet,”no harm done, Leftenant.”

“Should’ve watched where the fuck I was going,” Ariel said, shaking her head,”I’m—fuck!”

That last was forced from her as the deck went out from underneath both of them, the alarm screaming up and down the corridor, Astrogation Officer Indigo Myles—one of Ariel’s own drive room— screaming over for everyone to come running.

Now.

28 JANUARY, 1986 09:58:14 EST

“Flight deck,” Christa MacAuliffe’s voice said over the comm system, “ this is MacAuliffe, reporting payload all secure.”

“Uppity bitch,” Smith growled. “Almost as fucking tight-ass as Resnick over here, probably her type.”

“What you say to that, Judy baby?!” he added, as Scobee acknowledged Christa’s report. “ You been turning her out?”

“ ‘Oooh, Judy baby,” McNair commented, “ you’re soooo big, soooo big. Oooh, baby, strap it on and strap me down, ‘cuz your little Christa wants ya to teach her to be ya bad lil’ girlie, lil’ Christa wants teacher to make her scream!’ ”

“Hey, Judy, does she squeal like a pig?!” Smith asked, Onizuka howling, “ ‘ oh, Judy, Jew-day, ohhh bay-bay, do me from the rear, ‘cause I wanna be a queer! ‘ ”

Resnick tried concentrating on her instruments, as the flight deck vibrated with raccous laughter...and a hellish, whining capcophony of electrical musical instruments...Smith and his damn adolescent so-called rock and roll music...worse than fucking Dick Clark.

“’ Bay-bay wants a ride, bay-bay wants a ride,” Smith shrieked along with the dopehead spaceman murdering an electric guitar, “She wants a rocket ride, she wants a rocket ride.’” “Play that funky music, white boy!” McNair cried out.

“Smith,” Scobee said tautly, “I’ll only say this once. Either shut that goddamn noise off, or you will be shitting out your right ear!”

“If it’s too loud, jefe—” Smith started replying.

“—all right, I’m too old,” Scobee snapped, “but that garbage gets switched off now! ”

The wailings of a Scandinavian drug addict and his long-suffering guitar abruptly died away.

“We’re going up soon,” Scobee admonished, “so I thank you gentlemen to concentrate on your jobs.”

Another sigh...Crippen had talked seriously about getting out, going into business for himself, about using his life’s savings to buy some broken-down old marina in the Keys, running it...imagine that, commander of the first shuttle mission, of the Columbia’s maiden voyage, and all he really wanted to do was hide out in the Keys, living out some fantasy straight out of a bad Jimmy Buffett ditty, flip flops and all...he’d asked Scobee if he wanted to go in with him, fifty-fifty....

He should’ve taken him up on his offer.

“Challenger,” Milt Heflin’s voice said over his headphones,”you are go for ignition.”

“That’s you, dickhead,” Scobee said to Smith, hunting up and down his console for the switches that would heat up the orbiter’s enginers, finding it just before Heflin was about to come on the line and repeat himself.

“Roger that,” Scobee told the veteran mission controller, now counting down the seconds before Smith lit the boosters and shot themselves up into low Earth orbit, Challenger’s pilot softly singing,” , bay- bay wants some please! bay-bay’s on her knees! She wants a rocket ride, she wants a rocket ride.”

Scobee sighing…he really should’ve taken Crippen up on his offer.

28 JANUARY, 2226 09:59:18 TAI

The commander and senior astrogator of the Unbroken furiously worked astrogation and piloting holodisplays at their respective stations, their frigate riding down a long, curving, narrow—scarcely more than fifty meters in diameter—ribbon of pale indigo winding its way through the blackness of a huge mass shadow on all sides.

A black hole roughly between Proxima Centauri, the Sirius system and Barnard’s Star, the hows and whys of its not being discovered before now not mattering a damn, not nearly as much as this ship staying on the path through its deadly embrace, through a sharp sloping downward into more darkness ahead, the ship shaking, alarms screaming warning of imminent field destabilization, massive stresses on the spaceframe…the Harmons and van Gripstra had theorized it was possible to ride through a rotating black hole and its attendant singularity in hyperspace, since anyone damn fool enough to try would theoretically be travelling at a velocity great enough to escape even infinite gravity….

She hadn’t wanted to test that theory out…she should’ve been up here, her or Stevie, instead of cuddling up and letting some kid barely out of Academy steer this ship…one little bitty miscalculation had them going down the biggest and worst freakin’ g-coaster ride of their lives, possibly their last, she should’ve fucking— Screw that, the commander of the Unbroken rebuked herself sharply, concentrating on the astrogation and piloting repeater holodisplays at the command conn, helping Stevie fight the ship, fight infinite grav, ride the pale indigo light down and around a small, hard point of pure darkness, Stevie screaming “everybody, hold on, it’s going to—“

Fuck!

That little hard point of black—the singularity—whipcracked the ship round it, hurling them back out the way they’d come…least she thought it was the way they’d come down this freakin’ cosmic rabbit ho—

Clear blue sky in the master holodisplay, a man’s voice over her link saying something about throttling up, before the ship shook again, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson frantically reporting a massive explosion less than three hundred meters off their three-three one.

At the same time her wife, Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Genera Muncie reported a small, low- velocity, low-density mass striking Unbroken’s starboard shielding along their zero-two-nine.

The commander of the Unbroken whispering the f-word, as she saw a Y-shaped cloud of smoke and debris arrowing through the sky just ahead of her ship.

—endit—

And The Future Frightens Us “The past tempts us, the present confuses us, and the future frightens us, while, moment by moment, our lives slip away. ” Babylonian Productions, “The Coming Of Shadows,” from the series Babylon 5

28 JANUARY, 1986 10:01:50 EST

Lieutenant General Freeman Zephiniah Ezekiel Lang had plenty of time to wonder just what the fuck it was that had come out of nogoddamnwhere in a shower of sparks, interposing itself between him and his target at the last second.

The commanding general of Air Force Special Operations drifted down towards the state of Florida, looking up at the long, tapered bottle shape at least a hundred miles or so above him…a bad episode of Star Trek, ‘cept that wasn’t the Enterprise up there…it was some kind of ship, though not driven by rockets, jets or even the atomic-bomb driven turbine they’d been trying to figure out these last four decades…damn thing just floated up there, moving along at a good clip, the sat killer he’d intended for Challenger apparentally not even fazing it.

But, it looked like he’d done his job nonetheless…he saw a Y-shaped cloud of smoke and fire arcing towards the Earth even faster than he was falling…least that much had gone right, though it might not seem that way in the days to come, when the others started raising holy hell over his Uncle George’s overreaction to the mistake that had been made, and the media went in and made a hero out of that bitch, a martyr to their cause not being at all good for his….

Oh, fuck.

Naw, naw, naw, that could just could not be….just could not be…over there, just under that Y- shaped cloud….

Fuck! 28 JANUARY, 1986 15:02:28 TAI

“…this is Challenger,” a man’s staticky voice said over Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier’s link, audio only, no visual, the commander of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken rallying past the confusion of the last couple minutes—and 240 years, according to the data from the command conn’s astrogation repeater holodisplay—and the despair over what she’d done, snapping out,”talk to me, Leftenant!”

“Mass reading one hundred metric tons,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson reported, her voice still a bit unsteady, but that was all good,”about the size of a Greyhawk, primitive chemical propulsion motors, not even enough to boost them into low orbit…am reading seven human lifesigns, five men, two women—“

“Boss,” Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Genera Muncie,”there’s some kind of jamming going on from groundside; we can cut through it, no probs, but that ship down there’s not getting through to anyone save us; we’re close enough to him for our radio telescopes to pick up his comm in spite of the interference.”

“Altering vector to intercept,” Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads said, even as Unbroken dove down at c times one towards the badly-damaged ship, Prue telling her commander what was obvious just by looking in the master holodisplay…much of his waist and tail sections were gone, a couple of rocket motors firing weakly to avoid the relentless pull of gravity, Unbroken’s weaps officer telling her she was opening the hangar bay door and routing the output from the AG force beam generator through the forward emitters, setting it for snaring and towing, minimum possible power setting, since the ship was breaking up before their eyes.

“Boss—“ Genera started to say, Jami seeing them for herself in the left-hand command holodisplay, a good five or six dozen small aerospace craft—driven by jet turbine engines—were ascending rapidly from bases all over what her electronic warfare officer identified as the southern part of the American homeland.

“Of the old United States of America,” Genera quickly corrected herself,”excuse me…I’ve additional jet turbine-propelled craft lifting from a floating mobile platform of some kind just off of the eastern coast of the United States…and from an island roughly 145 klicks due south and east of the American state of Florida.”

“Cuba,” the holo of Unbroken’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant Coloniel Celina Albright, remarked.

“They can’t reach us,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon’s holoimage said from the drive room,”and I don’t think they have anything—“

“Multiple orbiting weaps platforms have just opened fire on us, Boss,” Prue reported,”with an assortment of low-velocity railguns firing low-density masses, missiles with uranium-detonated thermonuclear warheads, electromagnetic pulses, visible-light and X-ray wavelength laser beams and a couple of grasers…no effect on AG shielding.”

“Stand by to return fire anyway, Leftenant,” Jami said, hastily summing two and two and two and coming up six-sixty-six,”’cause they’re gonna get tired of trying to hit us and redirect their firepower at that —“

“No danger of that, luv,” Stevie replied,” we’ve got the bugger; flight crew from astrogation, stand by for atmospheric NGE!”

28 JANUARY, 1986 10:04:00 EST “Just what the fuck were you thinking?!” Zell Miller, nominally lieutenant governor of the state of Georgia, demanded, grabbing that weaselly, whiny little Yankee piece of shit by the front of his suit and jerking him off his feet, his Secret Service ops bringing their Uzis to bear on the both of them at the same time the Georgia state troopers assigned as Miller’s personal bodyguard drew their weapons down on them.

“We fuckin’ had a plan, you jackass!” he screamed, jerking the nominal Vice-President around like a rag doll, repeating himself, spitting the words in the face of what Dick Nixon had, in his senility, selected for a goddamn heir-apparent.

“Put him down,” Nixon, standing between the two of them and their bodyguards, dared order Miller.

“Put. Him. Down!”Nixon repeated, the Colt Diamondback pistol in his palsied right hand aimed dead at the Georgia lieutenant governor’s right temple, adding the word,”now!” as if that was going to make a damn bit of difference.

“You lost control of the others years ago,” Miller replied coldly,”letting this dumb motherfucker go and ruin our designs upon that fuckin’ schoolteacher proves as much.”

“Nevertheless,” Senator John McCain’s voice said from behind Miller, feeling the cold steel of his .45 automatic against the back of his skull,”he is at the head of the others…were it not for his intervention, the SoCon—the former SoCon—would’ve been lost to you and to us years ago.”

“It may,” he added,”still be lost to you, if you don’t do as you’re told.”

Miller did as he was told, all right, hurling the weasel of a Vice-President into the far wall of the room just above Kennedy Space Center’s Mission Control room, Bush calling him a son of a bitch, scrabbling inside his jacket for his weapon, the Georgia lieutenant governor opening his jacket up, splaying his hands out in front of him, telling the Yankee dicksucker to,”fucking try it, bitch!”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Micheal Hesseltine, the real power behind the British throne, remarked, Nixon grumbling,”no, it isn’t.”

“Mission Control’s been secured,” Dan Rather told the others, as he and Senator Albert Gore Jr. joined them. “All the news organizations have the explosion on a continous loop, everyone’s running over themselves trying to keep themselves and our target audience from realizing the full extent of what just happened…don’t worry, the footage of the explosion’s been cleaned up considerably, no trace of… whatever the hell it was…anywhere on it.”

“What the hell was it?!” McCain asked, Gore replying,”fuck if I know…fuck if anybody knows… that last shower of sparks blew out every radar antenna within five hundred miles of the state of Florida, including Aricebo and the Ike’s…that is working in our favor somewhat, the computers here and in Houston are fried, all telemetry they had on the Challenger up to the time it blew is gone for good, so we should have no trouble with whatever story we intend to put forth concerning—“

Some Air Force enlisted piece of shit entered the room, a radiocellular phone in his hands.

“Sir,” he said to Bush,”I have the Kremlin on the line for you.”

Nixon’s joke of an heir-apparent took the phone from the enlisted piece of shit, telling him to fucking go away and leave grown folks alone, snapping a “Yes?!” into the mouthpiece.

Two more “yes”es and a “fuck” later, Bush told the others:

“That was Andrei on the line.” “Yeah,” McCain replied,”no shit.”

“Well?!” Nixon demanded, his heir-apparent replying:

“One of their destroyers—the Udaloy—fished Freeman out of the Florida Straits…he’s reasonably sure they survived.”

“Aw, shit!” Miller swore, Bush ignorning him, dolefully continuing:

“Andrei also says telemetry from Salyut 7 confirms that the whole of our SDI network was deployed against an unknown spacecraft…with no effect whatsoever…the unknown spacecraft succeeded in recovering what was left of Challenger before disappearing in that last shower of sparks.”

Miller went for him again, only to have both Gore and McCain get in his goddamn way.

“This is all your fault, you stupid son of a bitch!” he screamed at Bush instead.

28 JANUARY, 1986 10:06:19 EST

With a scream, Lieutenant Commander Micheal Smith tore a nine-millimeter Beretta automatic pistol free from a hip pocket in his flight suit, emptying the entire clip into one of the three women in grey, form-fitting, powered spacesuits who’d clambered onto the shambles which had been Challenger’s flight deck.

“You stupid dicksucker!” Commander Francis Richard Scobee screamed, tearing himself out of his seat, jumping Smith, knocking him to the deck and wrestling the weapon from his hand just an instant too late…he was a dumb son of a bitch, not only did this violate the UN ban on weapons in space(he had to laugh at that one)but, given this bird’s fragile shell, even one bullet—

“Fuck you!” Smith screamed, shrugging the older man off him, coming up on one knee, grabbing the Beretta off the deck, reloading it with a fresh clip.

The woman he’d emptied the first one into at point-blank range shoving a gun—a big gun, like a Desert Eagle but looking twice bigger, twice as heavy—in his face…not a goddamn mark on her, even though all those nines should’ve painted this whole flight deck in a grey shade of her brains.

“Jilly,” the woman asked,”check to see if the ricochets—“

A younger woman, reddish hair, black eyes, replied,”most of them seemed to have either hit instruments or fell to the floor spent,” at the same time she tended to the burns and cuts on Judy Resnick’s face, the third woman tending to Ronald McNair’s broken right arm and listening to him bitch….she was younger still, pudgy face, kinky brown hair inside her helmet and grey beret—they were all wearing berets inside their helmets, definitely some kind of military outfit, the grey was about the right shade for the SoCon military(and they used all the right badges and indicies of rank for the SoCon’s Military Air Corps) but their space program had only been in the planning stages when their leadership had fallen on one another thirty-odd years ago, prompting their assimilation into the Union and a long struggle to—

Which reminded him, there hadn’t been any women in the SoCon armed forces to begin with… nor, despite all the delusions of the niggers having won, were there any women in any of the combat arms of the surviving military forces….

He looked back at Smith…dumb son of a bitch was looking up at the woman holding a weapon on him, ready to try feeding her another clip, even though eight of the fifteen bullets from the first one lay flatter than thin dimes on the deck plating, that alone suggesting some kind of personal force field.

That alone suggesting they were not from around here. “The future,” Christa MacAuliffe—face blotchy from burst capillaries, her right hand wrapped in banadges from Challenger’s one first-aid kit—said from the dogged hatch connecting the flight deck with what remained of the middeck, Gregory Jarvis sprawled, badly-burned and unconscious beside her…when the middeck had been blown by one of the sparks ripping through the shuttle at impossible speeds, she’d dragged him topside, in spite of her own injuries—which included a right shoulder which looked badly out of joint—the youngest of the three women moving to tend the two of them, shouting out,”Ma’am, we’re gonna have to get him up to the med deck, fast; he’s got a collapsed right lung, several broken ribs, third- degree burns over most of his body, severe internal hemorrhaging—“

What looked like one of those aerodynamic bicyles trundled onto the flight deck, wheeling over to Jarvis and the medico currently tending to him, the young woman—who Scobee realized, with an abrupt start, was not even eighteen—after injecting him with something, swung open the lid on what had to be some sort of motorized robotic gurney, gingerly picked Jarvis up and set him down in it, securing the lid and sending it on its way.

The kid then kneeling in front of MacAuliffe, MacAuliffe asking the question uppermost on Scobee’s mind:

“You’re a little young to be a doctor, aren’t you?”

“Not any more, ma’am,” the young woman replied softly, sadly.

“Not,” she repeated,”any more.”

28 JANUARY, 1986 15:18:04 TAI

Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon went over everything one more time to be sure.

Everything was as it should be, the Rittermark jenny, AG drive, AG shield generator, AG force beam generator, both antimatter reactors, the forest of primary and secondary field coils, hydrogen feed lines, power coupling and cabling…everything running normally, in spite of Unbroken’s trip through a black hole while in hyperspace and the few hairy moments after they’d found themselves in clear blue sky, 160 klicks above the surface of the Earth and 240 years in the past....

Unbroken’s chief flight engineer nodded her head, as she hovered by the Rittermark jenny, glowing bluishly as it drove the ship through hyperspace again, in search of the black hole that sent them back into the past…failing that, any black hole would do, they should be able to go back the way they’d come, just a matter of sorting out the data they’d gathered the first time they’d done this and working the rest out from there.

Her integral AG harness propelled her upward, towards the shield generator…they hadn’t had to use it too much in the last month or so, since almost all their fighting had been in hyperspace, she’d been worried it might have deteriorated through disuse, especially when all those orbital weaps platforms had been busy hurling their stone axes at the ship…her Interstellar History Cliff’s Notes had made no mention of orbiting weapons platforms in the 1980s; then again, it hadn’t made much mention of the 1980s period, other than implying it had been a much simpler time….

She sighed…part of her wished they had more time, or were better equipped to gather information about this time they were in; the American World State had torched much of the history of the years before it, and the successor states had only added to the breach over the past couple of centuries….

She watched ghostly blue tachyons swirling through the secondary Rittermark field coils between the jenny and the AG drive, the ship acclerating in response…they didn’t have the luxury of studying the past, nor were they equipped to do so, they were soldiers, not explorers, their job…their job was waiting back in the twenty-third century for them to finish doing, and they were going back just as soon as their passengers were tended to, and a way home had been found.

Her eyes drifted over to Ree, hands working a holodisplay in front of the AG drive, Ariel biting down on her lower lip, caught between wanting to go to her and hiding again…she’d meant to talk to her a couple nights ago, ended up tucking her into bed instead, just before all hell had broken loose, and she had to get up anyway…they hadn’t talked since Ariel had gotten shitfaced downside on Big Sky, stupidly trying to push her away, knowing….

Knowing she’d do it again if given half a chance, even though she couldn’t deny what she felt for her…in spite of the promise she’d made to herself, she’d gone and fallen in love with this woman, and, for that, she really couldn’t be blamed, Ree was a good person, better than what Ariel deserved, that was for damn skippy, she’d offered her love, friendship at least, and all she ever got in return was grief.

Yet….

Ree was looking at her now, smiling slightly, Ariel…

…screaming for her to lay face down, ass up on the goddamn floor, stomping her face into the cold ferrocrete, chuckling to herself as Ree whimpered and pleaded for mercy she didn’t fucking deserve, Ariel firing up the lasewhip….

…bitch, go fuck yourself, Ariel snapped at that part of her mind, her AG harness propelling her slowly towards her friend and her second, the thing inside her head jeering at her, asking her what could possibly be the matter, she was only showing Ariel what girls who loved other girls were….

“…fuckin’ don’t try that cryin’ bullshit on me, you nasty fucking piece of poot!” Mistress Rhiannon screamed at her, as girlie just lay there sobbing on the floor of the cage, Mistress whipping her ass again, the men all round them cheering Her on, howling for Her to show Her bitch what being a fucking dyke was….

…all about.

Again, Ariel told that part of herself to fuck off, leave her the fuck alone for a change, as she stood face to face with Ree, trying to say what had been on her mind the past couple days.

“Don’t,” Ree whispered, laying her hand on the left side of Ariel’s faceplate.

“I always forgive you,” she added, not angry, not accusing, clearly very, very hurt.”I always will.”

Smiling at her, making her friend and immediate superior sweat buckets inside her suit, she added:

”Take your time, luv.” before turning round and tending to her work.

28 JANUARY, 1986 11:15:41 EST

What the fuck?!

Scobee sat in his bed in what the three medicos had called the med deck, watching what this ship had said was the first Star Wars movie.

Problem being this wasn’t it.

This wasn’t even close. In the scene he was watching now, Princess Leia, done up in some black leather S&M dominatrix fantasy—complete with knee boots and dog collar—was whipping a naked redhead(with what was being called a laser whip), titties too huge to be real, as she was suspended in mid-air, legs spread wide open, her twot already bloody meat, ass and tits almost the same way, Leia—alternately called Mistress Vader or Dark Mistress in this movie—grabbing Princess Mara Jade’s face in one of her leather-gloved hands, hissing,”one more time, bitch, tell me the location of the Rebel base!”

“The f-fourth moon of Y-yavin, m-my Mistres—“ Mara Jade(where the fuck did they get that character from?!)replied breathily before Leia whipped her tits and her twot with a vicious passion, screaming,”you have not earned the right to call me that, you degenerate little piece of shit!”

By the time Leia had stopped whipping Mara…blood all over the cold metal cell, with Mara, moaning softly, flayed almost completely open, Leia smiling sadistically, surveying her handiwork, adding,”if, however, you prove to be telling the truth, you may yet have the honor of serving Me.”

“What the fuck?!” Scobee said aloud, a tall woman, long, straight blond hair coming down to the small of her back, her grey beret on crooked, standing at the foot of the bed next to his—Greg Jarvis’ bed— whispering,”they’re remajes of the originials.”

“They’re whatses?!” Scobee asked.

“Remajes,” the blond woman—who Scobee just now noticed had four black stripes round each cuff of her grey form-fitting suit—explained,”slang in the biz for re-imagined.”

Scobee, after the day he’d had, just had to bust out laughing at that one, finally catching on to what the woman—who looked young enough to be his daughter, sounded a hell of a lot older than that— had meant.

Not taking her eyes off Jarvis’ still comatose, floating in green Jello, sustained by machinery, form, she added,”they’re nowhere near the originials; the discs in the cooperative’s archives at Magrathea Station aren’t the originials, either, those were the ones my uncle had copied onto MMOD, last time he was there.”

“You lost me at ‘discs,’” Scobee said, listening to the soundtrack as he looked at her looking at Jarvis.

“A micro-mini optical disc is about the size of your thumbnail, maybe a little smaller,” the woman —a captain, assuming Navy ranks, doubtlessly something similar on their rank scale—said, her voice heavy as well as ancient,”holds ten terabytes of data—“

“Jesus,” Scobee remarked, shaking his head…the capacity of the average floppy was measured in just the hundreds of kilobytes…ten terabytes on something much smaller than even those new 3.5” floppies they’d come out with….

“The rest is a little too much to explain right now,” the woman then said, a definite understatement. “You can access the history database in the ship’s plasma matrices from your terminal, either voice or input through the holodisplay; if you want the copies my Uncle Dunstan made, you’re going to have to specify, the ship’s set up to throw the ’24 remajes at you by default, never quite got round to changing that….”

She trailed off, ice-blue eyes watching burned, dead skin slough itself away from the payload specialist’s body, Scobee glancing at her and the little robots swarming all over the layers of charred meat as it suspended itself in the gel cocooning Jarvis…the oldest of the three women doctors, a Major Ryla Sedgewick—introducing herself as this ship’s chief flight surgeon—had told him they’d injected robots smaller than a dust mite—nanos, she’d called them—into all of them to help repair the damage done to them by that fast-moving shower of what he now knew to have been tachyons, photons and what were called van Gripstra particles emitted from this ship upon its being hurled out of hyperspace—which, till now had been pure science fiction—into normal space this fucking close to Challenger.

“Your chief flight surgeon,” Scobee remarked,”said it was touch and go for a while there, but—“

“—she expects him to make a full recovery in a day or two,” the woman replied, adding, obviously angry at herself,”he wouldn’t fucking have ended up here, if I’d been doing my job, none of you would be in this mess—“

“We,” Scobee, the realization of what he was saying hitting hard,”would’ve been falling onto the state of Florida in a lonely silver rain instead.”

“How—“ the woman, shock readable in her face as she turned to look at him, started to ask, Scobee explaining:

“Our radar picked up a small object on a vector intersecting ours, just before you appeared…it had enough mass and velocity to blast us to smithereens…that ugly piece of shit’s a brick in atmosphere, the object probably still would’ve hit us, but it was still more of a chance than if we’d stayed with the booster assembly, least that’s what was going through my mind, when I blew the explosive bolts…still, like I said, it wasn’t much of a chance, more than likely we would’ve gotten greased, if you hadn’t shown up when you had—“

“To fuck you up with tachyon emissions,” she said ruefully, still angry with herself,”when we broke out into Earth’s atmosphere.”

She shook her head, turning back to Jarvis, Scobee reminding her:

“We’re all still here…uh—“

“Squadron Leader Jameison Lanier,” the woman introduced herself,”commanding the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken and her squadron.”

Scobee nodded, repeating himself:

“Squadron Leader, we’re all still here, a bit banged-up, maybe, but—“

She made a rude noise… Lanier wasn’t as stupid as to buy into his crap.

“You the commander of that bird?” she asked.

“Commander Francis Scobee,” Scobee replied.

Turning to look him in the eye, Lanier told him, flat-out:

“Commander, your troubles are only just beginning.”

28 JANUARY, 1986 16:21:05 TAI

“Unbroken,” Jami said quietly,”show Commander Scobee our radar telemetry from the incident, then show him the news broadcasts Ugly Duckling’s been gathering from Earth orbit.”

“Cancel that,” she added, changing her mind,”show him the news broadcasts first.”

The holoimage of a jowled, baggy-eyed man identifying himself as Dan Rather of CBS News— whether it was the same See BS as the one 240 years in the future, she didn’t know—going into his spiel, switching from reporters to politicos to people connected with the old American space program, all of them saying the same exact damn thing.

They’d all written these seven people off…no mention made of the “space shuttle” surviving the explosion, sure as hell, no mention made of Unbroken emerging from hyperspace almost two hundred klicks above the Earth, nor of the efforts made militarily to take either her or that bird she’d saved out.

Not word one about the object that would’ve obliterated what Scobee had called an ugly piece of shit had it not been for the five-thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate’s artificial gravity shielding.

Now, her ship showed him the telemetry from all 128 of her sensor plates, compiled into a composite image of the blue sky surrounding Unbroken upon breakout, including a brief glimpse at the shuttle and what Scobee had called the booster assembly—a huge tank of liquid hydrogen and two solid- fuel rocket boosters slung underneath what was an ugly piece of shit….

There was also an image of what would’ve hit it…a tin can with a solid-fuel rocket motor and a gyroscope…no warhead, not even one of the crude chemical explosive compounds these people obviously liked to use when the heavy stuff was too heavy, just solid metal.

“I saw one of these in either Popular Mechanics,” Scobee remarked,”or in the Navy Times…I forget…I do know they’re the low end of something we call the Strategic Defense Initiative, designed to be launched from fightercraft at low altitude into orbit, it kills spacecraft through sheer kinetic energy, though the official story is we’re cooking all this stuff up to kill Soviet spy satellites and orbital weaps platforms.”

Spacecraft, the commander of the Unbroken thought to herself, and he said ‘official story….’”

Of course, she concluded; only logical they’d come up with countermeasures to prevent more like Kiah and her sisters from escaping them.

“I don’t think,” Scobee then said slowly,”I need to tell you the real reason behind SDI; from the look on your face, just now, I think you already know.”

“You could say that,” Jami replied, Scobee adding:

“There’s just as little need for you to spell it out for me, I think I already know what their intentions were concerning us.”

“And,” he concluded,”the reason why.”

28 JANUARY, 1986 16:30:00 TAI

All those weapons pointed at the surface of that shockingly blue planet a thousand klicks below her.

Sighing, Celina shook her head, monitoring all manner of broadcasts Commonwealth Forces Auxiliary Vehicle Ugly Duckling’s radio telescopes were picking up, most of the official comm traffic encrypted, enciphered and encoded, as Unbroken’s intelligence officer expected, the private comm traffic and the broadcasts from the various mediacorps from this time in the clear.

Clearly depressing…the entertainment industry in this time little different from what it would become 240 years from now, its anti-female messages ranging from subtle and innocous to blatant and pornographic...all the news channels worldwide were covering the destruction of the Challenger—the name of the spacecraft they’d recovered—still no mention made of Unbroken’s appearance in their sky, or of the object someone had launched with the intent of taking the Challenger out. Celina downloaded everything she’d received into the Mark V Greyhawk’s comm drone, firing it off into hyperspace on vector for the Unbroken, continuing to monitor the transmissions from the planet below her, a far cry from the Earth she was familiar with…but, not too far, the ship’s radar and electromagnetic spectrum intercept gear indicating massive amounts of pollution from all over the globe, in every conceivable form, with a hole in the ozone layer widening over the continent of Antarctica….

She altered her orbit, descended to about a couple hundred klicks directly above the planet’s southern pole, scanning…they were there, the gantries, frozen, rusting wrecks of the ships that hadn’t made it out and, of course, the bases established to make sure no one who did not need to know ever found out.

One of those bases acquiring the Ugly Duckling, the radar alarm warning her of the missiles, laser beams and low-density sublight masses impacting the AG shielding from all directions, Celina altering vector again, a high, looping geodesic through space which reinserted her into the orbit she had been flying, well out of range of their orbiting weapons platforms and their radar.

“That was dumb,” she remarked to herself, checking to make sure the ship hadn’t been damaged, checking twice after that just to be sure she hadn’t missed anything, returning to the task at hand… everything was hooked into the Net in the twenty-third century, while here, there wasn’t even a Net, just a chaotic mishmash of computer networks which didn’t talk to one another, most of those having commercial, scientific or military apps, meaning much of that data was also encrypted, enciphered and encoded…a few public networks existed, though it seemed most of the few people who owned a personal computer communicated with one another in a loose, haphazard fashion at best…much of the data traffic was text-only, very little sound and visual….

Not much difference otherwise…she saw enough of the conversations in a couple of the public chat rooms to determine that much….

Another sigh, the comm drone she’d sent out breaking back out into normal space and docking with its dedicated launcher, uploading news of Unbroken’s progress on finding the black hole directly into Ugly Duckling’s AI, Celina calling it up, nodding her head…they’d located the black hole in question, about three and a half light years out, equidistant from Proxima Centauri, Barnard’s Star and Sirius, and Jami had commed her second and Formidiable’s commander, Willie Jordan, triple R3E, commander’s eyes only, telling her just what was going on and to tell no one, not until she could come back and make a full report to JMC herself.

All that remained now was to reconstruct their flight through the damn thing, calculate a vector that would return them to the twenty-third century.

And, give their guests a chance to decide between going home—even knowing they were dead to their own people, that their own people had attempted to and would most certainly continue attempting to murder all of them—or do the best they could in a future just as hellbent on killing them.

Ugly Duckling let her know Unbroken had broken out into normal space on the far side of Earth’s moon and was now settling into orbit around it, Celina sighing a third time, as she continued gathering information about the way things had been in this time…this was not your typical ep of SRO or any of its spinoffs…yeah, the seven of them were gathering knowledge about their future the more they stayed aboard Unbroken, but that didn’t matter, none of the endlessly done-to-death possibilities for disaster when past-timers met(and sometimes stole from)the future mattered, because there was only one truth in this; if that got compromised here, it would change their future and that of their Commonwealth’s a hell of a lot more than some idiot leaving his commlink behind for the local aborginies to backengineer.

That truth being the rule of law.

28 JANUARY, 1986 12:18:29 EST Smith and McNair both looked murder at Christa MacAuliffe, shifting uncomfortably in her bed, and at Judy Resnick, biting on her lower lip, trying not to look at anyone as she sat in the bed on Christa’s left, trying to make herself as small as possible.

“All your goddamn fault, skank fuckin’—“Onizuka groused from the bed between Smith’s and McNair’s, Commander Scobee, standing between them snapping,”yeah, that’s real constructive, you useless Kwai-Chaing Cain motherfucker.”

“Man, fuck you!” was McNair’s only reply, Scobee telling him that yeah, he probably would, given half the chance.

“Now,” he added,”if we’re through bitching about who’s supposedly at fault here—“

“How do you know they ain’t lying,” Smith asked, Scobee turning to look at him, Challenger’s pilot adding:

“About what they say is the future?”

Having seen what was in store for them in the ship’s history database, Christa doubted very much that was the case…too many gaps in the intervening years between now and then, definitely too many gaps in their record of the Challenger crew’s past, neither what had really happened nor what they told one another had happened found anywhere in what the twenty-third century’s combo of RAM and hard drive… Smith and Commander Scobee had spotted the object which would’ve smashed them to bits had it not been for the Unbroken—the name of this starship—so their benefactors weren’t lying about that, they probably weren’t lying about the media, NASA and everyone else saying they were all dead, of that the six of them —even Smith—were absolutely certain.

The six of them and Jarvis were all alone on the med deck, the three women doctors and the tall, pretty blonde who’d introduced herself to Scobee as the commander of this ship had all left them to look at the ship’s records and discuss their options, though Smith, Onizuka and McNair were all convinced they were listening through cameras and mikes hidden in the walls.

That, Smith had asserted, being what he would’ve done if this had been his ship.

“I don’t think,” Judy said out loud,”they would tell us about the war they’d left behind, not up front like they did.”

“Stupid-ass bitch,” McNair snorted in reply, he, Onizuka and Smith all exchanging looks between them, before Smith turned to face the two women and Commander Scobee, coming straight to the point:

“I think, for your sake, Judy, and for your little girlfriend’s…probably for you too, jefe, I don’t know…I think it be best if y’all went with them back to the future…you come back with me, I’ll shop you bitches the instant we’re all feet dry on Mother Earth, both ‘cause it’s the right thing to do, and it’ll keep my skinny ass alive and well, possibly even well enough off to retire to my own little island somewhere.”

“I don’t know,” he repeated, Commander Scobee shaking his head, remarking,”I should be more surprised than I am by what you just said.”

“It’s the God’s honest truth, jefe,” Smith replied,”every goddamn word of it.”

“Yeah,” Scobee said slowly,”I’m sure it is.”

28 JANUARY, 1986 12:21:07 EST

NIS always were about as subtle as a brick in the damn face. For the nth time, Special Agent Micheal Davis reflexively tested his mended right arm, bending it at the elbow, moving his fingers, whole nine…fucking thing had been broken in three places when he’d been torn from his chair during the mad minute following the sat killer being picked up on radar and what these bitches who’d saved them called tachyons, photons and van Whatever The Fuck They Were tearing through that Shuttle’s thin skin like it was fuckin’ Charmin.

Like outta goddamn Star Trek, Davis thought to himself, as he continued checking his arm out, one of ‘em bitches, the redheaded lil’ piece a redbone, runs some sort of beam over my arm, next thing… still a little bit sore, she said it was gonna be, all the time I kept thinkin’ how loud she gonna holler—how sore she gonna be—when Big Mike gets that sweet lil’ ol’ piece a pussy off in a corner somewhere and—

Davis shook his head, trying to pay attention to the fucking obvious Scobee was trying to tell them, still thinking about the black-haired, dark-eyed pussy that were feeling on the redhead just a few minutes ago, the two of them fucking kissing one another on the mouth right in front of him, like there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with that…hell, he knew they was all dykes, douching out each others’ stinkin’ twots and booties every time their mens let ‘em go off by theyselves, but still….

Still, the fifteen-year veteran of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division observed blackly, remembering what he’d seen of the future, we must’ve fucked up real bad to let ‘em colonize entire planets on their own, to free themselves of the male authority they needed to do right and to actively oppose us and our Work, to let ‘em escape Earth in the first damn place….

He sighed…the worst part was that Project Survivor had failed, would fail, was always gonna fail, his race not inheriting the Earth no matter what they did…on second thought, he’d figured out long time ago that it was about as much of a fraud as the space program, that the others knew the research wasn’t going to go nowhere, it was just to keep them from facing facts.

Like everything else, Davis observed, when you stop and thank ‘bout it….

He nodded his head now, having already made his decision…his .45 was back on the Shuttle, concealed on what was left of the flight deck…if he could get his hands on one of their guns, that would be even better, maybe he’d have time to go looking for this ship’s small-arms locker before heading back to Earth…either way, he still had a mission to do, the one Deputy Director Revell had laid out to him in Washington, before he’d gone south to become Ronald McNair.

Even if it seemed he had to finish the mission singlehanded…the agent calling himself Greg Jarvis was supposed to have been his backup, but he wasn’t going to be backing anyone up, not lying over there floating in green Jello and hooked up to machines and IVs.

No problem, they was all just pussy, and he was sure he could get the squid to help him if he needed any…hell, the NIS would probably fucking jump at the chance to help break down pussy, that was his job after all, probably itching for it , it being a good while since he stuck his shaft up in some plebette’s stankin’ shit….

Scobee…seemed a shame, having to do someone who been in country with him—even if he was an airdale—but the Work tolerated no weakness, any more than it could tolerate Crippen’s weakness, though way he’d done it had been a whole lot cleaner than the way ‘em OSI bastards wanted to do him, and the gators would eat everything, bullet to the head and all, no trace of him ever, just in case his death did turn out to be inconvenient to the Work….

Only thing he needed to do now was get to his computer on board the Challenger, see if he could hook up with the others, make arrangements for Resnick and MacAuliffe’s transportation to whereever they had set the stage.

28 JANUARY, 1986 17:33:06 EST “Jesus God,” Ariel remarked, tangled up in fiber-optic cabling, metal wires and cables making a rat’s nest in the bowels of what these people called a space shuttle, ”what a freaking mess.”

“Tell me about it,” Ree said from the hatchway above her.

“There are tubes in this son of a bitch,” she added, incredulous, Ariel replying,”no, you’ve got to be kidding.”

“I shit you not, luv,” Ree replied,”honest to God, freakin’ bloody vacuum tubes, quite a few cathode ray tubes as well…bugger….”

“What is it, baby?” Ariel asked, sorting out the rat’s nest, slowly starting to figure out what did what to where down here.

“Hydraulics,” Unbroken’s second engineer replied,”the controls are run by hydraulics, fluid forced through tubes at high pressure.”

“I know what those are,” Ariel replied, Ree replying,”I know you do, luv, it’s just…just that it’s all so bleedin’ analog.”

“Baby,” Ariel reminded her, even as she started to assessing the damage the tachyon emission had done to this bird,”this is almost two and a half centuries behind our tech.”

“I know, but…Christ,” Ree said, Ariel telling her,”yeah.”

“Yeah,” repeated Unbroken’s chief flight engineer, shaking her head…holes the size of her fist had been blown through everywhere, through metal skin thinner than her hand, Ariel rooting round through the wreckage of workstations, finding scorched and melted circuit boards, slagged wiring, busted-out cathode ray tubes, a hatch hanging askew to the access to this ship’s waist section, Ariel stepping over it, shaking her head at the charred stump of what had been an old-style robotic arm, thin rags of metal where there had been doors overhead, everything in here fucked up beyond any chance of repair, all except the satellite they had intended on deploying from here…a pair of solar panels folded up like the wings of a sleeping tiger bird, a cylindrical midsection, a dish extending out from the bottom, with a gigantic graser emitter, almost exactly like her laser lance except for the size…it wouldn’t scratch a military starcraft from the twenty-third century, AG shielding would’ve deflected or dissapated the beam into uselesness, but against anything unshielded, such as everything on the planet below her….

She whispered Jesus’ name over the link, as she estimated the power output of that damn thing, translating that into destructive capability, Ree telling her what Ariel already knew,”no way in hell is this bloody thing ever going to fly again.”

“Fucking thing,” Ariel replied, looking at the twisted, exploded, shredded remains of the chemical propellant drive motors,”should never have gotten off the ground in the first place…we don’t even have the equipment to repair it to use twenty-third century drives and systems, not that the Boss’ll approve that in the first place….”

She trailed off, still looking round, only confirming her opinion that this ugly-ass bird was not only unsalvagable but should never have been built in the first place.

“No safety systems of any kind,” Ree observed over the link,”less you want to count seat belts, no emergency escape systems at all…I don’t think there’s even a fire extinguisher on board…onboard computer—and I call it that entirely for argument’s sake—is completely fried, mass storage systems slagged, circuitry in much the same state, the Neolithic damn thing passing for a CPU chip’s got a tiny hole torn straight through its casing and circuitry…I suspect the hangar bay’s knee deep in hydraulic fluid, the system’s bled out altogether….” “Absolute bloody miracle,” she added,” any of them survived.”

“I know,” Ariel replied, stepping back over the hatch on her way topside.

28 JANUARY, 1986 13:00:00 EST

He was more out of shape than he thought he was…that climb up through four decks had winded him, and the walk towards the nose of this ship had taken the rest out of him…it wasn’t the heavy grav or the denser atmosphere, the ship was adjusting both a step ahead of Scobee so he wouldn’t be uncomfortable.

Reader’s Digest, he remarked to himself, stopping short of an irising hatch—like the ones from Alien—was more right about our military than even they probably like to admit.

He sat there a minute, hands on his thighs, breathing in and out, stepping through the hatch when he’d stopped seeing spots, onto a part of the ship resembling a den and kitchen all at once, Lanier putting a plate of food down on a wood-panelled coffee table in front of a tall woman—almost as tall as Lanier, long auburn hair, bright hazel eyes, two and a half rank stripes on the cuff of her suit—the other woman stretching herself in the plush chair in front of the table, Lanier reaching behind the back of the chair, kneading the other woman’s shoulder and neck muscles, the other woman, in turn, taking Lanier’s hands in hers, chuckling softly, as she patted them, Lanier turning to face Scobee, asking him,”yes, Commander?” even as she leaned over the chair, her head resting against the back of the other woman’s, even as she looked dead at the Challenger’s commander with those ice-blue eyes of hers.

“Something I can do you for?” she asked, the other woman staring up at her, giving her hands a gentle squeeze even as they continued massaging her neck and shoulders, Lanier not giving a fuck as to what thoughts she must think were going through his head, because….

Because, Scobee thought, inwardly snorting in contempt at himself, she loves her, and this is what people who love each other are supposed to fucking do in the first place; it ain’t no grainy eight-millimeter rib flick where the two women get naked and start oiling and slurping each other up, just before they start wrestling and fisting and grabbing each other’s titties….

He broke it off at that point, apologizing for having intruded.

“I needed to take a walk,” he explained, his eye falling on a three-dimensional pic of the two of them, in what had to be their service’s full-dress uniforms, each mashing cake in the other’s face,”while my people sort out what they’re going to do.”

“Have you?” Lanier asked, Scobee taking in the meaning of that mutual gesture and the dress uniforms.

“One of the things I have to think about, Squadron Leader,” Scobee, still looking at the pic, situated just behind and to one side of a potted red geranium, replied.

“Call me Jami,” Lanier replied, adding:

“That’s one of the holos from our wedding, nineteen years ago. Baby, this is Commander Francis Scobee—you go by Francis or Frank?”

“Dick,” Scobee replied automatically, turning to face the two women.” Richard’s my middle name.”

“Dick,” Jami said, hands still on the other woman’s shoulders,”this is is my wife and my second in command, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads, though, most everyone that knows her calls her Stevie.” “Dick,” Stevie said, extending her right hand towards Challenger’s commander, Scobee taking it, grasping it in a firm handshake…trying to, it was like trying to bend steel cable, Scobee then asking,”Stevie? Not like the singer, by any chance?”

“Yeah,” Stevie replied, chuckling,”as a matter of fact; my Gram was simply mad about Stevie Nicks, had all of her albums, the ones that didn’t get torched during the ascendancy of the AWS.”

Even knowing what he knew, Scobee still found it hard to believe that the UN would eventually turn into this American World State, finding it harder still that it would let itself be governed by some reject of a professional wrestler…but….

“My manners suck, Dick,” Jami said, letting go of Stevie, walking over to the kitchenette, taking a plate down from the cupboard. “Stevie and I were sitting down to some dinner while we had time to eat; perhaps, you’d like to join us…nothing special, just fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, collard greens—“

As Scobee’s nose was able to determine from all that food still simmering on the stove, Jami already heaping a plate high with mashed potatoes and gravy, picking out a pair of thighs with the tongs in her other hand…real food, on a spaceship….

“I think I will,” Scobee replied, nodding his head, Jami adding a couple drumsticks to the food already on the plate,”thanks.”

“Good,” Jami replied,”’cause this is your plate I’m fixing. You like collard greens?”

“Yeah,” Scobee replied, Jami already heaping some onto the plate, a huge piece of ham glistening with fat in the middle of all those greens.

“I don’t know,” he remarked,”if I’m going to be able to eat all that.”

Stevie chuckled, holding a drumstick in her hands, Jami piling on more food, not listening to a damn thing he’d just said.

28 JANUARY, 1986 13:22:29 EST

She wasn’t expecting this on a spaceship.

Christa’s toes dug into the soil and the wet grass beneath her feet, trees she didn’t recognize towering up to the ceiling at both ends of the life-support deck just below the med deck, the trees serving both as a source of oxygen and a screen covering the machinery helping to maintain this deck from view.

The air was thick with the scent of blue-tinged orange and red flowers, pure bright yellow flowers, purple flowers edged with scarlet and too many dozens of others whose names she did not know…wasn’t just flowers and trees that grew here, the garden serving a practical as well as an aesthetic purpose, all manner of fruits and vegetables thriving in this confined space—though whoever had designed this enviroment had done some cunning things to make it seem wide-open—some, such as apples and tomatoes, she recognized….

She sighed, looking up at blue sky over her head…how they’d managed that, she hadn’t the first clue, could be another one of those holograms that felt, looked, even smelled so real, could even be something as basic as water vapor refracted just the right way by the lighting in here, though that would lead to other technical problems….

It was the latter, meaning the technical problems of water amongst electrical components and an enclosed enviroment must’ve been solved somehow…some of those clouds up there drizzled cold rain onto her, lasting just enough to soak her through her p.j.s before passing on, leaving shockingly blue sky and the smell of ozone in its wake.

She heard a woman’s soft laughter from just behind her, Christa glancing…a tall, powerfully-built blonde, arm in arm with a much-shorter, much more slender, China-doll featured woman with olive skin and dark eyes, both of them in t-shirts and shorts, the taller woman carrying a picnic basket and a thermos in her right arm…just the way they looked at one another….

She quickly turned back around…she’d been taught that what she felt for other women was dirty, wrong, perverted, that it would devolve into dildos, beatings, butch and femme and drugs and stripping and whoring…and prison…she’d had the courage to think different, when she’d been in college, just for a few minutes, before they’d resorted to the cruder methods to make her hate what she was, to hate Shelli, hurt her….

The two women laughed to one another again, setting up their picnic, talking each to each, but not to her, she couldn’t even hear what they were saying, and it wasn’t any of her business anyway…Smith, Onizuka, especially that monkey bastard McNair—she’d seen how he’d looked at the redhead and her lover —probably Jarvis and Scobee as well, they would’ve just twisted the innocence behind her into something sick, sinister, more to their tastes.

More to what she had to pretend she believed, as she hid all these years, just as Judy had to hide all these years, constantly watching her step, more so since she was single, and, no woman that good looking could be single so long without being a dyke, that was how their logic ran, knowing she’d pay for a moment in the light with a lifetime of—

“No, no, go away!” one of the women—the China doll, probably, wasn’t sure— half-cried out to a loud coo!ing and flapping of wings, Christa surprised to discover pigeons fluttering about the deck, looking down to see one waddling its fat body up to her feet, flapping its wings expirimentally a couple of times before taking to the air, beating its wings right in front of her face, forcing her to take a couple of steps back.

“They’re just pigeons,” the blonde said, her voice husky, but not deep. “They’re not gonna hurt you, just looking for a meal.”

The China doll adding,”they make their nests in the trees on the life-support deck; the ship makes sure they don’t get loose and cause havoc throughout the rest of her.”

“How do they get in here in the first place?” Christa, turning to face the other two women, asked.

“Some get in when we take on cargo,” the blonde, fixing herself a roast beef and tomato sandwich, explained,”enough to keep the gene pool viable…from what Harriet and Dunstan both told me, there have been pigeons on this deck since the ship first left the Regulus Test Range sixty years ago.”

“Our time,” the China doll, pouring out two cups of steaming hot tea, added, the blonde fixing another roast beef and tomato sandwich, thinly spreading brown mustard on planks of what looked like homemade bread, before adding thick slices of tomato and roast beef, arranging both sandwiches on a paper plate with some potato chips and handing it to her lover.

“I’m Harriet Mangione,” the China doll said, extending her hand outward, Christa walking over and shaking her hand, the other woman then saying,”and I’m her wife, Kyra Spencer.”

“That—“ she started to ask, Christa shaking her head no, shaking Kyra’s hand, Harriet telling her,”there’s more in here than either one of us’ll eat, and you have to be starving, after the day you’ve had, um….”

“Christa,” Christa replied, Kyra asking her if she’d like to join them. “Yeah,” Christa said, sitting crosslegged across from both women,”I think I will, thanks.”

“No problem,” Harriet replied, retrieving another cup from the basket, Kyra reaching in it for three soup mugs and another thermos.

28 JANUARY, 1986 18:38:32 TAI

“She is one hell of a cook, isn’t she?” Stevie asked their guest, mmhmmming his reply through a mouthful of fat chicken thigh, Jami smiling nervously, ducking her head down, blushing, Stevie chuckling, shaking her head, as she reloaded her plate with more collard greens, mashed potatoes, gravy and fried chicken…there were about fifty, sixty more in the reefer in the ship’s cargo bay, they’d bought them when they had spent all that time on Lord Jim, Jami fully intending to roast a few of them for Thanksgiving dinner, having to settle for having some of them for Christmas instead…the potatoes and the collards came from the life-support deck, they grew most of their vegis onship, save for the sprouts only Prue seemed to like….

Looking over her shoulder, Unbroken’s second in command saw her weaps officer and her wife sitting on the recliner and the beanbag chair respectively, both of them tearing through their commander’s cooking, Ryla and Celina sitting round the coffee table, sharing the sofa with Jami and Dick Scobee, the three of them talking back and forth at one another while her wife chipped in a word or two, Stevie sighing as she looked at Jami, smiling at her, as she walked back to her chair.

What? Jami asked.

Thinking about you, Stevie replied, as she sat back down, watching her wife make a face in Prue’s direction.

How can she eat those fucking things?! Jami remarked for only the umpteenth time in the nineteen years she’d known her.

You‘re asking me, luv? Stevie replied, tearing into a drumstick at the same time. I can’t stand sprouts.

She likes the way you cook them , tho’, she added, Dick remarking,”I’m surprised you don’t have dedicated mess facilities on board.”

“League warbirds do,” Prue spoke up, spearing a sprout on her fork,”one for general officers, one for the command staff, one for the other officers, one for the NCOs and one for the rest of the crew.”

“Too much overhead, too many extra bodies,” Jami explained. “It’s cheaper just to teach those who can’t cook for themselves how to, use our requisition fund to buy the food we need and roll our own.”

“Hell of a lot more practical too,” she added, tearing the crispy, fatty skin off a thigh, popping it in her mouth, Celina taking up the explanation:

“’Sides, given the hours we all end up keeping onship, we don’t all eat at the same time, or even in shifts; like Jami said, you cut down on dedicated mess facilities and the people to run them, that’s money, mass, space and personnel which could either be put to better use, or eliminated altogether, allowing for a smaller, faster, more maneuverable ship with the same firepower as the average League machine.”

“If not more,” Prue added, Dick nodding his head, as he scooped up a forkful of greens—he was working on seconds himself—and popped them in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully as Unbroken’s weaps officer said,”’sides, I like it like this, a lot more cozy, homey; I don’t know if that makes sense to you, Dick, but when you live onship with sixty or seventy other people—“ Dick nodded his head to indicate he understood just fine.

“These are about the best greens,” he then said,”I’ve eaten in a while, Jami.”

“Thanks,” Jami, rather embarassed, said quickly, before starting on another thigh, Dick telling her:

“I mean it, I haven’t had collard greens this good since the time I was stationed at the naval air station in Marietta…that’s in north Georgia, it’s a suburb of Atlanta, there was this place….”

He trailed off, helping himself to some more collard greens, chewing slowly, swallowing, finishing what he’d been saying:

“It’s gone now…way it is with good places to eat, good intentions, good people….”

Sighing, Dick shook his head, adding:

“More of same still to come, from what I’ve seen of your history, what you could piece together after this American World State and their successors got through destroying it.”

“More of same,” Jami remarked, pausing midway through the thigh she held in her hands, ”still going on where we came from.”

“I know,” Dick replied softly, rising to his feet.

“If you’d all excuse me,” he whispered.

The commander of the Unbroken looking up at him, nodding her head slowly, telling him to go ahead.

28 JANUARY, 1986 14:14:00 EST

Judith Resnick watched the World Trade Center burn again.

She’d been to New York once, long time ago, watched them build the twin towers…over the years she’d watched them become an indelible part of the familiar New York City skyline, landmarks more prominent than even the Empire State Building.

In fifteen years’ time, they would be utterly destroyed, their funeral pyre used as an excuse to go forth, redeem the world and build a New Jerusalem.

It would all be blamed on them, the attack and the terrible reaction to that attack…it always was, just as they blamed them now for the economy, the military, terrorism, crime, drugs, liberalism…just as they blamed them for their man not becoming President two years ago, for the increased crackdowns and loss of civil liberties in the name of fighting the godless Commies, the murdering Arabs, the greedy Japs and the drug-peddling Colombians, for racism, the Moral Majority and for conservatism in general….

Ten years ago she could walk openly, if only for a little while…now, she had to hide who she was again, lock herself down, watch her step, pray that she stayed ahead of what they had in store for her…it was only going to get worse, as she saw for herself, the future going forward from what was being called Nine-Eleven to Jesse the Body’s rise to power and his declaration of an American World State on the floor of the UN Security Council, American soldiers spilling out into the streets, running down, raping and torturing women live on the CBS Evening News and Dan Rather not saying word fucking one about that(not that the son of a bitch ever had)dragging them to squalid, fenced-in sewers of prison camps, put to work in forced-labor gangs, strip clubs, whorehouses, and so on, while men proceeded to use what they’d developed to clone themselves without having to resort to forcibly impregnating women. They’d tried to escape—again—only to have men come after them as they fled to the stars, turning their colonies into more concentration camps, within an ace of killing all of them, before their cloning techniques failed them, their extinction stared them in their ugly faces, and civil war had been the result.

Two hundred years of women fighting to survive against men fighting to eradicate them following that civil war, that struggle becoming bloodier and more desperate with the passage of time….

On and on and on it goes, Judy remarked bitterly to herself, looking up from the holoprojection at Smith’s leering, sneering face, her blood running cold, as she desperately looked around for a weapon, just in case that young woman sitting at the terminal over to her right wasn’t enough to discourage him from his intentions…she hid, but it had come out anyway, whispers about her sexuality had reached everyone’s ears at the Cape, the look in Smith’s eyes a variation of the looks she got from the men and women assigned there…even the women assigned there had to whisper the things lesbians were supposed to do to one another and apply that to her, the price was too high for them not to, she understood that, and she’d resorted to keeping to herself as an alternative to risking herself or any other woman.

But, that hadn’t done any good…it just served to make her more miserable…hell, she liked Christa MacAuliffe from the first moment she’d met her, found herself falling in love with her the more she’d gotten to know her…but she hadn’t wanted to risk herself or Christa—they told such stories on teacher, she hadn’t wanted to add to them….

It wouldn’t have done any good, hiding…they were going to blow them all out of the sky rather than see Christa become a hero…even if they had let the mission go through as planned, even if the seven of them were to go home right now….

They told such stories….

28 JANUARY, 1986 14:23:28 EST

Arecibo was picking them up loud and clear, orbiting round the Moon, well out of range of the orbital platforms, not that all of them put together could punch through that ship’s shields.

The others were in D.C., debating their options, while Lang sat in the commander’s office in at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Yard, sipping at his glass of Jack Daniels, staring at the computer terminal on the desk…Buck Revell’s nigger boy, his partner and Zell Miller’s operative all were amongst the crew, two factions of the others working towards a common goal, McCain knowing of Miller’s operative, letting him stay where he was at, a backup in case Davis and Ericsson weren’t able to make things go according to plan.

Davis and Ericsson had a portable computer hidden on board that ugly-ass bird, with a radiocellular modem which should be able to access the ARAPA network, even from lunar orbit…if they were still alive….

“Sir—” the voice of the petty officer third-class acting as receptionist said over the intercom, Lang replying,”send him on in.”

“Him” being Oliver “Buck” Revell, Deputy Director of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Division, the withered-up old Yankee walking into the office, abruptly asking,”well?!”

“Ain’t been n’word from y’nigger or t’other one neither,” Lang replied, taking another sip of Jack.

“What about your cousin’s man?” Revell asked, sitting down in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

“He’d be more likely t’talk with Zell than with me, Buck,” Lang reminded him, adding: “Araceeba hadn’t picked up no radio transmissions from that ship, least none aimed at t’Earth, not since that other ship zoomed over Antarctica, snoopin’ round what they left behind.”

Revell nodded his head in reply, getting up to help himself to the commander’s wet bar.

“All these factions,” he said,”are going to be the ruination of the Work, Freeman; haven’t they learned that by now?”

“Guess not,” Lang replied.

“Neither t’time nor place for any of that, tho’,” he remarked, Revell, pausing over the whiskey sour he’d mixed for himself, nodding his head in agreement.

“Senator McCain’s convinced the others to give us eight hours to hear from our operatives,” he then said. “After that, they’re going to put their alternate plan into action.”

“That bein’?” Lang asked, certain he would not like the answer.

He didn’t.

“An Ariane 4 rocket is being refitted with one of the atomic turbines we salvaged from the MacMurdo site,” Revell replied, disgusted,”and its payload will be as much antimatter as the geniuses at Los Alamos can manufacture and safely stuff into the rocket’s nosecone.”

“Goddamnit,” Lang whispered, shaking his head, Revell remarking,”as far as they’re concerned, the seven of them are dead already; this is the alternative presenting the least inconvenience to what they’ve already convinced the rest of the world of; once accomplished, they will convene an investigative panel headed up by Neil Armstrong to come up with a good lie as to why the Challenger blew up, while causing a nuclear disaster in the Ukraine and making some of Oliver North’s operations in Nicaragua and the Middle East public knowledge, both serving as distractions from this….”

He trailed off, shaking his head, downing the whisky in one gulp, fixing himself another and taking it with him, as he sat back down to wait with Lang for any word from either Davis or Ericsson.

28 JANUARY, 1986 19:30:11 TAI

“You OK?” Jami asked him, as he stood in front of the shambles which had been the space shuttle Challenger, lying on its belly in Unbroken’s hangar bay.

“Far from it,” Dick replied, his voice distant, Jami marvelling at the ragged gash of waist and tail sections, of exploded remains of primitive chemical-reaction motors, of the twisted metal which had been a wing, of black tiles scattered all over the deck, still finding it hard to believe the damn thing was meant to go up at all, let alone any one of the seven aboard had come out of it alive….

“If we offended—“ she started to say, Dick replying:

“You didn’t.”

“I,” he added,”offended, just by being in that room with you guys, after—“

“Everything you’ve done,” Jami finished for him.

“I spent my entire life fighting men like you,” she added, angry, but not with him. “I’ve no illusions about the things you’ve done in the service of your country.” “And,” she added quietly,”I mean nation in the Biblical sense.”

Dick simply nodded his head in reply, saying, after a pause:

“I noticed that My Lai isn’t in your history database.”

“Should it be?” Jami asked.

Another nod.

“Seventeen years,” he began,”ten months and an odd number of days ago, I commanded a squadron of F-4s aboard the Forrestal—that’s an aircraft carrier, a ship used to ferry aircraft from place to place as primary armament…we were off the coast of a country called VietNam, we’d been there on and off for about thirty-six months, taking out sampans, villages, vehicles, any place where they might be hiding…of course, we gave different reasons for being there, we always do, the enemy’s always well armed in our war stories, always doing terrible things to its POWs….”

He sighed, balling up his fists, taking his time before continuing:

“Intel said the women in that region were all holed up in a place called MyLai; they were just looking for a place where they could find refuge from us, and we were ordered to go in before the ground pounders, destroy…kill as many as possible, so the Army, the Marines and the Aussies wouldn’t have such a hard time rounding up survivors to….”

“You don’t have to explain,” Jami said, fighting to hold it all in, Dick just standing there, nodding his fucking head.

“I got those people into this mess,” he said,”not you, you just happened to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time; I helped line up everyone on board Challenger for the kill shot, and I’m the one who’s responsible for whatever’s waiting for them down there…Smith said he’d sell Resnick and MacAuliffe out to save his own neck, though I doubt those who ordered us shot down will give him the option.”

Another pause.

“I’m also responsible for what’s to come,” he said,”what you’ve had to live through.”

“All because the sight of women with women,” he added,”was enough to make me as much of a coward as the rest of my kind.”

“Yeah,” Jami replied, nodding her head, her fists unclenching.

“Yeah,” she repeated softly.

—endit—

The Death Of Hope “Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of lost adventurers my peers— How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.” Robert Browning, “ ‘Childe Roland To the Dark Tower Came’ ”

29 JANUARY, 2226 03:00:00 TAI

“Fuck!” Sunni Pate screamed, unashamedly ducking down onto the floor the instant she saw the bright light streaking down to earth near the the barred, AG shielded window of her room in the Phoenix Center,, the floor and walls shaking with the impact, the light searing her eyes even through tightly-shut lids, even with her face plastered against the carpeting, the thunderclap of its impact rolling on for what felt like hours before finally fading away.

She was still alive, opening her eyes to the carpet, slowly getting up, a few things knocked out of place here and there, but, otherwise, it was all still standing.

So, she walked over to the window, looking outside…a crater had been punched into the wet ground outside her room, grey wisps of smoke rising up from it…not enough, though, to obscure the ragged, scorched, scratched-up thing which had made the crater in the first place…she noticed bits of glass melted into the ground, pieces of metal all over the place, arms bent up from the object in question, as if it were waving hello.

People were coming from all over to have a look at what had hit, the Commie Forces medicos and security troops who’d been running the Phoenix Center since Old Town had fallen to JMC forces two months ago, the combat engineers still working on the buildings all along Davis Drive, passing motorists, everyone, all talking and gesturing excitedly as they approached the crater, Sunni looking at the object in the center of the crater some more, sure she’d been seeing things.

No way could that be the flag of the old United States of America on its side.

28 JANUARY, 1986 15:04:19 EST

Wen-Ho Lee smiled tightly, as he watched the Legionnaires whipping the lazy whores to pull harder, faster, the soldiers calling them sluts and whores in French, making them do work probably for the first time in their overpriveliged, pampered, spoiled, worthless lives, forcing them to pull the massive atomic turbine engine into position inside the Ariane 4’s hollowed-out first stage, technicians and mechanics immediately swarming all over it, hastily moving to attach and connect the turbine to the rest of the launch vehicle.

Nodding his head, Lee turned his attention back to the work he and the ten scientists and technicians of Los Alamos’ Special Energies Working Group were doing—namely filling the upper two stages of the soon-to-be-assembled Ariane with antimatter…one hundred metric tons worth, an explosive yield equal to 2.4 trillion tons of TNT, the most powerful engine of mass destruction his race had ever crafted….

Sighing, Lee regretted having to turn his boundless creative energies to the construction of such things, but they would have it no other way, the harlots didn’t care how much of a wrench building devices of annhilation was to a sensitive, high-minded, masculine soul such as his…all they cared about was the satisfaction of their innate female drive to pervert and corrupt and debase, to make the whole world as lesbian as they were, to devolve all of them into the Yahoo-like state of brutality in which this planet had wallowed before his race had been forced to wage holy and interminable war to subjugate and, perhaps, one day, eradicate them from the surface of their world.

“Goddamn you!” Peck, his chief assistant, shouted to one of the techs monitoring the transfer process. “Watch it! That magnetic field flucuated, couldn’t you see the needle jump?! Jesus God, one slipup, and all of South America gets wiped off the fucking map!”

Peck repeated Jesus’ name again, Lee nodding his head as he studied the dials and gauges of the machinery dedicated to pumping the antimatter from the special containment craft flown straight from the SEWG’s development facilties outside of Roswell into a similar vessel built into the Ariane’s upper two stages and powered directly from the motor on the tractor on which the launcher was mounted; when work was completed on the first stage, the atomic turbine would take over powering the magnetic containment as the vehicle was wheeled to the gantry for launch into Lunar insertion orbit; guided by radar and its onboard computer, it would then steer straight for the starship which had prevented the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger and hopefully succeed where the entire global arsenal of orbital weapons platforms had failed.

Lee consulted the Bulova on his left wrist…the others had given him until ten o’clock tonight, EST, to have the vehicle ready for launch—less than seven hours from now—a deadline he was sure was well within the reach of his people and Arianespace’s; they were already almost done with the antimatter transfer, no major flucuation in the magnetic field of the Ariane’s containment vessel, in spite of Peck’s constant nagging of the techs monitoring the transfer, and it wouldn’t be too much longer before work on the first stage was completed and the entire rocket assembled and readied for its part in the successful conclusion of the Work.

Smiling, nodding, Lee turned his attention back to the sluts howling in orgasm, their jailers whipping them to the barges hugging the Guiana coastline, waiting to take them back to their kennels.

28 JANUARY, 1986 20:18:05 TAI

Sighing, Squadron Leader Jameison Lanier studied the radio transmissions Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken were receiving from Earth, as she sat at the astrogation station.

All the video and the major audio-only signals were about the same thing, the deaths of seven brave astronauts, some horribly dried-up old fucker—IDed by the media as Saint Ronald Reagan, though not the one whose face hung in the Government Pavillion in Nuevos Los Angeles, on de la Vega—reciting a line of poetry about them slipping the surly bonds of earth and touching the face of God…some of the weaker radio-frequency signals, some vid, most audio-only, were crying about sabotage by the Commies— apparentally what the Russians were called long before there was a Commonwealth Of Cor Leonis—or by the feminist conspiracy which seemed to exist in this time as well.

Participants in too many chat rooms already exchanging the usual tastless jokes that accompanied every tragedy:

ConorMcLeod883> What were Christa McAuliffe’s last words?

RastaMan225>I don’t know.

ConorMcLeod883> <>

RastaMan225> ROFLMAO!!!

BigBoy1566> Wait, I’ve got one. How many astronauts can you fit in a Volkswagen?

RastaMan225> <>

RastaMan225> Heard it already.

ConorMcLeod883> How ‘bout this one? Y’know Christa had blue eyes, don’t ya?

BigBoy1566> No, I didn’t. RastaMan225> Yeah. One BLEW this way and one BL

“We’ve gone round the Lunar farside,” the ship told her,”expiriencing temporary loss of signal from Earth.”

“Thank God,” Jami replied, sighing, fogging up her faceplate…sending them back was sending them to their deaths, she knew that, but…it was their choice.

Things would be far from better for them 240 years in the future, with a war on that was promising to be even bloodier than 9YW, at best…and, the Armageddon of Revealation more than likely, she’d seen more than enough of what Derreg had brought with him to figure that out on her own, even if she hadn’t figured out how all the pieces fit together.

Even if she hadn’t wanted to figure that out….

Another sigh, Unbroken all too quickly coming round the cratered, pitted, grey, dread, depressing surface of Earth’s sole natural satellite, the blue and bright white clouds of the planet hurting her eyes…it wouldn’t even take two and a half centuries for Earth to be almost as grey, dread and depressing as her Moon, both of them wearing garlands of skulls.

Your imagery leaves something to be desired, luv, her wife, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads, joked.

I’m not a poet, baby, Jami replied, eyes still on the master holodisplay ahead of her.

I ain’t a lot of things, she added, Stevie replying, well, you were right, even if the imagery did suck….

It does at that, Jami said.

“Indigo knows why I relieved her?” she asked. “She understands, right?”

“That it wasn’t a reflection on her,” Stevie replied. “I’m not so sure…she’s still apologizing for dropping us through the rabbit hole in the first place.”

“One of us should’ve had the watch,” Jami remarked.

And, Stevie thought, “by one of us,” you really mean—

“Me,” Jami said truthfully. “Yeah.”

“Rubbish,” Stevie saying what Jami knew she would. “You, of all people, need to be pampered and spoiled.”

“What?” she then asked in response to Jami’s snort.

“I was just thinking the same about you, baby,” she remarked.

28 JANUARY, 1986 15:28:16 EST

This wasn’t the originial either.

She’d told him that, that this Star Wars was a “special edition” made eleven years from now… basically the same movie, with cleaned-up footage and the Jabba scene which had been in the novel but which Lucas couldn’t make happen on film, least not in ’77. Commander Francis “Dick” Scobee sat in his bed on Unbroken’s med deck, nodding his head when Alec Guiness told Mark Hamill that his destiny lay on a different path from his, heading out to disable the Death Star’s tractor beams and get himself vaporized by his Frankensteinian creation…Jami had told him Lucas had done all nine of his planned movies, ending up blowing his brains out in a roach motel room on some planet thirty light years and six decades from here, broken, drunk and disappointed at the way the world had turned out, from what she’d said her uncle had told her.

That uncle, she added, getting himself killed nearly two and a half centuries from the time Scobee was watching his copy of Star Wars.

She’d expected him to have blood on his hands…she’d said as much when they’d been in the hangar bay, looking at what was left of the Challenger…actually, what she had said was, “I spent my entire life fighting men like you. I’ve no illusions about the things you’ve done in the service of your country. And, I mean nation in the Biblical sense.”

He’d then told her about My Lai…first time in nearly eighteen years he’d told anyone the truth about that day; even amongst themselves, he and Bruce Crippen did not discuss the matter…ordered to keep the knowledge deeply compartmentalized, that was exactly what they’d both done, both of them, when asked about that day—fewer and fewer people did, the world having gotten a hell of a lot meaner since ‘77—said they weren’t there, that William Calley had been jobbed by his superiors, the liberal media, Jane Fonda and the drugged-out hippie protesters all listening to Hendrix….

Most of those hippies, he observed bitterly, as David Proust and Alec Guiness went at it with their lightsabers, are wearing suits and ties now, making their fortunes working for the corporations they were supposed to have been fighting against, getting their drugs from Colombia and Mexico, now that the” baby killers” weren’t sending them free shit from the jungles of Indochina anymore.

She probably wouldn’t have been surprised by that either, he thought, the voice of James Earl Jones telling Alec,”you should not have come back!”

28 JANUARY, 1986 16:00:02 EST

Portable, my black ass, Special Agent Micheal Davis groused, lugging the heavy, goddamn thing from its hiding place on the Challenger’s flight deck, briefly debating with himself where he was going to set all this shit up at, finally deciding here would be as good a place as any, laying the computer itself down on the deck, looking for a place to plug it up into—nobody thought about batteries—finally finding something that would work.

Davis then trying to remember how to power up the shuttle’s APU, not even wanting to consider the possibility that the auxillary power unit might not be in working order, wishing Space Boy was here with him, his partner knew more about crap like that then he did…hell, Davis didn’t even know which switch—

Got it, one flick, and the flight deck and the computer were both powered up, the veteran FBI Counter-Intelligence agent sitting crosslegged on the floor, keyboard in his lap, staring at green text on a black screen, checking to make sure the modem was hooked up to the back of the computer—it fucking had a battery—before typing in the command at the blinking C:\> _ thing that would activate the comm program.

Another blinking dash thing stared him in the face after the program told him it was ready to go, Davis entering:

ACCESS ARAPANET. hitting the big key marked with the right-angle arrow, waiting just like the damn thing politely told him to…it should have enough range to get from the Moon back to Earth, least that was what he’d been told when they issued him and Ericsson the gear they needed to pull off their mission.

Damn thing took its time telling him to ENTER USERNAME. Davis typing:

BIGMIKE1181.

ARAPANET then telling him to ENTER PASSWORD. Davis typing “BIGMIKEY,” though, on the screen it looked more like this:

********

Now, the fucker was telling him to please wait.

Wasn’t that a hell of a shit?!

28 JANUARY, 1986 16:05:12 EST

“It’s y’boy!” Lieutenant General Freeman Zephiniah Ezekiel Lang whooped, snapping Deputy Director Oliver “Buck” Revell of the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Division up out of the alcoholic stupor he’d drunk himself into, Revell lunging halfway across the desk , trying to take a look at the computer terminal on the desk, demanding the director of Air Force Special Operations tell him what his nigger had to say.

“He ain’t said nothin’ yet, Buck,” Lang, in a bit of an alcoholic stupor himself, replied,”he’s jest now logged on.”

At the same time, he hunt and pecked a question concerning Davis’ status into the terminal, sending it back on its way to Lunar orbit via satlink.

Davis replying that his arm had been broken, but the crew of that ship up there—he gave no particulars—had fixed that, his partner having had it worse than he was, with internal injuries and third- degree burns, but he was supposed to be all healed up in a day or two.

Lang then asked him if that bitch was alive, Davis quickly replying they both were, that he was ready to put the originial plan into action, all he needed were a way to get his hands on them, a way off that ship and some people to meet him on the other end.

The commander of Air Force Special Operations turned the monitor round so his old running buddy could see what his boy was saying, Revell unnecessarily telling Lang to let Davis know about the change in plan.

“Goddamnit,” Lang replied, already typing out the words, as Revell turned the monitor back round, ”I’m gettin’ there, Buck.”

After Lang had let him know all about the modified Ariane launcher being aimed at that ship from CSG, Davis asked him how long he had before they lit the candle on that motherfucker.

28 JANUARY, 1986 21:09:05 TAI

“A bit less than no time, I’d say,” Stevie, managing to get right up behind that knobguzzling black son of a bitch, replied, the bastard jumping up as if he’d been shot, snapping off the f-word as he turned round, almost chipping his perfect white teeth on the barrel of her drawn Browning M2 rail pistol, his right hand stopped midway in its journey towards the pistol-shaped lump in his right waist pocket. “No,” Unbroken’s senior astrogator said simply, holding out her left hand, as she kept her weapon shoved in his gaping gob.

“Let’s have it,” she added, the yobbo handing her his chemical-propellant slugger, butt end first, smiling now, prompting Stevie to not gently grab him by the scruff of his neck, throwing him towards the ruin of an airlock, advising him against any further stupidity, before telling him to step through.

Stevie right behind him, shaking her head at the stupidity he’d already committed…had he really thought the ship wouldn’t have picked up the radio transmission from here back to Earth and that she wouldn’t alert Jami to said transmission.

Must have, really wasn’t a bright lad, this one, chuckling slightly as he took one look at the squad of eight women covering his exit from the smashed spacecraft—especially at the shortest and most slender of the women, Alfa Squad’s leader, Master Sergeant Regina Palmer—and decided trying to overpower them was a viable option.

Regina clouting him across his thick skull with the butt of her Browning M3 assault railer, Stevie catching him, as he fell backward, throwing him back into the arms of two of the other women in Regina’s squad.

“Med deck,” she ordered, heading towards the ladder leading topside, “for now.”

“Shoot the motherfucker dead,” she added,”should he come to and do anything you don’t like.”

28 JANUARY, 1986 21:06:15 TAI

Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon was at the weaps station now, the supper the S.A. had ordered her topside to eat left forgotten back on the relief deck the instant the battle-ready had blown off , and the ship’s chief flight engineer had found herself closer to the astrogation deck than the woman who normally sat here.

It hadn’t taken her long to find the device being readied for their destruction…it was just above the planet’s equator, on the continent called South America, in what had been one of the Frogs’ overseas colonies before the New America Act had made the whole world American soil, and Jesse Ventura had outlawed any and all forms of space travel…motherfuck, there was a hundred tons of antimatter being stuffed into the nose of that thing, a yield of nearly two and a half trillion tons, roughly twice that of one of Unbroken’s 457s fired at light speed through normal space—four times the damage a 457 could do before the Dauntless Development Team had found a way to increase the mass of carbon gas the railguns could compress safely—which might not be enough to destroy the ship, but, it would, at least, severely reduce her shielding enough for those weapons platforms in Earth orbit to finish the job of smearing Unbroken across the Lunar surface.

Radar was picking up an atomic turbine like the one that had been on Kiah, before her people had rebuilt her drive room, Ariel doing the math, figuring the kinetic energy of the weapon from the velocity that turbine would give it—about eighty, ninety percent of light speed, given the lighter mass it was being asked to shift—factoring that into the damage that thing would do when it hit Unbroken full on.

“Relieving you, Leftenant,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson said, Ariel giving up the weaps station to the ship’s third in command, letting her know what radar had determined so far, Prue thanking her, Ariel leaving the astro deck, her friend and second, Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Rhiannon Moseley, right behind her, the two of them passing the S.A. on the relief deck, Unbroken’s second in command stopping Ariel.

“Go on ahead, baby,” Ariel, knowing this was coming, said to Ree,”I won’t be a minute.” Nodding, Ree stepped through the inter-section connector between the relief deck and HabOne, Ariel turning to face the S.A., telling her,”ma’am, you were right…I was being stupid, trying to push Ree away any way I could think of, and all I really ended up doing was hurting her.”

“Yes, you were, Ariel,” S.A. Rhoads agreed,”but, still, I acted out of emotion, rather than….”

She trailed off, Ariel asking:

“She did you the same way, didn’t she? At first?”

The S.A. simply nodded her head in reply.

“Go on,” she said. “If you want, we can talk more about this later, when—“

“Ma’am,” Ariel replied, the AG harness built into her greys already taking her towards the inter- section connector.

28 JANUARY, 1986 16:08:59 EST

“Allons-y, allons-y, allons-y!” voices shouted at one another in French, men still working on the first stage of the launcher even as they rushed it to join the other two, Lee and Peck just as frantically shouting at their techs to finish pumping the antimatter into the Ariane…their orders had come down, changing everything at the last second, that ship—bitch that she was—surprising the agent they had on board her, the others panicking and ordering the launch moved up to ASAP.

The tractor carrying the SEWG personnel and the upper two-thirds of the Ariane 4 trundled at its ponderous top speed towards the gantry, a second tractor carrying the lower third close behind, sirens screaming their heads off, Foreign Legionnaires scrambling to posts everywhere Lee looked, Mirage fightercraft already lifting from the military airstrip just beyond the CSG perimeter and from the French supercarrier Le Richelieu…some pathetic attempt to try and prevent that ship from stopping the launch or destroying the weapon before it leaves the atmosphere, Lee thought to himself, finding the notion more ridiculous every time he thought about it.

The senior physicist turned his attention back to the the transfer of antimatter, the C-5 taxiing to keep up with the Ariane, both trying to make it as quick as possible without blowing them all up…they had to get it done before they reached the gantry, the monstrous transport plane would not squeeze through the gates, would probably crack itself up on the fence, and that would be bad all round.

“That’s the last of it, thank God!” Peck observed, the C-5 pulling away, the special umbilical connecting it to the containment vessel on the Ariane snaking back into its tail like the cord on one of those Sears cannister vacuum cleaners, the lumbering aircraft heading towards open sky as quickly as its mass and its jets could move it.

“Here it comes!” Peck then shouted, the Arianespace technicians transferring themselves and the lower third of the modified launcher from one tractor to the other, already at work joining the three stages together, before they’d even come across, both tractors approaching the gantry at a good clip.

28 JANUARY, 1986 16:12:00 EST

“You goddamn, skank fuckin’ dyke bitches!” Lieutenant Commander Micheal Smith screamed, lunging from his bed on Unbroken’s med deck towards where Judith Resnick and Christa MacAuliffe were bunking up, the three women of this ship’s medical staff and the eight security troops guarding McNair moving to restrain him.

Scobee getting there first, his right fist connecting solidly enough with Smith’s cocksucker to send him flying back onto his bed in a shower of blood and teeth, Ellison Onizuka thinking about going for his former commander, thinking better of it when Scobee turned and asked if he wanted some of what Smith had had coming to him for days.

“You goddamn motherfucker!” Smith screamed, Scobee turning just in time to see him come up off his back and try for him, swinging wildly with a roundhouse which missed by a mile, Scobee letting him have it again in his kisser, this time grabbing hold of his fucking neck as he went down, pressing him down into the mattress, squeezing harder, strangling the younger man’s cursing and threats to fuck him up as well as “those two rabid fuckin’ bull-dykes” if given half a chance.

McNair chuckling in the force-shielded bed on Smith’s left, remarking,”maaan, you done chose the losing side of the war. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Fuck off!” Scobee replied, Ryla Sedgewick and Jilly Pollock pulling his hands off Smith’s throat and Scobee away from Challenger’s former pilot, McNair saying something about girlie liking it like that, Scobee telling him to fuck off again, as the youngest of the three doctors, Heidi Proctor, came up to Ryla, reporting that the med and life support decks were now sealed off from the rest of the ship and on their own local fusion reactor and power grid.

“Not going to do your present situation any good bashing in his dicksucker,” Ryla remarked, McNair telling Scobee,”that right, listen to what Mistress say, No-Dick, listen to what She say or She gonna whup that pussy good!”

He was sitting up as much as what they called a paralysis field permitted, just laughing his sorry black ass off…everything Stevie had told him meant someone else amongst their mutual superiors had been planning to let the mission go through, so McNair and either Smith, Onizuka, Jarvis, or all three of the rat bastards could overpower McAuliffe and Resnick and deliver them to people who would tell such stories about teacher, crashing her after letting her touch the face of God that senile drooler had been going on about in his eulogy.

Meaning, of course, the men above them had been working at cross purposes with one another, but, after nearly three decades, especially after the Sixties and Seventies, that was no longer anything new.

Nor was it anything which would help him or any of the other six…right now, their survival was in the hands of this ship and her crew…once they’d dealt with the Ariane 4 modified to take them out, the seven members of the Challenger crew would be completely on their own concerning their next move….

“You should not have come back….” Scobee thought to himself, the movie still running forgotten in the background.

But, he asked himself, did Obi-Wan really have a choice in the matter…given the option between facing his former student in a fight he couldn’t win and sneaking away to save his own skinny ass, in the end, he chooses to fire up Daddy Skywalker’s lightsaber and have at it one last time, even knowing he was going to die at the hands of the monstrosity he’d made with equal measures of arrogance, ignorance and impotence.

Sighing, nodding his head, his mind made up now, Scobee relaxed, Jilly and Ryla letting him go.

28 JANUARY, 1986 16:16:40 EST

A line from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage ran through her head.

Followed immediately by a line from a Beatles song, about the kingdom of heaven being in one’s hands.

Christa watched Commander Scobee retreat to his bed to finish watching Star Wars, watched Smith continuing to rant and rave even as Ryla tended to him. Turned to see Judy alternately staring at her flailing hands and the holo of…the World Trade Center, the World Trade Center, falling to earth in a cloud of dust and smoke, some Brit’s voice in the background—probably Robin Day, she wasn’t sure—repeating the news that planes hijacked by box-cutter wielding Arabs—when everyone knew those camel jockey motherfuckers used AK-47s to take over jetliners—had crashed into both towers and the Pentagon….

Will crash into them, Christa mentally corrected herself, still finding it hard to believe the United States was going to invade Iraq—not once, but twice in the next seventeen years—the holoprojection over the terminal built into Judy’s bed moving forward from what would be called 9/11 to the second invasion of Iraq, to Dan Rather telling the world what an evil bastard Saddam was…right now, he’d told everyone what a forward-thinking, benevolent, democracy-loving kind of guy he was, nothing like that evil bastard Ayatollah Khomeni next door in Iran….

From the footage of the invasion and fall of Iraq, the holoprojection was going ever forward, to some pro wrestler seizing power, he and the owner of the New York Giants declaring the existence of the American World State, the rest of the world going along with that, their forces running down, raping, torturing and murdering women, incarcerating the unlucky ones in “urban containment areas[ghettos],” ”regional containment campuses,” and—in the case of Detroit, Las Vegas, Truth or Consequences, Macon, Oakland, Hagerstown(in Maryland), Birmingham, Levanworth, Shinjuku(part of Tokyo, she believed), Manchester(there was one in Georgia as well, she never knew that), Baghdad, another Iraqi city called Tikrit, couple others—“metropolitan prison zones.”

The blame for everything before( and after) this American World State being placed squarely on the shoulders on someone named Hillary, another woman whose last name was Rice and whose first name she couldn’t even come close to pronouncing….

On women in general, which did not come as much of a surprise to someone used to her people being blamed for everything from originial sin to the 1919 World Series…hell, they were probably making her the butt of the jokes which always followed great tragedy or suffering…”What were Christa’s last words? ‘What does this button do?!’ “something along those lines….

She sighed, watching Judy stare at the holo and at her hands, biting down on her lower lip… neither one of them should have to hide who they were….the way Harriet and Kyra had been, or Jilly and that other woman—Christy, she thought her name was—that was how it was supposed to be.

How it had been for a little while, before she’d been beaten down, and it had all become just a complicated series of false fronts and parts she had to play to ensure her own survival.

In a jungle that was just going to kill her anyway.

Judy looked at Christa’s hand reaching out to hers, holding hers, Judy then looking back at her, the look in her dark eyes—ancient and pained—telling her don’t.

Not unless you mean it.

Christa simply nodding her head, giving Judy’s hand a gentle squeeze, smiling at her.

28 JANUARY, 1986 16:24:11 EST

The atomic turbine detonated and ground into life, tearing away from the gantry in a great fiery gout obliterating gantry, earth and several of the technicans still working on the Ariane when CSG’s launch controllers had transmitted the ignition and launch commands to the vehicle’s onboard computer, the flame causing the Atlantic to briefly boil and steam as the modified Ariane 4 streaked skyward. Lee and his SEWG watching this from the safety of the Guiana Space Center’s launch control room, the chief controller gibbering in French with his superiors…their work done, they’d climbed down from their tractor into waiting jeeps, given the privilege of watching the launch and the success of the mission before returning to Roswell for final debriefing from Mannherheim and dispersal to their various academic and research posts throughout the world while Mannerheim’s Federal Emergency Management Agency shocktroops continued keeping the secret of antimatter power technology under lock and key for the sake of all mankind.

The Ariane was a mile above the Earth when an alarm buzzed, and one of the launch controllers shouted “Merde!” over the speakers, the chief controller whispering an English word starting with the sixth letter of the alphabet when the atomic fire propelling the Ariane towards its intended target snuffed itself out, the controllers all shouting over themselves to tell their boss and Lee the very obvious, that there’d been a malfunction in the atomic turbine, it couldn’t be restarted.

And, the Ariane, loaded with a hundred tons of antimatter encased in magnetics programmed to shut off on impact, had gone ballistic, falling out of the sky on a trajectory for somewhere on the South American continent.

With a yield of two and a half trillion tons, where that missile fell did not matter, Peck had been optimistic when he said everything in South America would be wiped from existence when that antimatter was released into the atmosphere…most likely, ground zero would reach at least into central Texas, he had to have his computers back at Los Alamos to do the math, but he was reasonably sure of his quick calculation.

Nodding his head, Lee looked at the Ariane falling from the sky…as long as this served the Work, his own annhilation did not matter…this would be made to serve the interests of the Work—probably even to hasten the full-scale implementation of Operation Night Train, even if Project Survivor had yet to bear fruit—he had no doubt in the others’ ability to turn this impending tragedy to their own ends.

To the service of their race.

And his.

28 JANUARY, 1986 21:25:00 TAI

Prue’s whispered “oh, bloody hell,” came at the same time Stevie’s swift, sure fingers had worked the astrogation and piloting holodisplays and sent Unbroken into hyperspace, breaking them out eight hundred meters above the coast of what had been the French colony of Guiana, the five-thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate swooping down upon the errant missile, catching it in her AG force beam, going NGE and breaking out in orbit round Earth’s Sun, where her weaps officer threw the son of a bitch as deep into its heart as she could, before Stevie took them back into hyperspace and returned them to their previous orbit round the Moon.

All before the commander of the Unbroken could think to give the order to snatch that missile before it fell back down upon the Earth.

It was another few seconds before her heart started beating again and for her brain to finally process what the fuck had just happened… they’d been waiting for it to leave Earth’s orbit so they could take it out with the Gatling 90s without hurting those on the surface of the planet; instead, the turbine those bastards had stolen from the Antarctic graveyard they’d desecrated had crapped out on them in mid-flight, putting hundreds of millions of people in danger of being wiped out, not that those who’d come up with this plan to attack her ship gave a shit about that to begin with….

All those people would’ve been annhilated if her crew had been caught off-guard like their commander had been…good women—Stevie best of all—they’d acted, without hesitation, when they’d seen the situation unfold before them. While all she could fucking do was sit in her chair and shake.

“M-maintain battle r-ready,” she managed to say over her link,”just in c-case t-they’ve got something else planned that can hurt us.”

“Understood, Boss,” her wife calmly replied.

We had way too much practice at this sort of thing, she whispered in Jami’s mind, not to act instinctively like we just did.

All Jami could do was nod her head in reply to that, Unbroken swinging round the far side of the Moon, the violence of a two and a half trillion-ton antimatter event still churning up the solar atmosphere.

Continuing to shake as she thought about just how close she’d come to causing another incalcuably tragic loss of life.

28 JANUARY, 1986 21:30:28 TAI

Dryswallowing, Ariel regained her breath, sucking down air in frantic gasps, wishing she could unseal her suit because, after what had just happened, she needed a smoke more than anything.

No time to think, Squadron Leader Lanier, her wife and the others topside had acted, and, bam! it was all over with, the missile meant to destroy them detonating in the heart of Earth’s Sun, and the ship herself was orbiting the Moon again, the battle ready klaxon going off inside her head, the alert lights spinning round and round on bases set every few meters along the top of the drive room.

There she was, on the opposite end of the AG shield generator, helping Ariel go over it three times like a Topaz, making damn sure it would not crap out at the worst possible moment…or any moment, for that matter…they weren’t even supposed to have invented antimatter yet, the first antimatter reactors didn’t even come on line ‘til the twenty-tweens….

Not the first time what we know about the past has been proven wrong, now is it? she asked herself, looking over the readouts on the holodisplays in front of her one more time, wishing they could spend more time here, trying to find out just how things really had been in the past.

At the same time, knowing enough to realize things hadn’t changed all that much in 240 years….

“We’ve put nearly every erg of power the antimatter reactors could generate into the shielding,” Ree remarked over her link. “It should be strong enough to stop whatever they can think to throw at us.”

“Yeah,” Ariel replied, checking the graphic showing the current strength of the ship’s AG shielding…at the same time ignoring the whispering in her own head, trying to tell her what girls who loved—

Leave me the fuck alone, Ariel told that part of her mind, her body tensing up.

“It should be enough,” Unbroken’s chief flight engineer said out loud,”assuming they don’t have too many more of those missiles ready to go down there.”

“And, assuming they can get them working,” Ree commented.

“True,” Ariel said. Silence after that, the two of them continuing to check the shielding, Ree descending to the Rittermark generator, Ariel to the number two reactor on the opposite side of the jenny, its holodisplay appearing underneath her right hand the instant her feet touched deck.

Ariel breathing deep, as she checked the the reactor’s status on the holodisplay…everything was how it should be, hydrogen flow, antimatter creation, matter/antimatter reaction rate, AG containment field constriction, energy liberation and power transfer…more than enough left over to heat up the nucleosynthesis reactors on the Gatling 90s and the 457s, fire up the AG drive, infinity driver and Rittermark jenny, energize the secondary Rittermark field coils and the AG force beam once in hyperspace and run the remaining critical systems—AI core, internal defenses, telegate, bay doors, radar, tachyar, distortion field generator, jammers, ESI gear and comms—the life-support and med decks would remain on local power until they stood down from battle ready(if that ever happened)with all nonessential systems— lights, airlocks, escape stations, det level and the reefer section of the cargo bay—powered either from the ship’s secondary generator array or from uninterruptible power sources.

She called up another holodisplay…the life-support deck repeater holodisplay, duplicating the control holodisplay on the life support deck(and the life-support functions accessible from the command and weaps holodisplays on the astrogation deck)showing her, amongst other things, the status of the AG shielding round the hatchways of the inter-section connectors and the airlocks to the life-support and med decks, as well as the hatches themselves; the life-support and med deck airlock hatches were genetically and biometrically scanlocked during battle ready, while the inter-section connector hatches were that way at all times, the shielding serving to minimize damage, make it more difficult for an enemy boarding party to gain access to the ship’s critical areas and—with the locked hatches—to keep atmosphere in both the frigate’s middle decks.

Unbroken’s chief flight engineer checked those throughly, before calling up the holodisplay controlling the ship’s internal defenses, turreted Gatling 25s covering every part of the frigate except the AI core and the drive room—too many critical systems, not enough room—which had to rely on cyberteks armed with assault carbines to supplement the firepower of the nine women who worked here.

Ariel checked her M6 next, now that she’d gotten herself thinking about boarding actions…most of those ended badly for both sides, but it still didn’t stop anyone from trying…sighing, she gave her weapon the once-over by hand and by working its holodisplay to access the diagnostic, glancing across the drive room at Ree—who’d made her way from the Rittermark jenny to the ship’s number one antimatter reactor—doing the same thing with her weapon.

“Don’t know,” she observed,”what surprises they might have in store for us next.”

“No,” Ariel replied, giving the assault carbine another once-over, inwardly screaming for the voice in her head to shut up.

“We don’t,” she added out loud.

28 JANUARY, 1986 17:22:29 EST

“Well,” Lang remarked nastily, “that didn’t work, did it?”

“No,” Revell replied, downing more whisky sour.

“Problem is,” he added, going back over to the wet bar,”neither of our men are in any position to do a goddamn thing to ‘em; God only knows whether or not your cousin’s operative is in the same sorry situation.”

“Makes me wish they’d captured one of ‘em ships intact when they invaded that godfersaken blocka ice 44 years ago,” Lang said.” Least then, we’d have somethin’ what could reach ‘em, possibly even hep capture that other ship.” “We were lucky,” Revell reminded him,”just to have recovered the few working atomic turbines in our possession.”

“Not that t’others would agree with ye on that count, Buck, ” Lang, refilling his glass with more Jack Daniels, remarked.

“I know, Freeman, they originially wanted all the technology destroyed,” Revell said, looking as if he’d swallowed something more sour than the drink he was mixing,”none of it recoverable.”

“That is standard operatin’ proceedure,” Lang reminded him.

“Y’know why,” he added, saluting the FBI deputy director with his glass.

“Yeah,” Revell spat, adding:

”I know why; that was also the objective of destroying MacAuliffe, her public stoning was to have served as the last straw, the excuse we needed to disband NASA and forget about space travel once and for all; it was to have been the one blow struck which would’ve expunged the memory of those animals ever having achieved spaceflight, while at the same time serving notice upon them that escape simply would not be allowed in any form.”

“Y’know I had n’choice,” Lang replied, defensive.

“ The Work comes first!” Revell snapped, turning to face Lang.

“First, Freeman,” he repeated. “Nothing else comes before it, especially something as utterly trivial as family ties… ‘He that loveth father or mother more than me is not wo—‘”

“Don’t y’fuckin’ think I know I fucked up?!” Lang, slamming his drink down onto the desktop, rising from the chair, screamed back in that Yankee sumbitch’s withered-up old cooter head.

“G.H. Christ, man!” he said.

“That ain’t the point n’more, y’dam’ Yankee!” he told him, coming round the desk to stand toe to toe with him.

“What is the point, Freeman?” Revell demanded.

“They’re both still alive, y’jackass,” Lang said. “And, as long as they’re still alive, there’s a better n’even chance they’re gonna come right back here t’Mother Earth and cause all sorts a problems fur us… can y’imagine the kinda damage the Work’s gonna suffer should either one of ‘em, but ‘specially MacAuliffe, gits herself found by the liberal Jew media afore we have a chance to get aholda her…while she won’t be zactly untouchable after that, it is gonna be hail tryin’ to put her down once that happens.”

“And, you propose?” Revell mockingly asked him.

“Waitin’,” Lang replied,”watchin’, gettin’ there first.”

“Got plenty a ways a doin’ all that,” he added, nodding his head,”without havin’ t’let t’others know.”

28 JANUARY, 1986 22:30:01 TAI

“Doctors tend to be a little on the conservative side with the prognoses,” Major Ryla Sedgewick said to Dick Scobee, as Greg Jarvis moaned and stirred in the bed below, his skin fully regrown, the gel which had encased him and the dead meat the nanos had sloughed from his body draining away into the med deck biodigester tank, to be recycled as fertilizer for the plants on the life-support deck above.

He had healed much faster than Unbroken’s chief flight surgeon had expected…third-degree burns had covered most of his face and body, his right lung had collapsed, his spleen had ruptured, ribcage snapped in too many places, internal bleeders out the wazoo…probably, if this had been twentieth-century medtech, instead of twenty-third, he would’ve been beyond help in the first place….

Nodding her head at the holodisplays above Jarvis’ bed, Ryla turned from her patient, letting Scobee fill in the blanks for his crewman, as she walked back to the med deck workstation, where Jami sat, cup of coffee in her hands…an all too familiar scene, she spent as much time down here as she did topside on the astrogation deck, she’d wanted to know the instant Jarvis’ condition had changed either for better or for worse, even knowing, in all likelihood, he would go for her throat, same as most of the other men whose lives they’d saved…Micheal Smith was looking murder at Scobee and at the Challenger’s two female crewmemembers…especially at them, now that Christa was holding Judy’s hand and the two of them were talking in low voices, laughing from time to time…both of them still more than a little apprehensive at taking the step they’d both taken, but that was for them to work through.

That, amongst other problems.

“They’ve decided to return to Earth,” Ryla told Jami without preamble, Jami remarking,”I figured they would, in the end.”

“Intelligence desk from Lanier,” the commander of the Unbroken then said, the holoimage of the ship’s intel officer—Ryla’s wife of over thirty years—Lieutenant Colonel Celina Albright floating over the workstation terminal, saying,” Albright on line, go.”

“Baby,” Jami asked,”have we gathered enough information to hack their computer systems?”

“More than enough,” Celina replied, nodding her head.

“They’ve decided,” she said, already knowing why her commander had asked that,”haven’t they?”

“Yeah,” Jami replied.

“Enough of their society is computerized,” Celina said,”that we can create the necessary fake documentation and transfer any monies they might have into other bank accounts; they can try going as themselves, but—“

Jami simply nodded her head, one of the med deck’s cyberteks trundling up to Jarvis’ bed with a replica of his flight suit and underthings recycled from the scraps of his originial gear.

“One problem solved,” Jami remarked.

“Given everything that’s happened,” she added a pause later,”I don’t think it’d be a good idea to drop them all off in the same place…Smith, Onizuka, McNair—if that is his real name—probably Jarvis as well, we’ll have to gate onto the planet before we’ve gate Dick, Christa and Judy whereever we decide to put them.”

“We can’t really hold McNair on anything,” she added,”Smith neither—macho stupidity not being a crime even in the twenty-third century…nor is talking on the phone with one’s masters, they were planning to launch that damn thing without any help from him, and the attempted assault’s a misdemeanor charge; I doubt taking him back to the future just to fine and banish him from Commonwealth soil’s going to mean anything to him.” “True,” Ryla said, nodding her head, Jami asking,”Celina, how long will it take to do what you need to do?”

“An hour, maybe a little less,” Celina replied, the commander of the Unbroken nodding her head.

“Let me know, baby, discomming,” she said, Ryla following her friend’s ice-blue eyes, as she watched Jarvis cursing his erstwhile commander…before stealing a covert glance at McNair, who looked back at him and shrugged best he could given he was still under paralysis, Jarvis angrily snatching the clothing offered him from the cybertek and getting himself dressed in sullen silence.

“That’s what I’d have done,” Jami remarked, before Ryla could ask her question. “Two, for the two of them.”

“Whoever gave the order to take out the shuttle in the first place,” she added,”was acting alone; his running buddies had an entirely different plan for the two of them, one most likely involving posing them in skinrags while fucking drag queens went at them, enough to tell the kind of story they always tell on teacher….”

She trailed off.

“Mama,” she said slowly, after a silence,”probably had to watch her step there too.”

28 JANUARY, 1986 18:05:01 EST

They hadn’t discovered it.

Nor would it have mattered…the half ton of C-4 explosive wired into the orbiter’s rocket engines was now as useless to him and to the Work as a female was to a man.

Special Agent Ralph Ericsson of FBI Counter-Intelligence swore to himself as he regarded the wiring which had gang-linked all the blocks of plastic explosive to the command detonator on what had been the Challenger’s middeck…that detonator having been wired into the workstation given to that schoolteacher for her “expiriments.”

Senator McCain had not been satisfied with the plan that hillbilly piece of shit had proposed, and the others had blindly accepted, owing to the lack of creativity and stagnation following the nearly four decades between the drafting of the History in 1948 and the present time, that stagnation and complacency having proven the near-ruination of the Work time and again, first in Texas and Ericcson’s former homeland—where the others had to write in a civil war and a persecution of black men to cover the Union’s assimilation of both his beloved SoCon and Texas—then through Nixon’s poor choice of heirs- apparent—Kennedy’s weakness finally forcing the others to act without Nixon’s approval in Dallas—then in what should have been a simple cleansing operation in ‘Nam, and, finally, in the mess which had resulted in that idiot Georgia peanut farmer being elected President and helping them almost undo over two hundred years’ worth of effort….

Senator McCain had acted on his own to do what had to be done…it wasn’t enough that the schoolteacher be discredited and distorted…that was still part of his plan, always would be, but that in itself would not have been enough to shut down the official program, nor would it have been sufficent to justify what had to be done to those animals…the mission had to fail, hers had to be the hand shown causing that dramatic and catastrophic failure and it had to be live and uncut on every TV set on the planet…then, while everyone was in shock, would come the necessary distortions and lies, the stories they always told about schoolteachers to neutralize whatever influence they may have on the children they were supposed to babysit for their men…on the heels of that, would come the decision to shut down NASA—the blame for which would be laid squarely upon their backs—followed by other acts of mass destruction on Earth, mass murders of civilians which would force the others to finally execute Operation Night Train, whether or not Project Survivor was ready—by the time it was ready, it would be too late anyway—caging and scouring the animals clean from their world….

Ericcson clenched his jaw until it hurt, balling his fists so that the pain of those competed with that of his jaw…after everything he’d done to make her right, his fucking bitch had left him, just up and fucking left him, probably with that skank piece of pussy he’d caught at his house more than once…three years he’d been looking for her and her piece of ass—Candace Pearsen, a fucking schoolteacher, ironically enough—using every resource he had, and…not one goddamn thing, not one goddamn—

The veteran FBI agent forced himself to calm down, put that all out of his mind…he had hoped this mission would mean a final end to his frustration…but he would come out of this alive, in spite of everything, and worse, he would do so knowing everything he’d worked for would all end up being for nothing…even if he told the others what he knew, and they believed him, they would be too busy bungling and fighting amongst themselves to be anywhere near proactive on it…not that the history he’d seen provided sufficent clues for them to know just what had to be undone now to prevent that future from taking place.

All of this assuming they simply did not kill the messenger and chose to deny everything…the History, after all, served to delude himself, the others and their race into believing what they needed to in order to accomplish the Work….

Too many wires melted and severed in too many place for him to splice together…he had considered that alternative, was in the process of triggering the explosives, when the middeck had been blasted apart, and everything had gone dark on him; he’d no clue just what the detonation of all that C-4 inside this ship’s hangar would do to it, if it did any damage at all, but it was his last shot.

Standing up, Ericsson took one last look at the wreckage of the shuttle’s tail section before walking through the payload bay, briefly considering the possibility of overloading the nuclear reactor in the weaps satellite he was supposed to have been deploying into LEO…at the same time, rejecting the idea, remembering the contractors, on instructions from the Air Force, had welded all the access panels shut to prevent any sort of sabotage…he could, he supposed, get one of the damn things open with no access to cutting torches…in a million years or two.

Sighing, he walked through the payload bay, stepping over the hatch leading onto the shambles of a middeck.

28 JANUARY, 1986 23:18:00 TAI

“I’m ready to go,” Jami said over her link, working the holodisplays in front of her, Commonwealth Forces Auxiliary Vehicle Ugly Duckling lifting from the deck and through the opening hangar bay doors, altering vector to insert the Mark V Greyhawk utility spaceplane into low Earth orbit the instant she’d cleared the frigate.

“Be careful, luv,” Stevie’s voice replied tautly…she’d of course had been against her wife doing this, but Jami couldn’t ask anyone else to…it had been her plan, one, and, two, everyone else was just too critical to the operation of the ship to be risked.

She hadn’t even wanted Ariel coming along, but Stevie had insisted, for reasons which had made too much sense for the commander of the Unbroken not to agree with them.

“TGT beacon circuitry checks out fine, Boss,” Ariel said from behind her, Jami hearing the steady whirr of a diagnostic scanner, as she switched on the Ugly Duckling’s distortion field, diddling with it till the spaceplane looked and hopefully scanned like empty sky, the commander of the Unbroken leaving it to the ship’s AI to adjust the distortion field to match changing conditions, as she concentrating on slipping into Earth orbit, and, from there, into atmosphere, aiming herself for the target Unbroken‘s radar had picked out from Lunar orbit. “That was the TGT beacon being fired,” Ariel remarked. “Vector is true for target, estimating impact in—“

“Now, I think,” Jami replied, the radio telescopes alive with the signal being transmitted from the telegate targeting beacon Unbroken had launched from a thousand klicks above the Earth, Stevie having broken orbit an instant after Jami had, not bothering to use the ship’s distortion field to disguise herself.

That being part of the plan, of course…Jami just hoped it would be good enough.

“Baby, take the wheel,” she said, when Ugly Duckling descended to less than a klick over his intended target, Jami unbelting herself and slipping past her chief flight engineer as she sat down at the piloting station.

As Jami made her way onto the troop deck, Ariel asked over the link:

“Ma’am?”

“What is it, baby?” Jami asked.

“Later,” Ariel asked, hesitant,”later, when this is all over…can you and me talk?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jami replied, just before the troop deck doors swung open beneath her feet, and she fell a thousand meters toward the Earth.

28 JANUARY, 1986 18:20:26 EST

“Hot damn!” Lang exulted, still holding the phone in his hand, Revell asking him,”what?!”

“The VLA’s picked up a strong beam of coherant neutrinas comin’ down outta the sky towards Washington State, NORAD, Omaha n’ Salyut 7’s trackin’ what’s transmittin’ that signal…n’ the ship what launched it; they broke Lunar orbit and slipped inta gesanchranus orbit little over six hunner’ miles above Mount Rainer National Park…m’thankin’ is they’re gonna use some kinda telaportation dee-vice, like outta Star Trek, to send ‘em on down.”

Lang didn’t waste any further time explaining things to Revell, instead letting his fingers do the walking, getting on the phone to McChord Air Force Base to send every swinging dick they could muster over to where that whatever the fuck it was had just now touched down intact ASAP or even sooner.

“Good a guess as any, I suppose,” Revell replied, pulling his radiocellular phone from his jacket, hooking up with an orbiting satellite, getting in touch with the heads of the FBI’s Seattle and Spokane field offices, telling them to head to Mount Rainer with every agent they had available, Lang already off the phone with McChord AFB and talking with Hurlbert Field, ordering the 9th Special Ops Wing to start flying towards Washington State and not to fucking spare the horses, switching lines, alerting the SEAL team here at Rosy Roads that Lieutenant General Freeman Zephiniah Ezekiel Lang had a job for them to do that required them to be on a Herky bird headed for Mount Rainer, before calling Gitmo, seeing what they had to spare for him, finally getting back to the ops boss here at Rosy Roads, telling him to have an F-14 gassed up and ready for him to use now, or, by God, he was gonna have some genuine Grade-A Texas tubesteak shoved eighteen inches up his goddamn Navy faggot ass.

Lang hanging up the phone just in time for Salyut 7 to call again, the Russkies letting him know that, according to radar and radio telescopes, the object was putting out some sort of global scanning beam, while continously transmitting that neutrino signal back up to the ship in GEO over Washington State.

“I’ll be goddamned, Freeman,” Revell remarked, as the two men headed for the door,”you might actually be right.” “Bitch,” Lang replied, both of them hauling ass for the nearest exit and the flight line,”I know I’m right; only thing what makes sense, it’s scanning the area round it, so those on the ship know just where to set them down, like the way ‘em transporters was s’posed t’work on Star Trek in the first place; that’s why that ship’s set up on a line a sight with the thing that it launched.”

The two men were outside, running as fast as they could towards a Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter being brought into position on the flight line, some enlisted piece of shit holding out a flight suit and helmet for Revell, Lang still wearing his from this morning, his helmet cupped under his arm like a football, the Air Force three-star ignorning the enlisted man’s salute as he put on his helmet and clambered up the ladder into the pilot’s seat, Revell cursing and fumbling his suit on before jumping into the RIO’s chair behind him, Lang kicking in the jets at full blast, securing the canopy and bulleting them the hell away from Puerto Rico, going supersonic as they climbed to cruising altitude and headed for Washington State.

28 JANUARY, 1986 23:21:16 TAI

“Bitch,” Smith started protesting,”what the f—“

Major Harriet Mangione shoved the twelve barrels of her Browning M4 Gatling railer into the Earther’s fat gut to shut off any further whining and prompt him and his three mates to climb up the telegate stage towards the spacetime rift, the hangar bay door grinding open behind her, Unbroken’s security forces commander hearing the sound of the Ugly Duckling’s gear touching deck, not taking her eyes off the four men for a second, just in case they tried turning round at the last instant.

They didn’t…not with forty women holding Gatling railers, assault railers, tribarrels and assault carbines on their sorry asses, the ship’s chief flight engineer and the other three members of Challenger’s former crew being the only other ones besides Harriet and her people in the room, this being enough to encourage the four others to step through the rift and into what Christa had called Mount Rainer National Park.

Harriet wishing she could go down there herself…from what little she’d seen on the telegate’s local control holodisplay, it was all crisp, clean and unspoiled, the perfect place for Kyra and her to get away from this war, if only for a short time…

“They’re through, Major,” Ree Moseley said, Ariel Dixon walking over to join her at the local control holodisplay, Ree quickly adding,”switching focus to Squadron Leader Lanier’s TG—oh, bloody hell!”

“What is it, Leftenant?!” Harriet and Stevie’s voices both frantically asked the ship’s second flight engineer.

“...no!” she screamed, bolting from the others, jumping on those fucking hounds as they tore that poor thing apart, clubbing the sumbitches away from her with her fists, kicking a couple more squarely in their sides, Jami cradling the other girl in her arms, begging her to be all right.

Before a click of the mouse had her on the ground, twitching, pissing and shitting herself, pain shooting up like fire through her every last nerve, the sixteen-year old girl screaming her head off, blood just pouring out of her twot, more blood pooling in her mouth, tasting metallic on her tongue, one of the guards, a lieutenant, screaming for someone to “dump the goddamn little howler in the fucking tank....”

28 JANUARY, 1986 23:23:50 TAI

…the commander of the Unbroken reacting, not thinking, just bringing her M6 to bear on that noisy flying eggbeater firing on the filthy, half-naked blonde girl stumbling through weeds, fifteen hyperdense deuce and a halves hurled out of the weapon at the speed of light turning that eggbeater—with what she could’ve sworn was a National Police badge on its side—into a roar of bluish-white light. The young woman…barely eighteen…wearing what Jami knew all too well to be prison-ish in any century…stopping to look up, sirens screaming and dogs barking closer and closer to her, Jami screaming,”goddamn you, run!” at the top of her lungs, khaki and blue-black badge-wearing men emerging from the weeds and abandoned buildings, screaming for both of them to halt, opening fire with a variety of single chemical-propellant slugthrowers which would be fatal for the young woman Jami was trying to protect.

But not for the commander of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken, her intergral AG harness zipping her all over the place at over a hundred kph, allowing her to interpose her AG-shielded self between the woman and the bullets coming towards her, Jami letting fly with the M6, a carbon gas cannister flinging itself hot, spent and glowing with heat away from her superheating weapon, Jami reloading before the icewarriors before her could take advantage of that.

None of the ones still on their feet looking as if they wanted to in the first place, choosing the better part of valor and getting the fuck out of Dodge as fast as their jackboots could carry them, all thought of pursuing their now-disappeared quarry forgotten, Jami snapping over her link,”what the hell are y’all waiting for, gate them down here, now!”

A spacetime rift forming before her, Christa MacAuliffe and Judy Resnick emerging from it hand in hand, Dick right behind him, Jami and he briefly looking one another in the eye.

“Go,” she told all three of them,”now, before the jackboots I chased off come back here with reinforcements.”

Dick nodding his head, Christa and Judy already stumbling through the weeds, tall grass and uneven terrain, in the direction of a narrow road in front of Jami, the former commander of the Challenger walking past Jami, negoiating equally uncertain terrain as he moved off in the opposite direction.

Jami herself stepping through the rift, back onto her ship, telling Stevie to get them the hell away from here and back to their own time, the infinity driver whining low even as she headed topside.

29 JANUARY, 2226 06:43:27 TAI

Doctor Andrew Charles Previn had to head back to home office to find something which would play the gold-plated vinyl disk recovered from the wreckage of the ancient American space probe which had ended its life in the middle of Freeman Lang’s Old Town…the disk itself having survived more or less intact, in spite of the crashlanding and the probe’s over two-century voyage through interstellar space.

Gently, he set the tone arm of the record player in the cooperative’s archives down upon the record—that was what they’d called them back then, records or LPs, for long-play—wincing as he heard popping noises from the attached speakers, the popping subsiding to a background noise as the unmistakable strains of “The Brandenburg Concerto” filled the room.

For a while anyway, the tone arm skipping, Charlie cursing the anicent tech, the record now playing back the sound of children laughing, the ocean, birds singing each to each, wind in dry grass.

The veteran cooperative scout and former FedAerospaceForce officer cursing that, what it meant, remembering all the people he’d lost over the years, all the sacrifices….

Antares and his old friend John Keller having to trade their lives to save over a hundred thousand others two months ago.

He closed his eyes tightly, squeezing out the tears, as a man by the name of Carter began speaking.

29 JANUARY, 2226 06:45:00 TAI “Son of a bitch,” Jami interjected, her ship emerging from the black hole, plunging deeper into the melee unfolding in hyperspace, the rest of her squadron fighting tooth and nail for their lives and the lives of the JMC convoy trying to get through to Tartarus.

“Fighter detachment, suit up and hit space!” the commander of the Unbroken barked out, 457s and Gatling 90s already blazing away, Prue launching Raptors in support of the ship, loosing the AG force beam in pulses through the beam emitters to sweep aside incoming tachyon-impregnated hyperdense masses of monomolecular carbon being salvoed their way by the League warbirds, fighters and UAVs altering vector to intercept them.

Unbroken’s twelve Mark IV Osprey fighters streaking forth from her hangar and into the ensuing fray. —endit—

The Way Of The Warrior “’If you love, love without reservation, and if you fight, fight without fear.’ ” Babylonian Productions, “The Coming Of Shadows,” from the series Babylon 5

29 JANUARY, 2226 08:01:05 TAI

This wasn’t an episode of SRO.

Nor was it an ep from Star Station Babylon either, mused Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier, as she sat at Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken’s intelligence desk, reviewing the past day‘s records… though Zellner had now found a way to extend the System-Wide Minefield round Witch’s Tit into hyperspace, even hyperspace mines couldn’t compete against the pull of the black hole which had dragged her ship 240 years into the past.

They sure as hell couldn’t use a graviton beam, drop a Genesis device down its throat or even deploy a warning beacon.

The commander of the Unbroken sighed…JMC hadn’t asked after her, too busy fighting a war on multiple fronts, Jami was just glad that her ship’s absence hadn’t cost them victory—such as it was—at Tartarus…in a way, JMC not asking made what she was about to do easier, not the first time a Commonwealth Forces officer had been asked to enter into a conspiracy of silence to protect something too sensitive or dangerous for anyone to know about, and time travel certainly qualified as both, there were more than enough people who’d watched bad sci-fi, and thought they just go in and fix things for themselves now by dicking round with then, when all they’d cause was trouble for themselves and everyone else….

Besides, the war she had to fight was in the present day.

“Unbroken,” she said to the ship,”I think you know what I need for you to do.” “Yeah,” Unbroken replied.

“Isolate all memory from 09:49:00 TAI, 28 January, 2226 to 06:46:00 TAI, 29 January, 2226,” Jami said, nothing she wanted to do less than what she was doing now,”including all memory from our time in 1986, from the rest of your memory states, triple encode, encipher and encrypt using a random algorithim of your own devising, key to my voiceprint, DNA and biometrics. After you do that, move those memories to plasma matrix drive f. and unmount the drive; authorization is Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier, commanding 2d Squadron, 5th Wing, Command Group of the Commonwealth Forces’ 5th Aerospace Division; Commonwealth Forces authorization passphrase: Sinless and pure, the Dark Lady comes. “

“It has to be done, Jami,” the ship replied, even as she blanked the holodisplay in front of her, severing those memories from the other memory states in her plasma matrices, scrambling them with an R3E scheme all her own, before moving the encoded, enciphered, encrypted memories to a blank plasma matrix drive.

“I know,” Jami replied, sighing.

“I just….” she started to say, trailing off.

Sighing again, as the ship then ejected the drive from her core, Jami removing it from its bay, inserting another in its place.

Taking the drive with her as she climbed up out of the AI core onto the astrogation deck.

29 JANUARY, 2226 08:12:35 TAI

Senior Astrogator Khryste Pollard studied her fighter’s master holodisplay, working both astrogation and piloting holodisplays as her Mark IV Osprey plunged deeper into hyperspace, tachyar pulsing out in all directions looking either for enemy convoys or enemy interdiction/counter-interdiction patrols.

Trying to keep her mind on her job, thinking about Jilly, how she was going to pop the question, if she was going to pop the question, if she should pop the question, if it wasn’t too, much too fast…they’d only been lovers a couple of months, though, from the first moment she’d met her, Khryste knew she was the one, if only she hadn’t wasted so much fucking time….

Sighing, she smiled, shaking her head at how stupid she’d been, just because of the things that had been done to her by things posing as women…she’d known them for what they were, it was just, at the time, there’d been too much going on for her to listen to what her own instincts had been trying to tell her.

She’d always known, even through the worst of it, that she’d wanted Jilly in her life more than anything in the worlds.

She studied the tachyar returns, only a glance, before returning her attention to the master holodisplay…Mama and Amy had already gotten married, two days ago, big church wedding, and she’d missed it(Amy and Mama had sent plenty of pics, though) , Movie Board and the average man were probably raising ten kinds of hell about all that, even though marriages between women had always been legal under the Articles of Union(or, at least, they hadn’t been expressly outlawed), it was just that the Yanghers had gone out of their way to twist the old Eb Plebbnista to make it apply only to chiefs and sons of chiefs, slurring the meaning of the words ‘til they no longer meant a fucking thing….

And, Delta Trianguli III had fucked up the way Omega III and Sol III had done before them, that being neither here nor there, the war she had to fight here and now taking greater priority. Another glance at the tachyar returns…nothing, local hyperspace had been pretty quiet in the hour and ten minutes since Unbroken had come back through the black hole to help her squadron take out an enemy hickey force trying to keep JMC reinforcements from reaching the Hell Star; according to the JMC intel stream, attempts by the League to reinforce their people on Tartarus had dropped off considerably since Dis had fallen a couple of days ago, though the fighting had not dropped off in the slightest…it had gotten bloodier, in fact, according to the intel stream, League forces and the men dressed up as prison guards and other inmates becoming more vicious and suicidal as the battle began turning inexorably against them.

They probably would’ve tried that next, after they’d….

….”fuck,” Harmony swore, moving to tear the thirteen-year old girl off the poor thing bruised, beaten and shivering in her arms.

Then, in her own voice, Harmony turned to Mama, whined,”Mama, that piecea poot’s fucking feelin’ on that other skank, after everythin’….”

“…we tried, her lesbian pathology’s still incorrigbly—“ Suzanne said, the guard snapping,”voice, you stupid bitch!” at her, Suzanne talking in her own voice now, the guard barking,”I don’t ever wanna hear ya fuckin’ act like you’re smart, you’re a bitch, fuckin’ act like a bitch!”

“Pootie still ain’t doin’ right,” Suzanne half-whined, grabbing Ariel by her hair, pulling her up to her knees after having beaten her face down, ass up into the floor of the cellblock, fucking making her look at the frightened girl whose pussy she was supposed to have spat on, after Ariel had broken away from her work detail, knocked hell out of Suzanne and a couple of her crew, pulled their latest victim away from them and had held on tight…Suz’s crew were all taking their turns banging her, three of them at a time shoving fucking toys into her mouth, ass and twot, slapping her butt, telling her that “pootie-poot like it like dat!”

“I mean,” Suz drawled in her thick hillbillyish accent,” I tried and I tried and I tried some more to teach this dumb fuckin’ girlie what we all ‘bout, but—“

The guard—Miz Pat, matron of the cellblock—just spat at Suzanne’s crotch, telling her,”all you bitches are good for, makin’ excuses.”

Deciding:

“Two weeks in the tank for this bitch,” pointing to the other guards standing round Suz, the two of them grabbing at her arms, dragging her off towards the cellblock’s fuck tank, Miz Pat then grabbing a fistful of Ariel’s hair, forcing her to look at her fat black ass as she told two of Suz’s crew,”and this bitch, she go straight to the Tail, ‘til the CA decide what to do with her stankin’….”

29 JANUARY, 2226 09:03:29 TAI

…nasty-ass poot.

“Baby?” Squadron Leader Lanier repeated, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon snapping back to here and now, her commander handing her a cup of coffee with bug juice and hot chocolate mix stirred in—an old Moot House trick—Ariel thanking her, the Boss adding,”the grits’ll be ready in just a sec; they ain’t instant, so they’re taking a little longer to cook.”

She sat at the edge of the coffee table in Unbroken’s relief deck, holding her Winnie the Pooh cup in both hands, looking dead at Ariel, waiting for her to speak her mind, those pale blue eyes of hers making Ariel more than a little nervous as she saw herself reflected double in them.

“The S.A.,” Ariel began,”s-said, at first, y-you….y-you—“ “Did her way you’re doing Ree right now,” the Boss finished for her, her words soft, her eyes now staring down at the carpet, her hand on Ariel’s left knee.

“Yeah,” she added. “Something I still can’t forgive myself for doing, the hell I put her through, just because she was in love with me, and I was so desperately in love with her, but I was just too scared of what I was, what I might become, of fucking up again, to just let things be.”

“What made you stop being scared?” Ariel asked.

“I still am,” the Boss said, meeting her chief flight engineer’s eyes again,”of everything, especially of fucking up…I just realized, one night, after trying to drink myself unconscious again, that I couldn’t do it anymore, I couldn’t let my fears and my own stupidity stand in the way of what I really wanted, and, baby, what I really wanted was to be with her, for as long as she’d let me be with her…from the first time she smiled at me, I knew she was the one…just…clicked, you know.”

“I think I do,” Ariel whispered, Unbroken’s commander getting up, taking the whisk to the pot of grits on the stove, telling Ariel,”please, God, tell me you don’t put milk and sugar in yours like some freakin’ tarbaby from the projects.”

Ariel couldn’t help laughing at that.

“No, ma’am,” she said, her commander cutting the fire down low under the grits, taking down a couple of big bowls from the cupboard, ”just butter, salt and pepper.”

“I gotta have a ton of cheese in mine,” she told Ariel, pulling the butter and half a block of Velveeta out of the icebox, ”and about the same amount of butter; I might overdo it on the butter a bit for yours,” she had finished fixing Ariel’s, bringing to her along with six strips of bacon on a napkin-covered saucer, a spoon and a pepper shaker,”and I’ll let you add the pepper.”

“Thank you,” Ariel said, already stirring the melting glob of butter in the center of her grits, applying a liberal dash of pepper, shaking her head at the bacon, sure she wasn’t going to eat all six pieces, her commander sitting down with her breakfast, crunching up her bacon and stirring it into her bowl of very cheesy and buttery grits, killing half the pepper shaker, turning them nearly as grey as steam table grits, stirring them to get some of the buttery, cheesy color back.

“Baby,” she said,”Stevie was the absolute best…she stuck with me even when I’d given up on both of us, and I will always love her for that…period…but, I should have never put her through it to begin with, I should’ve…..”

She sighed, picking up her cup of coffee from Ariel’s side of the table, smiling over the lip of the cup.

“Enough about that, though,” she said, after a pause. “I could tell about how scary the first time was, how very, very gentle, patient and kind she was with me, ‘til I realized here I was, on my knees to her, getting naked, and…and, instead of the worst I’d come to expect…my head got fucked with something awful—rest of me too—both in Witch’s Tit and all those loony bins Daddy and the quacks stuck me in to cure my ‘lesbian pathology’ and underlying ‘victim-state mentality….’ ”

She snorted, smiling wider, her voice dropping to almost nothing as she spoke:

“Instead of doing what she wanted to me, she got naked, close enough to it, got down on her knees, took me in her arms and held me, as I cried and shook, and it was then I realized I always trusted her, that she wasn’t anything like what had been passing itself off as female and abusing me in prison, the Phoenix Center and all ‘em other places…and, that I would never do anything to hurt her…cause she trusted me, she loved me, in spite of myself, willing to wait ‘til it was right for me, and it was as right a time as any.”

She sighed wetly, grinning like an idiot at the same time.

“That’s how it was for me, at least,” she added. “Like I might’ve told you once, it’s up to you to find your way out of the woods on this…I haven’t helped matters much for either of y’all on that, especially with that little Sunday drive with the PM to Black Mountain, probably muddied the waters even more for you, and, for that, I’m—“

“Your intentions were good,” Ariel said after a spoonful of grits.

“And,” the Boss remarked,”my reputation precedes me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ariel replied, chuckling, unable to help herself, choking off the additional “yours and your uncle’s,” before she could speak it.

“’Sall right, baby,” the Boss replied, after a couple big spoonfuls of grits, Ariel having forgotten she could read people’s minds.

“Not really,” the Boss told her.”It’s more of a phermonal thing, tho’ I still can’t explain how me and Stevie are able to do that, even in vacuum.”

Nodding her head, she reached out, placing her hand on Ariel’s knee again, whispering:

“Baby, you should always try to remind yourself of the people in your life who are gone now…no matter how bad it hurts.”

29 JANUARY, 2226 09:11:01 TAI

“It came from her weapon,” the Intelligence Arm forensic tech told Donna Rhoads, Director- General of the Commonwealth Forces’ Intelligence Arm, as she stood in the War Room, eyes on the master tactical holodisplay,”no doubt of it.”

Donna nodded, watching war and insanity unfold all across the map of human space, thinking about her sister—on New Utopia coordinating the war effort with the other JMC heads of state, running herself down running the Commonwealth government—her sister-in-law, leading the bloody fighting on Tartarus that showed no promise of abating just because the enemy had all but given up on reinforcing his troops there, Zellner instead choosing to reinforce the South Coast and the eastern part of the Terranovan continent of Basseterre, as well as his colonies in the Archipelago and Nasty Hank, finding a way to extend the SWMF surrounding the DM+50 1125 system into local hyperspace…fighting on the Yanker homeworld had become bloodier in the past month following Zellner’s removal from office by the majority rule he had, until recently, claimed to have been in favor of, with the minority of male citizens still devoted to him forming citizens’ volunteer lynch mobs to terrorize their countrymen, raising all kinds of hell, even inside the JMC zone of control, everything from ambushes to ten-year old boys with kinetic-kill devices strapped on their bodies blowing themselves up in the middle of either JMC troops or other women….

“Ma’am?” the tech said, Donna replying,”oh, I’m sorry, Leftenant.”

“It did come from Squadron Leader Lanier’s M6, then?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” the tech replied. “And, it is 240 years old, almost to the day.”

Donna nodded her head again…a quick meeting of the Defence Staff and the JMC had already been convened, Angelique listening in on it via T-Star from New Utopia, none of them taking their time in reaching the only decision there could be under the circumstances. “Secure the cannister and all your notes in the archives, Leftenant,” she ordered. “No further inquiries are to be made; that’s a direct order from the Defence Staff and the Prime Minister herself.”

“Understood,” the tech replied.

“It’s already been done, ma’am,” she added.

29 JANUARY, 2226 09:18:12 TAI

“…Black Titans’ Amazon shocktroops have just arrived on the scene, breaking up the protest with the use of biological agents,” TMS’ Kalandrah Wright told the worlds, a backdrop of black-leather wearing bull-dykes firing heavy nerve projectors into a crowd of unarmed women and men playing in the background behind her,”plutonium oxide gas and nerve weapons.”

It was just her voice now, the background becoming foreground, the “Amazons” running down, stripping and raping women supposedly protesting a marriage between two women which had taken place in the First Methodist Church, across the street from the Phoenix Center, one of the Amazons, all over big, spiked blond hair, tats, grabbing a woman in her teens or tweens, slamming her facedown into the ferrocrete, howling,”yeah, baby, you’re my wife-girlie now, we goin’ to the chapel, and we gonna git married!” she/he/it shoving a fucking toy almost as big as the one Randy used to use on her into the woman’s ass after tearing her jeans open and jerking them down to her knees, Kalandrah’s voice near hysterics, as she added,” oh, my God, those Amazons are dragging innocent women and girls by their hair to the church, they’re going to—no, no, get the fuck away from me, goddamn bitch, get the f—“

The holoprojection fell a long way down onto its side, the cameras panning in on another big bull- dyke stripping Kalandrah naked, beating her into the pavement, screaming for her to “shut the fuck up, wife-girlie,” before raping her repeatedly with a dildo, Kalandrah screaming her head off, as the holoprojection dissolved briefly into snow.

Only briefly, old Gotchanow, slavering and foaming away, quickly taking the place of the snow:

“This is Cynthia McKinley’s idea of free and democratic expression! The majority of the Terranovan people have spoken, have denounced lesbian marriage as the unnatural, unhealthy, perverse abomination against the natural order, against nature’s rule that one man plus one woman equals marriage, that every scientist, psychologist, military and law-enforcement expert in the human worlds have stated unequivocally that it is!

The majority have spoken, and Cynthia McKinley and the Commie dommies who own her have chosen to resort to rape and violence to silence that majority, to turning decent, God-fearing women away from the civilized values taught them by their fathers, their brothers, their boyfriends and their husbands, turn them back towards the jungle of their own innate perversity, turn them all the way out into slobbering lesbian sex slaves to drooling lesbian sex killers, and force them them to participate in grotesque, fraudulent parodies of the free expression of normal, natural love between one man and one w—“

“Off,” Sunni Pate said, the HV in the dayroom shutting up, Sunni looking out across the street, two women, arm in arm, one wearing a grey pantsuit, the other a beige pantsuit, both with flowers in their hair, walking—skipping almost—arm in arm, heads leaning on shoulders, down the steps of the church, other women and children throwing rice at them as they stopped for a second, warmly hugging and kissing one another openly, unafraid, not a jackboot in sight.

And, it wasn’t raining, like it had been this morning, when that old American space probe had come down hard near her room…the Middies had come in, taking most of the pieces back to their cooperative’s home office, leaving the crater to fill up with rainwater…FedNewsNet said they’d found an old-style recording inside, with audio images from the past; that was being bubblewrapped and sent on its way back to T-nova…. The newlyweds posed for a few holos before being helped into the limo waiting to take them away to whereever they were planning on having their honeymoon…somehow, that wasn’t strange, calling two women newlyweds…maybe, that was from seeing Amy and Lori together after their wedding at Owensboro Methodist Church three days ago, both of them with long dresses and flowers in their hair, Pastor Lambeck marrying them without a second thought as to what he was doing, even though he was supposed to have been against the whole idea in the first place….

She sighed wetly…the two of them were offworld now, in one of the many little hotels dotting the forested, fertile slopes of Firestar’s Garde Bien mountains, a splendid view of the Triang Vert in which most of the planet’s residents made their home…not too many places to honeymoon here, not for a while, Governor McKinley and her prime minister, a Homesteader named Suzannah Trimble, were still working twenty-four hour days trying to fix everything, get the infrastructure back up, rearm and reorganize the National Police to take over from the AFVC, consolidate the Homesteaders’ ad hoc armed forces into the fledgling Union Armed Forces, a million and one other things.

Security being one of those things, the citizens’ volunteer militas still operating inside the JMC zone of control had threatened a repeat of their actions during the recall election for any woman who even thought of openly marrying another woman in Terranovan soil, making good on those threats in Junction City—an hour west of Freeman Lang—yesterday, a gang of thugs doing a drive by on the city hall, killing the mayor, city clerk, two AFVC constables and a National Policeman from the Talbot County Command….the two women had gotten married in spite of that, once the president of the city council had been sworn in as mayor by the deputy city clerk, the thugs ending up hanging, bound, blindfolded and shot full of holes, from jackapple trees along Terranova 96 between Junction City and Geneva.

Loudmouth Jim Hunter had been amongst them.

“Sunni?” the soft voice of Kay Dixon, one of the Phoenix Center’s civilian volunteers, said from behind her.

“Sunni,” she said,”there’s a comm for you from Jonni, if—“

“Thanks, baby,” Sunni said, turning and sitting down at the sofa to work the terminal in front of her.

29 JANUARY, 2226 09:26:28 TAI

“Hey, baby,” Jonni Ward said, as she sat on the bed in her quarters aboard Republican Union Armed Forces Starcraft Albion, stretching and yawning, excusing herself.

“’Sall right,” Sunni’s holoimage replied…she looked one hell of a lot better than she had two months ago, Jami Lanier finding Maria helped a lot in that respect…she smiled more, more than she had when she’d been with Randy, the smile being more genuine these days…she’d grown her hair out…..

“Funeral services,” CBC’s Irma DeLong said in the holo sharing space with Sunni’s,”were held today for Terranovan National Policeman 1C Garrison Sipe, killed in yesterday morning’s drive-by shooting of the city hall in Junction City, on Terranova.”

That holo dissolved to a quick replay of the shooting in question, the Gnat throwing himself, rail pistol blazing, in front of the two women who were supposed to have been married, one and a quarters, deuce and halves, twelves, 25s and a pair of 90s not leaving a hell of a lot of him left to put in the flag- draped casket now being fired over by the remainder of the Talbot County Command, a Commonwealth Constable in the dark blue dress uniform of the Allied Forces Volunteer Constabulary piping “Amazing Grace,” after which a National Policeman played “Taps,” a National Police sergeant major walking over to young(sixteen, got out of training at Forsyth just before the war had broken out) Sipe’s father, handing him the triangularlly-folded Union Colors, the woman who’d piped “Amazing Grace,” then coming over to the old man, whispering she was sorry for his loss.

Sipe’s father blindly shaking her hand.

“Sorry, baby,” Jonni said. “They’re showing that poor kid’s funeral live on CBC…he was just sixteen.”

“I know,” Sunni replied.”The two AFVC who died weren’t much older...you know Loudmouth Jim was amongst the bastards who shot ‘em up, don’t you?”

“I do now,” Jonni replied, surprised.

“They just got through IDing the bodies this morning,” Sunni explained. “AFVC’s looking into who killed ‘em—“

“Not very hard, I’m sure,” Jonni remarked.

“Actually, yeah, baby, they are,” Sunni replied,”probably in spite of themselves, and I can see their point, that kind of thing’s what we’re trying to get away from.”

“True,” Jonni replied, still not sorry for the passing of Loudmouth Jim or any of the cocksuckers he’d chosen to spend his last hours with.

“How’s Maria?” she then asked.

“She’s fine,” Sunni said, sighing,”as much as….”

She trailed off, sighing again.

“She’s finally grieving for Shelby,” she told her,”something, as you know, no one would let her do before…other than that, she’s still got a long way to go…still has trouble sleeping….”

Jonni nodded her head, only thing she could think to do or say in reply….

“Like I said,” Sunni said, after a silence,”it’s gonna take a long time…if it ever gets any better for her.”

“How ‘bout you, baby?” she asked.

“Dead tired,” Jonni replied. “We’ve been flying round the clock against the Hell Star, the League warbirds defending it, enemy convoys and enemy patrols, making bombing runs against Heyerdahl, New America and New Georgia, all in the same day…just got through driving back another attempt by the League’s Mobile Force to take Big Sky and Hammarskjold…we’re stood down right now, Albion’s on Big Sky being refuelled and restocked, the crew’s resting up…then, it’s probably back to Tartarus…I don’t know what you’ve been hearing about the fighting there, but the League’s far from out of it, even though we’re doing a good job of cutting off their reinforcements…or,” her turn to sigh,”maybe, because we’re doing a good job of cutting off their reinforcements.”

“That’s what I’ve been hearing on the news,” Sunni told her, nodding her head.

“It’s bad,” Jonni said. “The League starcraft still in system are concentrating on attacking Dis, now that we’ve finally managed to secure it…the Hell Star itself’s a fuckin’ meatgrinder, casaulties are sixty, seventy meg worth of JMC troops and spacers, only about forty to forty-five percent of the women incarcerated there have been found alive—if you could call how they were found being alive….” Another sigh, Jonni clenching her fists tightly, remembering her own time in Hell, even if she was trying not to.

Sunni was staring past her, her own memories of places like that briefly taking hold of her, before she sighed again, nodding her head.

She asked, after another long silence:

“You get the holos from Amy and Lori’s wedding?”

“Waiting for me when we came out of hyperspace in the New Seattle corridor,” Jonni replied, joking,”along with a hundred meg worth of email telling me I may have already won a billion dollars.”

“In old American money,” Sunni quipped, Jonni asking,”I heard about that…what happened?”

“The Mids sent Charlie Previn to take a look at it, since archeology’s one of his specialities,” Sunni replied, waxing the most enthusiastic Jonni had ever seen her get about a subject. “He was already in system on other business, and he came almost as soon as that thing hit the ground…it’s a space probe from the twentieth century, Voyager something or other, all he and his people were able to make out from all the scorching and scarring on the nameplate…since there were pics of a naked man and woman on the plate, his first thought was that it had been sent out to contact other civilizations; he turned out to be right, there was some sort of ancient record in the form of a vinyl disc, he said it was used a lot back then to record sound…he took it back to Magrathea Station to play it back on the player the cooperative archives has which can play back those discs—“

“How did you—” Jonni started to ask, Sunni replying,”baby, this ain’t the Phoenix Center of old…I’m not a prisoner…I was watching him the whole time he was poking round in the wreckage, used to read his novels all the time when I was a kid, Jami and me both…we both wanted to join the cooperative and fly scoutcraft when we ….”

Sighing, she said, her voice bitter:

“We both had that in common, though, as you might know, we weren’t supposed to want something like that, we were girls, after all….”

Jonni nodded her head.

29 JANUARY, 2226 16:01:16 TAI

She still did a double take every time she saw the coiled snake outlined against the red, white and green stripes of the Union Colors.

Second Lieutenant Kishana Winslow of the Terranova National Police stretched herself as she walked out of the Bibb County Law Enforcement Center’s station house, eyes on the new Terranovan flag —the coiled snake being the symbol the Homesteaders had adopted ten years ago—flying on the highest of three staffs, the Silver Bear of Midnight Sun and the Avalons’ Marist Cross flying from the lower two, those two nations providing most of the non-Terranovan volunteers for the Allied Force Volunteer Constabulary’s contingent in Flyntsboro.

A contingent which had been reduced in the past month or so, as the new government—also in Flyntsboro—rebuilt the National Police, freeing those AFVC personnel previously assigned here to patrol newly-liberated areas of Basseterre.

Her former partner Jaden had been reassigned to Gray—liberated by the JMC during the violence of last month’s recall elections—while Kishana had chosen to join the National Police against her better judgement, finding herself with a commission within a week of joining. And, a great deal to do…there was still gang activity and citizen’s volunteer militias to contend with, all of whom had decided to make any woman even thinking of marrying another woman pay with her life and the lives of those closest to her….

None of which mattered right now…her shift was over with, and she was headed for home…to NaTanya and Tasha….her daughter and her best friend in every sense of the word….

It’d not been easy, especially with the war on, everything that had been done to them, everything they’d done to themselves simply because they’d both been afraid of what their feelings for one another might lead them to doing.

They’d told such stories after all, about women who loved other women, about poor Felicia, what she supposedly did to all them women she’d been with, when the truth had been she’d never gotten an even break her whole life….

Sighing, she tossed her bag into the back of her ’20 Nissan Sentra, climbing into the driver’s seat, firing up the ten-cylinder, two-stroke hydrogen burning internal combustion engine, powering up the car’s AG field and pulling out of her assigned parking space in the station house’s parking lot, Kishana telling the car’s simple comp to find her a channel running news and put it on.

“…recruited her 16-year old lesbian lover to assist her,” MSN News’ Jessica Lovecock said,” in what Terranovan Security and Intelligence Directorate Colonel Stephan Brown, a member of the League’s Special Lesbian Sex Crimes Tribunal, referred to as ‘an act of pure, unparalleled sadism,’ inflicted upon Savidge’s mother and father after they forbade her seeing her friend and ordered her to stop using dru—“

“Switch,” Kishana said, pulling out onto Telfair Street, turning at the light onto Hardeman Avenue, the car switching to Telenet 424’s Michelle Yeats telling the worlds,” Terranovan Special Forces Command Private First Class Lynndie Englund was formally arraigned by the Union Security Council at Fort Gillem in New Whitehorse today, for her rape, torture and murder of over seven hundred Homesteader men and women while stationed at the Cahill Point detention center. Englund, seen here with two unidentified females, was quiet, subdued, a far cry from the boastful young reservist who showed little remorse for her actions a month ago,” she looked even more butch than in the interview she’d done with CBS. “Special Forces Command Major Carolyn Wood, in her opening arguments, portrayed Englund as a high-strung, homicidial, brutal lesbian with a streak of sadism and an addiction to kinky and bizzare sexual practices with both male and female soldiers, including her lesbian lover, 18-year old Private First Class Sabrina Harman and a man their fellow soldiers described as their, quote,’chick-let with a dick-let,’ unquote, Specialist First Class Carlos Gome—“

“Switch,” Kishana repeated, the car catching FedNewsNet’s Josie Tallmann in the middle of talking about Garry Sipe’s funeral and yesterday’s drive-by in Junction City.

“—have been positively identified by forensic identification technicians, the Allied Forces Volunteer Constabulary will work with the Terranovan Buerau of Criminal Investigations to bring their murderers to justice. In a joint statement which is sure to generate controversy amongst many both on Terranova and throughout the JMC member states, the head of the TBCI, Juanita Barrett, and the head AFVC official on Terranova, Commonwealth Constabulary Detective Superintendent Julia Free, said, unequivocally,’ this will be investigated and the guilty parties brought to justice; while there are some who think these gentlemen got what they deserved, while we and many amongst the ranks of both the AFVC and the Terranovan Ministry of Justice may personally feel that way…what we want, and what the law demands are two entirely separate things…and, if there is ever to be any hope of anything good emerging from this, what the law demands must be what prevails.’

Meanwhile, funeral services for sixteen-year old National Policeman First Class Garrison Sipe were held this morning in the cemetery in his hometown of Howard,” Josie was talking in the background, as the Mids showed the highlights of the funeral,”Sipe, killed in yesterday’s drive-by shooting in Junction City, has been awarded the Terranovan Medal of Honor by unanimous decision of a special joint session of the Terranovan Common Legislature, which met in Flyntsboro’s Grand Opera House, with Governor Cynthia McKinley slated to present the medal personally to Sipe’s sole surviving parent, retired Terranovan Republican Coast Guard Rear Admiral Junior Grade Kennisaw Mountain Sipe, in two days’ time.”

“He believed in the law,” the elder Sipe said, his voice choked,”in doing right, more n’I ever did, that’s for damn skippy….probably never even thought twice ‘bout puttin’ himself in the path of those two women, even knowing he was gonna die, that was just….”

He trailed off, the Mids having the decency to cut away from that and move on to the rest of the story:

“The bodies of the two members of the Allied Forces Volunteer Constabulary killed in yesterday’s attack, Midnight Sun Federal Police Service 2d Lieutenant Jenna Persico and Avalon Federal Constabulary Detective Chief Inspector Talia Gregg, have been returned to their homeworlds of Windfriend and Alisande respectively, both to be buried with full honors tomorrow morning; funeral services for Junction City mayor David Woodard and City Clerk Marynell Chavez will be held at the Bethel AME Church in Junction City at 13:00 tomorrow afternoon, with burial to take place in the city’s cemetery.”

Kishana nodded her head, as she pulled into the parking space in front of her apartment, put it in park, cut off the motor, listened to a little bit more of the news before getting out, stretching herself again… they were still on the alert for any more such attacks, probably would be for however long this war—

“Mom-mmmeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” her two-year old daughter squealed as she came in a flash of green towards her, Kishana picking her up in her arms, hugging her tight, kissing her, telling her hey, asking her if she’d been good.

“Don’t I get a hug and a kiss?” Latacha Gipson’s voice asked, Kishana turning to see her round, chubby face split by a smile, making her look even cuter than she was, Kishana taking her in her arms as well, planting a wet, sloppy one on her right cheek.

Jokingly asking her if she’d been good, Tasha quipping back how very damn funny that was.

29 JANUARY, 2226 16:08:00 TAI

“Have a seat, baby,” Jami said to Astrogation Officer Indigo Myles as she stepped onto the relief deck from the astrogation deck.

The seventeen year old woman, nodding her head, walked over to the chair recently vacated by her boss lady, the commander of the Unbroken finishing washing the bowl, plate and silverware Ariel had used….she’d eaten four helpings of grits and half a pig’s worth of bacon…hopefully, she’d heard what she needed to, enough, at least, to go the rest of the way on her own….

Jami put the the clean things back where they belonged, taking the pot of Earl Grey, cups and chicken sandwiches she’d made over to where the drive room’s junior was sitting, shifting her weight uncomfortably in the chair.

“It’s a bit heavy for afternoon tea, I know,” Jami explained, as she laid the two trays down on the coffee table,”but I figured after eight hours on solo watch, you’d probably want something more substansial than scones, crumpets or bread and butter.”

“This is fine, m-ma’am,” Indigo stammered.

“Baby,” Jami remarked, tossing her hair like Alice, as she sat at the edge of the table, helping herself to a cup of tea with cream, lemon and sugar, “I don’t bite.”

“Ma’am,” Indigo said, nodding her head.

Unbroken’s commander made sure to look the short, white-haired young woman in her bright grey eyes, even as she poured her a cup of tea, straight, no cream, sugar or lemon .…she was as old as Jami had been when she’d graduated Academy and found herself on this ship as an ALt2C…she had her hair pinned up short, making her face even more elfin than it would normally be, just needed points on those tiny ears of hers.

“Have a sandwich,” she said, Indigo already tearing into one, didn’t bother fooling with a plate… both her mothers were Commie Forces, five generations’ worth, all the way back to the Great Civil War; her fraternal twin sister was her uncle Carson’s second, if she wasn’t mistaken….

She let the junior officer eat, at the same time the commander of the Unbroken picked up a sandwich and started eating...Prue was running solo watch now, Stevie would be up next, with Jami at the bottom of the lineup(part of her wife’s responsibilities as second in command included making out the watch schedule)each of them taking it in eight-hour shifts …she knew why Stevie had made it out way she had, and she loved her dearly, but, this setup left Unbroken’s command astrogator with little to do…after this, just the monthly ship’s status report—the ship herself compiling most of the data for that, Jami only having to add a couple of comments and sign her name—the annual evals and….another workout in the gym, a little target practice, re-re-reread a couple of the books on her shelves, listen to some of her music.

Climb the freakin’ walls for lack of anything else to do, she never did know how to handle down time…first, though, was this…she had to get Indigo at ease with herself, before she explained to her that the slipup which had sent them through a black hole and back into the past could’ve happened to anyone, it didn’t reflect on Indigo personally, and she shouldn’t beat herself up over it; she was too good an officer to fret herself over one little mistake…Ariel and Stevie both had had this same talk with her, but….

“Ma’am,” Indigo said slowly,”about me buggering up and sending us all into the past—“

“Any one of us,” Jami replied,”could’ve made that same mistake, baby…especially me.”

Briefly putting her hand on the young woman’s knee, she added:

“Nobody’s perfect, so there’s no need for you to apologize for not being perfect…you’re a damn good officer, your boss lady, everyone else on the command staff that’s seen you at work have nothing but good things to say about you, and everything I’ve seen tells me you’re the best I could have hoped for.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Indigo replied, nervous.

“It’s the truth,” Jami said.

“Ma’am,” Indigo said, nodding her head, Jami telling her to go ahead, have another sandwich, the commander of the Unbroken helping herself to another as well.

29 JANUARY, 2226 16:11:24 TAI

Jilly hmmmmed! as she warmly hugged Khryste, whispering,”you smell good.”

“Baby,” the commander of the ship’s fighter detachment reminded her,”I’ve spent the last eight hours in the cockpit of my fighter and in my suit. I probably stink to high heaven of sweat.”

Leaning her forehead against her lover’s, Jilly giggled, blushed, whispered,”I’ve something I want to ask you.” “What?” Khryste said, her heart skipping a beat or two, the eighteen year old woman trying to keep her breathing regular, the scream of Ospreys powering up and launching out of the ship’s hangar bay in her ears.

Jilly’s reply was to kiss her on the cheek and whisper,”not h-here, luv, i-in—“

“Jilly,” Khryste asked, picking up the stammer in her lover’s voice,”what’s—“

“On s-second th-thought,” Jilly said, Khryste holding on to her as she started trembling,”m-maybe we should do it here, I-i don’t think….”

She dryswallowed, looked away from Khryste for a second, then met her dark eyes with her flashing green ones.

“I-i….” she started to say, seizing up, Khryste laying her hand gently on Jilly’s right cheek, whispering,”I haven’t made things easy for us, have I?”

“Wasn’t your fault,” Jilly told her.

Khryste just nodded her head, telling her straight up:

“Even when I was doing my best to hurt you and push you away, y-you were always the o-one for me, that was why I was s-so scared, ‘cause….”

She trailed off, sighing, looking into eyes brimming over with tears, the words just coming out of both of them at once:

“Look, you wanna get married, or—“ both of them equally surprised the other had just said what had been on her mind.

“You,” Khryste repeated, smiling, in spite of her own tears,”were always the one for me, I knew that from the first time we met…I’m so sorry I made it hell for you, I wish I could’ve done it differently, I should’ve done it differently, but I-i want to be with you….for as long as you’ll have me around.”

“That’s gonna be an awful long time, honey,” Jilly whispered, smiling, kissing her full on the mouth, hugging her again.

“An awful long time,” she repeated.

29 JANUARY, 2226 16:28:18 TAI

She turned away from her door again.

And, again, Ariel came back to it, hand shaking as it hesitated on the buzzer.

It had all seemed so easy, just face up to it all and try to work through whatever came next, try to….

…jerk her down onto her knees by the chain holding her to the table, shoving her tongue down her throat as one of the other dykes shoved her fist all the way up in her….

…Unbroken’s chief flight engineer stroked the doorbuzzer, Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Rhiannon Moseley’s voice telling her,”come in, Ariel.” Ree was standing just behind the door, her second still in her greys, her blonde hair spilling down round her shoulders, her uniform beret askew on her head.

Ariel standing closer to her than she’d ever had, standard-issue quarters being pretty cozy…she saw her own stupid face reflected double in Ree’s light brown eyes, the door sliding shut behind Ariel.

Who didn’t even know where to begin, even though she’d now well and truly committed herself to doing this.

“There’s still time to back out,” Ree said, not angry, still more than a bit hurt, mostly….

Mostly, just as nervous as Ariel was, Ree adding,”if…that’s…what you want to do….”

…balling up one leather-gloved fist, she shoved it all the way in her twot, as one of the other dykes held her face down, ass….

…no.

“No,” Ariel said out loud, trembling, but, nevertheless committed to the path, no turning away n—

“Battle ready, battle ready,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson’s voice screamed over the intercom at the same time the battle-ready klaxon blew off,”flight crew to stations, flight crew to stations, commander and S.A. to astrogation immediately! Am detecting multiple hostiles inbound on attack vector! I say again, we’ve got hostiles inbound, all flight crew to stations, commander and S.A. to astrogation immediately!”

“Damn,” Ariel swore, sealing up her suit,” just when I finally—“

“It’s all right, luv,” Ree whispered over her link, the two women bulleting out of the second flight engineer’s quarters, hauling ass for the tailward inter-section connector as fast as their integral AG harnesses could move them.

—endit—

The Answer Is The Same “One life or a thousand, the answer is the same. We fight.” Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

29 JANUARY, 2226 16:34:19 TAI

“Yes,” Guy Thomas Zellner, Governor of the Union breathed out, the He who was over all the others watching His Heather Savidge and His fuckin’ Jennifer Duncan fucking going at it hot and nasty with a couple of the new fish, pissing and shitting on their titties, deep-throating their stinking ass pooties with fucking hand-carved wooden strap-on dildos, making the new little girlies in the block wipe their goddamn stinking asses with their eager, fuckin’ pink tongues, slapping their fucking cooters around when they didn’t lap up their fuckin’ brown motherfuckin’ cooters just right, His coldhearted fuckin’ bitch of a goddamn Heather—the words FUCK BITCH!!! a bloody gash on the same left forearm where she’d fuckin’ carve the words KILL THE BITCHES!!! and the rest of her to-do list later on—finally kicking one of ‘em down on her back, fucking strapping her dildo round the other bitch’s face, fucking sliding down the goddamn pole to fuckin’ get her stinkin’ ass all up in that shit!

Now Heather’s little girlfriend slapped the ass of the other new bitch, screaming for her to lap up the stinking-ass pootie of the girl on the goddamn floor moaning and flopping around like a chomper pulled onto the deck of a g-skimmer, little Jenni slapping that fat ass hard, screaming for it to get higher up in the air, higher, Jenni mounting that damn ponygirl as she slurped nasty, stinkin’ pussy, all four of the bitches moaning and howling like fucking—

“Yes!” He forced from His lungs, them sick fucks making Him go at it like a son of a bitch, the scene shifting to the actual murder, Heather shoving Daddy’s goddamn fuckin’ cock right up in her own goddamn mama’s stinking brown cooter, while her little girlie forced Mama to eat out her stinking goddamn, fat, fuckin’ cunt, sick fuckin’ whores passing round a huffer full of fuckin’ kike, getting higher and higher and hornier and hornier as they made Mama their bad goddamn lil’ fuckin’ girlie, fuckin’ made her beg to be spanked on her pretty little ass, Heather being the fucking mama and the goddamn daddy, just fuckin’ whaling away on that fat ass with Daddy’s motherfucking belt at the same time she kept right on shoving his severed bruise-bluish fucking pecker right up in that shit, goddamn sick bitch finally taking that belt, wrapping it round Mama’s screaming, sobbing, pale white-trash fuckin’ throat, cinching the motherfucker up tight and pulling as hard as she could, all three of em bitches screaming as they fuckin’ came together.

“By God, yes!” He hissed, those bitches still not through with Him, making Him watch as they dragged Mama off into the kitchen to join Daddy, burying her face right up in where Heather had done carved her Daddy a new fuckin’ pussy before fucking that bad little girlie to fuckin’ death, that bitch then grabbing a handful of her older lover’s hair, jerking her down onto her knees, shoving Daddy’s pecker down her bitch’s throat, asking her who the fuckin’ daddy was now, just who the fuck was her goddamn daddy now?!

“Yes,” He whispered, about to fuckin’ stroke right there on the couch watching this scene staged expressly for Him and Him alone, Heather’s nasty fuckin’ little bitch telling her man she was the fuckin’ daddy through a mouthful of fucking penis, Daddy fucking taking it out of her mouth and slapping her across the face with it, trailing come like fire from a comet, Heather screaming for her bitch to “put some goddamn panties on, and let’s go, bitch! We fuckin’ ain’t got all day!”

“Yes,” the Governor of the Union half-chuckled, half-exhaled, holding His wet, throbbing self in His hands and watching.

29 JANUARY, 2226 16:38:00 TAI

“…shipment,” the Movie Board prick on the other end of the comm said,”has breached containment, zero-survival protocols are not working, am in positive danger of being—“

Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier, commanding Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken didn’t care what the fuck else the commander of the Vargas Movie Board Security Vrunin’gee -class frigate running at breakneck speed towards the squadron of N.C.O. Manassas-class frigates her weaps officer had picked up on tachyar had to say, nor did she have to care, she already knew what was at stake.

“N.C.O. warbirds launching gobstoppers against that Vrunin’gee, closing to gun range!” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson shouted. ”Our Raptors and Ospreys are moving to intercept, launching hyperspace tactical missiles in response, weaps reactors and secondary Rittermark field coils on Gatling 90s and 457s heated up and ready to go, Boss!”

“S.A.,” the commander of the Unbroken said to her wife, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads,”close to unassisted telegate range; security forces to the telegate stage, drive room from command, Leftenant, you and four of your people are to join the security forces on board that bird.” “Ma’am,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon’s holoimage replied, the five-thousand ton Commonwealth Forces Dauntless-class frigate pouring it on, Stevie pumping tachyons through more secondary Rittermark field coils into the AG drive beam, the ship now moving at c times ten and a half meg, all her guns blazing, her twelve Mark IV Osprey fightercraft and thirty-six Mark III Raptor unmanned aerospace vehicles mixing it up with enemy IS.3037 UAVs and Grey Ghost fighters, the frigate’s 48 turreted Gatling-barrel 90-millimeter railguns and pulsed AG force beam stopping all the gobstoppers the Rednecks had launched against that Movie Board Security frigate.

The twelve hyperspace tactical missiles Prue had salvoed against them all striking home against their targets, Unbroken’s third in command shouting out,”Movie Board warbird launching fighters and UAVs!”

“We’re within unassisted telegate range, Boss!” Unbroken’s electronic warfare officer, Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Genera Muncie shouted out. “Targeting enemy vehicle’s drive room, focus established, mathematical conditions match 100%, security forces and drive room personnel stepping through the spacetime rift now!”

“We’ve got more hostiles inbound!” Prue screamed in counterpoint. “They’re coming in on all vectors, launching fighters, UAVs and gobstoppers!”

“That’s fine,” was the only thing the commander of the Unbroken could think to say to that.

29 JANUARY, 2226 16:44:21 TAI

Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon’s Browning M6 assault carbine was firing full-bore the instant she flew through the spacetime rift into the drive room of the Movie Board Security frigate, instantly blowing away an armed cybertek, burning down two flight engineers caught between working their control holodisplays and going for their guns, splattering another motherfucker shouting orders all over the Rittermark generator, bringing down a couple more trying to take cover behind the AG force beam generator.

And, it was over, just like that, the five Commonwealth Forces flight engineers and forty Commonwealth Forces security troops were in firm possession of the ship’s drive room, Ariel’s hands already working the control holodisplay for the antimatter reactor nearest her, using that to call up repeater holodisplays for the internal defenses and sensors…right now, control of the former lay with the command conn, the latter spread out amongst the astro deck’s four stations…a girl…native to Terranova…their only prisoner and the ship’s 270 surviving crew were having the Devil’s own time trying to catch her, as she ran loose throughout the ship, frantically dodging the fire of the internal defenses, stumbling and falling onto her hands and knees on the top most of the three hab decks, Unbroken’s chief flight engineer’s heart stopping for that desperate instant where she was struggling to her feet, a squad of Movie Board icewarriors this close to grabbing her, the ship bringing a turreted Gatling 25’s twelve contrarotating barrels to bear on her.

She worked the holodisplays in front of her, accessing the internal defense program, not having time for anything fancy, writing a blankfile on the spot, using search and replace commands to take out the authorizations and targeting files, writing up new ones on the spot, rebooting the system.

The Movie Board icewarriors ground into dogmeat before they could even come close to that girl, now half-staggering, half-running noseward, as the ship’s Rittermark jenny cut out and the Movie Board security frigate dropped back into normal space, Ariel fighting the AI to keep him from loading backups of the files she’d just corrupted, hacking into the lifesystem controls at the same time to disable the pluto gas dischargers, shouting out to somebody that the manual overrides should be on the life-support deck.

At the same time rewriting the file controlling the hatches to allow Unbroken’s security forces to move freely throughout the ship. 29 JANUARY, 2226 16:50:56 TAI

Standing in the operations center of the Tartarus Women’s Penal Colony, Martin Newcombe, Governor-General of the Hell Star since the end of the Jolian War, the colony’s twenty-first Helga since it had first opened for business nearly two hundred years ago, watched the end approach in ranks of Avalon indigo, Midnight Sun black and Commonwealth grey.

Always Commonwealth grey, same as thirty years ago, when Unbroken had blown his Djinn out from under him in the Nova Victoria corridor following his squadron’s successful sortie over Joli.

“All star forts have either been overrun or destroyed!” one of the operations techs shouted out, another shouting,”They’ve gotten through to the power room, AG shielding and all automatic defenses in main block are offline, am unable to reestablish control!”

“Bloody hell!” another tech interjected, before telling Newcombe the very obvious.”They’ve brought the transfer gates online, they’re coming through like a fuckin’ ‘orde of blackflies! Guards are completely overwhelmed!”

“All queens from Newcombe,” Newcombe said into his link,”all queens from Newcombe, you are to kill your bitches immediately. I say again, all queens are to kill their bitches immediately! All available guards and Movie Board Security personnel are to proceed to Club Sappho, the pits, the labs and so on and terminate all unassigned inmates at once; there must be nothing for them to liberate, no victory whatsoever! That is all.”

With that, the governor of the Hell Star walked quickly out of the operations center, straight down the corridor for the lift which would take him to the residence level of Block Alfa…the latest in a long line of Darling Children lay face down, arse up in her closet, chained by her neck to the floor, wallowing in her own shit and piss, waiting to be used for the thing she was…and that was most certainly not a schoolteacher, not a crusader for other bitches’ so-called rights, not a university honors graduate, not a star football player, not intelligent, not even fucking human, just another disgusting piece of stinking cunt who thought she was so much better than the men who she needed to provide her with constant discipline….

The men who had to resort to every means at their disposal to make her hate her own subhuman kind as much as they did.

Newcombe ran from the lift, through the courtyard, lungs burning with the effort, the governor of Tartarus damn near collapsing as he reached the garden gate of his house, keying his entry code into its system to unlock and open the gate and the front door, Newcombe stripping down to the knickers he wore under his uniform, littering the front hallway with his gear, as he headed into the changing room, snatching up the Helga mask from the Barbie head on his makeup table, carefully putting it on, carefully applying the knockers over his own chest next, then the brassiere….he wore the vaginal appliance underneath his knickers full time now, spending more time as Helga than he did himself these days.

Admiring Helga in the mirror, She then pulled on the knee-length boots, followed by the long, split-all-the-way-up-Her-fat-arse khaki skirt and the tight button down khaki shirt and black tie, Her blond hair already done up in a matronly bun, the irises of Her cybernetic eyes changing to just the right hint of cold-steel blue, as She picked up the cane that was Her badge of office as warden of the Hell Star, slapping the back of the chair hard, putting one booted foot in the chair, reaching inside Her pants to finger the bioplastic twot, stimulating the built-in emission glands, taking Her fingers back out of Herself, contemptously sniffing them to remind Herself why She should feel nothing but contempt for all Her subhuman kind.

Pulling on her black leather gloves with a snap! Helga then turned away from Her unsightly reflection in the mirror, walking through the door connecting the bedroom with the changing room.

29 JANUARY, 2226 16:59:07 TAI “I know ya like eating my poot, so here it is, ya stinkin’ Avalon dyke bitch!” an “inmate” screamed, wrapping its legs round Brigadier Adel Lancecrow’s neck, shoving its bioplastic vagina into her faceplate, Wolverines reaching through the Avalon Defense Force standard infantryman’s shielding to try and tear open her suit, the two of them staggering backwards in the narrow corridor before Adel shoved the barrel of her Browning M2 rail pistol into its gaping gob, pressing down on the filthy tongue-studded tongue slobbering over the top of her helmet, squeezing the trigger and letting the drag queen motherfucker have it with a five-round burst up close and personal.

The commanding officer of 2d Brigade, 19th Standard Infantry Division of the Planetary Confederation of Avalon’s 7th Army throwing the rest of it off her, her intergral AG harness moving her forward, both pistol and M3 assault railer firing full bore as she advanced, more guards and “inmates” where that one had come from, all of them shielded, heavily-armed, wearing AG harnesses same as her people.

Coming at the Avalon soldiers hundreds at a time in corridors designed for only one or two people to fit through, the AG-shielded monocarbon doors on either side of her muffling the screams of the innocents trapped behind them with drag queens who doubtlessly had positive orders to kill their captives the instant the last of the Hell Star’s cellblocks had been breached.

One of the guards snapping off a “fuck!” in his own voice, all those doors sliding open at once, one of the “inmates” screaming “keep those fuckin’ dykes the ‘ell away fr—“

Just before a deuce and a half turned his Adam’s apple into a geyser of pinkish froth, Adel blasting her way through screaming queens with both weapons, bulling her way into one of the cells, both her M2 and her M3 firing before she could think the thought, catching a tall she/he/it with glistening black skin in the midst bending over a white girl naked from the waist down, the bloody cane it had been holding in its hand clattering loudly to the floor, the white girl—fifteen, maybe—falling onto her hands and knees, as the thing holding her in its grasp sprayed the walls of the cell.

She struggled to her knees, looking up at the Avalon soldier with fear in her dark brown eyes, trembling, scared Adel was going to take up from what she’d been told was female had left off, the poor thing whimpering,”p-please, d-don’t, I-i-i….”

Doesn’t that sound familiar, Adel thought bitterly to herself, not even able to spare the time to try and comfort her.

29 JANUARY, 2226 17:01:27 TAI

“Goddamnit, Leftenant, where the hell are they?!” demanded the commander of the Unbroken as her ship juked, twisted, turned and shot her way through enemy warbirds coming at her from all over hyperspace.

“Somewhere in normal space, Boss,” Prue replied, feverishly returning the enemy’s fire, loosing pulse of coherent artificial grav, coordinating the efforts of the ship’s Raptors and vectoring point-defense fire at the same time she was doing everything she could to find that Movie Board warbird amongst the totality of normal space.

“Keep looking,” Jami spat out, a voice shouting over her link,”Albion to Unbroken, here we come!”

A Terranovan Albion-class gunship carrier streaking into the fray, her ninety-six ASC-130 Nightwing gunships and two companies of modified War Eagle fightercraft streaking ahead of her, firing 90s, 127s, 203s and gobstoppers, the Albion herself pumping bolts of ghostly blue from all her weaps, as she charged in right behind her consorts…Willie Jordan had brought her Formidiable and the rest of the squadron into it a minute or two after Ariel, her people and Unbroken’s security forces had gated aboard that Vrunin’gee, and Rasalgethi and her squadron had joined in a few minutes after that, the enemy throwing in everything he could spare after Unbroken had blown away the N.C.O. squadron responding to the Movie Board commander’s request to be taken out.

Stevie’s fingers worked the astrogation and piloting holodisplays, banking the ship sharply away from a Movie Board fightercraft—dubbed an F-302 in one breath-takingly stunning lack of originality— driving 90s and 127s into where the frigate had been, Prue blasting him back into normal space with one of the Gatling 90s, the ten 457-millimeter railguns pounding and smashing DNSB von Richtofens, Azanian Johannesburgs, Yanker Freeman Langs and Brit Maggie Thatchers left and right, Unbroken driving herself forward at fifteen and a half million times the speed of light, her guns splattering a Californio Los Angeles- class battlewagon and a gaggle of Dope King frigates trailing behind Mother Goose, Stevie twisting the ship round as a pair of Mountaindove Vancouver-class frigates angled in for a shot at her.

“Red Comet to Unbroken, here we come!” another woman’s voice shouted over her link, freakin’ Red Comet—who for ten years had been a skeleton sitting half-completed in one of stations of the Regulus Test Range—now screaming into battle, all guns blazing, her War Eagles and Nightwings joining Albion’s in taking out as many of the enemy as they could.

“Unbroken from Swiftsure,” Jasmyn Tilghmann-Gault’s voice said over the link now, Swiftsure, her squadron, their Raptors and Ospreys streaking past Unbroken,”tallyho! I say again, tallyho!”

“Unbroken from True Lover’s Vengance, here we come!” screamed the commander of the squadron of Zapho Starstrikers Genera was telling her had just joined the fight.

“They’re getting reinforcements as well,” Prue remarked, Unbroken blasting her way through enemy machines all round her, tachyar lighting up more League warbirds moving to take their places.

29 JANUARY, 2226 17:04:00 TAI

“I won’t fuckin’ let you slags have her!” Sidney Deal screamed for the umpteenth time in the past few minutes he’d been trading fire with Major Harriet Mangione and the women of two of her security forces’ five squads, the bastard son of a Wrong Dong Phooie SOB ducking back behind the hatchway of the inter-section connector between the waist section and the relief deck of this warbird, the…kid…he was trying to get his filthy fucking hands on cowering bruised, naked, soiled and bloody between him and her people, neither they nor the Movie Board’s number-one iceboy able to get a clear shot in at one another.

Harriet didn’t bother wondering why the head of Movie Board Security was aboard this ship, that was a mystery that would reveal itself (or not)after this was all over and done with.

“We’ve gotten to the manual overrides for the pluto gas dischargers,” her wife, Sergeant Major Kyra Spencer, said over her link.

“Good,” Harriet replied, letting Deal have a taste of her Browning M4 Gatling railer the instant that bastard ducked back round to fire off another burst from his Palmer/Walker IAW assault railer, the veteran Commonwealth Forces security trooper swearing again as Deal dodged the blue death ray which fucked up even more of this ship.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched as the turreted Gatling 25s attempted to bring themselves to bear on her people, the head Movie Board security thug frantically attempting to access the ship’s AI through his holopad and reset the internal defenses.

“I don’t know how long I can keep this up, Major,” Ariel Dixon’s voice said. “I’m fighting him and the ship, and Deal’s authorization protocols are hardcoded into this hunk of junk; I can only suppress hard-logic imperatives for so long.” “Keep trying, Leftenant,” Harriet replied, her wife telling her,”we’ve done a sweep of the habitat, life-support and, now the med decks…so far, no one else survived…Deal must‘ve hidden out in the AI core, that’s the only part of the ship other than the drive room not protected by the internal-defense system…we’re sweeping the det level n—“

Bloody hell!

When it rains it pours, the old saying ran…if Unbroken’s chief flight engineer hadn’t thought to keep the AG shielding up and running, the fuckers out there driving masses of hyperdense monocarbon at light speed into the Movie Board Security frigate would’ve ended this quick…as it was—

“AG shielding’s reduced by 70%,” Ariel’s voice reported,”ship’s primary and secondary electrical systems are fried, teritary el system’s only fifteen percent undisrupted…we’re not going anywhere aboard this bird, even if we do take it, they put one through the AG drive and the infinity driver, my people are okay, even though there’s now a hole in here you could fly an Imperial Star Destroyer through.”

The deck shook again.

“They’re Mountaindickheads, FH-14 Harms,” Ariel added,” and King Cobra UAVs; their parent frigate’s just dropped back into normal space, rapidly closing to unassisted telegate ra—“

“Told you slags you couldn’t have her!” Deal shouted exultantly from the hatchway, Harriet furiously vectoring another buzzing blue death ray in his direction.

“Ma’am,” Ariel said,”I’ve got an idea…I’ve switched the telegate to local control—“

“We’re already on the hangar deck, Harriet,” Kyra replied, “one of us is standing by on the stage, while I fire this damn thing up.”

The familiar heat-shimmering of the spacetime rift formed just in front of that young woman, Deal screaming a series of obscene, half-coherent rants, as a Commonwealth grey-suited arm reached out and snatched his intended victim to safety, Harriet screaming for the others to haul ass, all sixteen of them running like hell through the distortion in spacetime, the commander of Unbroken’s security forces shouting for Kyra to “reset the focus and yank the flight engineers out of there!”

Ariel, last one through, telling Harriet they didn’t have a whole lot of time, even as every one of them were running for one of the Argus SH.4 utility spaceplanes parked on the deck.

29 JANUARY, 2226 17:07:41 TAI

Sidney Llewellyn Deal might have appreciated the delicious irony of that Mountaindickhead being completely taken in by a trick straight out of the third of SRO’s multi-part season finales/premieres—”The Search For Houck’s Brain”—if he himself hadn’t been a victim of that irony.

If it hadn’t been one of them what had thought to do that in the first place.

The head of Movie Board Security watched the expanding cloud of dust which had been a Mountaindove Vancouver-class frigate and the Movie Board Security Starcraft Centauri Republic, sighing, as he worked the holodisplays in front of him, taking the escape vehicle into hyperspace on vector for the Terranova…He had liked the scenes Deal and the others had filmed on board His Capitol’s studio facilities (using the slag he was supposed to have been transporting to Mauberley3234ChainedHeat)for inclusion in the first episode of Lifetime’s new series Girls Unleashed!—hosted by some Sally Disney Group’s splicers had cut and pasted to look just like that slag Ellen de Grassi—that would run in his favor when news of this fantastic balls-up reached His ears, best Deal go to Him directly and appeal to the sense of mercy innate to all His race, not run for home like some cowardy custard. Least all the other ones, their butches and the Disney Group production crew were on different ships on different vectors…that would also work in his favor, he might even retain his place as head of Security…he’d grown used to the advantages of having the most authority amongst the pay grade twelves, more authority than even the members of the Board themselves(though he’d sense enough never to flout it in their faces…too often)and him having started out in the biz as a pay grade one doing bit parts in commercials, studio audiences and pornos just to pay the rates….

Sighing, Deal stared into the pod’s master holodisplay, working the piloting and astro holodisplays to avoid the battle swirling in hyperspace all about him in the nauseating reddish-greyness made only slightly more sane by AI enhancement of the tachyar returns, the head of Movie Board Security briefly considering, just as quickly rejecting, an idea to make for one of the League ships still in it, use it to try and hunt down that slag and those who took her….all that violence being traded back and forth by UAVs, fightercraft, frigates and battleships, the close quarters at which they traded that violence…and, the fact that the JMC machines were gradually, inexorably gaining the ascendancy over the League forces vectored this way on Deal’s word of command, made that notion untenable.

No…no, there wasn’t a thing for him save going to Him directly and taking his chances upon His mercy, as he’d planned.

29 JANUARY, 2226 17:08:01 TAI

“Hold on, it’s gonna be tight!” Major Mangione screamed over Ariel’s link eight-tenths of a subjective second after they’d gone NGE inside the hangar bay of that Movie Board frigate, Ariel grabbing onto a piece of gear in the cargo bay, glancing at the poor thing naked, shivering, bruised, bloodied and dirty, trying her best to curl up inside herself, cringing from Sergeant Major Spencer’s touch, retreating to as far away from the others of her kind as she could….

Unbroken’s chief flight engineer put her age at about sixteen, seventeen, maybe…about the same age she’d been when—

Fuckin’ A!

The blood drained quickly from her head, Ariel holding on tight to whatever the hell it was she was holding on to, Major Mangione going wide open, their borrowed transportation screaming and THUD!ing hard as its gear hit deck and started squalling, they’d come in much too fast, alarms howling inside her head, no telling what they were going to hit first, the Ugly Duckling, the telegate at the other end of the hangar bay, the side of the fucking ship….

Nothing at all, miraculously enough, Ariel thanking God, breathing again, the rear cargo ramp of the Argus slapping the deck plating with a ring echoing throughout the spaceplane, everyone moving to get the hell off it.

The girl staying put, retreating even further when Sergeant Major Spencer attempted to take her by the hand and lead her down the ramp.

“Baby—“ Ariel started to say, reaching her hand out towards her….

…grabbing a handful of Jenni’s hair, jerking her down onto her knees, shoving a man’s severed prick down Jenni’s throat,Heather screaming for her to tell her” who’s the fuckin’ daddy now, bitch, just who the fuck’s your goddamn….”

“…daddy, now, you sick fuckin’ piece of goddamn poot?!” Ariel demanded, shoving that goddamn fucking thing down Ree’s throat, making her choke on fucking come, another woman, dead, on her knees, face buried in the wound between a dead man’s shaved legs…. …that ain’t what we are, Ariel insisted, both to Jenni and to herself, that fucking bitch laughing at her, whispering, of course, you are, baby, you like her, and girls who like other girls have got to—

“That ain’t what we are,” Ariel said out loud, taking a deep breath, still holding out her hand to Jenni—blue eyes wide, scared ….

…crying...oh, God, Yolanda said Tracy was secretly lesbian...maybe she...oh, God, oh—

Tracy gently brushed a tear from Yolanda’s cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered,“ if I knew your coming out would make him do this to you, I—”

“He woulda beat me anyway,” Yolanda replied softly,“ and worse...he always do, always say it was my fault, ‘cuz I’m too outspoken, too smart and I forgot that I’m just a ho,’ and....”

“Girl, ” Tracy whispered, running her hand along Yolanda’s arm, “don’t you ever let anyone get away with calling you that...not even me, not even as a joke, ‘cause you dam’ sho’ ain’t no ho’...you are a beautiful person, Yolanda, you have no idea....”

…as they looked into Ariel’s.

“Baby,” Unbroken’s chief flight engineer told,”I can’t explain what you went through…you just have to trust me, it wasn’t what you thought it was, we’re not like that…she wasn’t like that, I don’t think….”

“S-s-she….” Jenni started saying, falling down onto her knees, sobbing uncontrollably, letting Ariel pick her up and hold her close, the two women descending onto Unbroken’s hangar deck and into the waiting hands of the ship’s med team.

29 JANUARY, 2226 17:15:38 TAI

“You’re gonna get it good, you slag!” Helga screamed, tearing through Block Alfa’s residence level, slicing bits of shrubbery and slapping solid objects with Her cane, fingering Her holstered nerve pistol with Her left hand, ordering her Darling to “come out here and face your punishment this instant!”

Of course, Her naughty little girlie would not obey her Mistress’ orders…of all Her Darling Children, this one had been the most difficult to break to Her will…when She thought She’d had it hating what it was, realizing it deserved what it got cos it was female, eager for the pain and humiliation all its subhuman kind deserved, fucking bitch goes and does something like this…it couldn’t just pull down its knickers, take twelve on its arse and allow itself to be used one last time before She’d wrapped the garrote round its neck, oh, no, no, no, no, couldn’t make it easy, it had to go and fucking claw Mistress in the face like the fuckin’ animal all females were, had to fucking run away and make it harder on itself.

The whole fucking place echoed with the sounds of gunfire, screaming and cursing, though nowhere near where She was walking…they’d linked the transfer gates down below to the personnel gates on this level, sent in more Commie, Middie and Avalon bull-dykes in a pathetic attempt to try and rescue their subhuman animal kind from all slag had coming to them simply for being slags.

What Her bad little Darling Slag had coming to it for being a bad little Darling Slag…She screamed again for it to come out and take what was coming to it, Mistress might be inclined to show mercy if it crawled out of its hiding place, stripped down, grovelled at Her feet and begged for some loving discipline, yeah, yeah, baby, yeah, yeah.

Knickers! Now She would never be able to get that damn song out of Her head, they should never have brought that slut Maria Santidad here to perform its little flashdance/concert thing at Club Sappho after degrading itself at the Super Bowl…none of its kind knew anything about singing, and their idea of performing involved a pole of some sort and just enough clothing for tits and twot to pop out during the bloody halftime show, so that the center of attention would be on that Mountaindove wetback slag whoring for the masses instead of on the War Eagles massacring the Fighting Falcons in a perfectly good game of American football….

“I gave you an order, you filthy fuckin’ slut!” She screamed, ripping apart more shrubbery with Her cane, the sounds of gunfire, cursing and screaming coming closer to Her. “You’d better come crawling out here, crawl out here and lick My boots, beg for the punishment you deserve for being naughty! It’ll go much easier on you, than it would if I have to find you myself!”

“Come out here!” She screamed, mentally kicking Herself for not bringing the hounds with her… it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d used Zeus and Apollo in a scene with one of Her Darlings…hell, She’d turned ‘em loose on this one more than once, tied it down while both hounds screwed it in every one of its bleedin’ holes, five times in the last movie, as a matter of fact, after which it had to sleep in the kennel and be Their bit—

Bugger!

That burst came entirely too close to Her, Helga cursing whoever had fired it, as She ducked down, narrowly avoiding being sprayed all over the shrubbery, the warden of the Hell Star reflexively turning in the direction where the firing had come, seeing nothing, turning in the direction in which She’d been going, quickening Her pace, continuing to hunt for Her Darling Childe.

29 JANUARY, 2226 17:37:06 TAI

“Shit!” one of her troopers shouted, a quartet of 90s guappo!ing the corridor, guards and inmates taking up firing positions behind them, laying down a withering fusillade of one and a quarters and deuce and a halves.

Beyond them, one of the infamous Hell Star’s gladiator pits, the veteran Avalon soldier hearing the sounds of lasewhips, cheering and screaming from where she was at.

“Heavy-weaps platoon,” she shouted over her link,”fuckin’ clear the road!”

“Fire in the hole!” came the reply from 1st Lieutenant Brandi Abdul-Malik, commanding the headquarters company’s heavy-weapons platoon, Adel hunkering down, closing her eyes tight, a single, roaring, blinding flash of blue echoing down the corridor, making everything shake, someone using Adel’s voice screaming for her people to move their asses, Adel’s body propelling itself headlong into the smoking, blood and grease-spattered passage before she could even think to move, M2 and M3 firing of their own accord, more guards and “inmates” screaming, firing, filling up the way ahead, the Avalon standard infantry driving on through, the heavy-weaps platoon doing some shouting of their own, their 90 mm Gatling man-portable artillery systems continuing to clear a path through septic, howling, murderous drag queens, all the way to a still-smoking hole opening onto the pits themselves, a Movie Board Security shield merged with the floor letting her know this had been the studios which put together at least some of the movies’ lesbian gladiator matches.

Such as the one taking place in the mirror-finished black chasm below her…two women—one black, one white—stripped down to collars, rings and leather G-string panties, were being flayed open by lasewhips in the hands of drag queens dressed in the same fashion…bioplastic appliances allowing them to look exactly like the women they were whipping to either death or a humiliating submission live in fucking 256-bit true color. The queens in the black-metal bleachers above the sloping pit were either cheering them on, garroting the inmates assigned to them or trying to take out the Avalon soldiers coming down upon them like the wrath of God, all of those choices leading to their deaths, Adel and the women under her knowing their type only too well, knowing from bitter expirience there wasn’t a goddamn thing else for these sons of bitches….

The white girl—eighteen, nineteen, maybe even in her tweens—was struggling to climb the slick side of the pit, trying desperately to escape the black queen, a guard mashing in her face with its boot, she/he/it kicking her back down, the queen grabbing hold of the back of her panties, tearing them off as he hauled her down, held her fast, balled up his fist.

Exploded in a shower of blood, bone and grease, same as the guard who’d kicked her back down and two or three others who’d grabbed up IAWs and opened fire on Adel swooping down into the pit, interposing her bruise-purple shielding between the young woman now cowering naked on the deck and the white queen’s lasewhip, the surviving gladiator howling,”sla—“

Just before a black arm snaked round its neck, a black hand clawing its face, grabbing hold, twisting hard, ‘til a wet craaaaacccckkk! had she/he/it folding over on itself.

The black woman standing there trembling for just a second, before moving past Adel, trying to take the white one in her arms, the other woman cringing from her touch, whimpering, shaking uncontrollably.

Not one goddamn thing else for these miserable sons of bitches, Adel thought bitterly to herself, turning back round and moving forward.

29 JANUARY, 2226 17:45:17 TAI

Their people were back aboard Unbroken with the woman they’d rescued from that Movie Board frigate.

And, the fighting was far from over, Senior Astrogator Khryste Pollard’s hands living organisms of their own, working the piloting and astrogation holodisplays of her Mark IV Osprey hyperspace fighter with scarely any input from her brain, things were just going by too fast for her to think.

Commonwealth Forces Ship Sky Dancer’s six 127s and twin forward Gatling 90s hurled tachyon- impregnated, hyperdense monocarbon masses into a cloud of Californio FH-4 Wraiths, scattering them across the totality of superspace in less than an eyeblink, the fighter’s two remaining gobstoppers already flying true towards a pair of Winterhavener New Belfast-class frigates, one of them slipping through the open hangar bay on one of them, catching him just as he’d been about to launch his detachment of twelve Banshee II fighters, the other Winterhaven frigate desperately trying to shoot the second hyperspace tactical missile down, juking out of its path just barely in time, only to be blown apart anyway by a 457 salvoed from one of the JMC frigates, Khryste’s last gobstopper slamming right into the fat gut of a British Prince Of Wales-class battlewagon.

Nothing but guns now, Khryste juking, twisting, loosing pulses of coherent artificial grav through the beam emitters, 90s and 127s striking home in all directions, Sky Dancer flying through a Phooie Wu- Lung she’d just killed, the ship and her pilot fighting to stay in hyperspace, Khryste feverishly feeding in corrections to the Rittermark jenny, trying to compensate for the violence churning up hyperspace like a hurricane whipping the sea to a rabid-dog froth at the same time she pumped more rounds into more enemy warbirds, fighters and UAVs trying their best to kill her.

And, she wanted to come home alive, now more than ever…she was going to get married to the woman of her dreams, in spite of herself…they had to set a date, figure out who they were going to invite, who they wanted to give them away, what kind of cake, a million and one other things they couldn’t even begin to start planning cause of the battle-ready blowing off and everyone hauling ass to their stations…. Right now, she couldn’t plan a fucking thing except staying alive so there would be a wedding… there not being much of a plan to staying alive, all reflex, instinct, hands flying across holodisplays independent of the brain which drove them, which was good, because thinking didn’t seem to enter all that much into the concept of staying alive….

With a scream and a shout, she ducked and darted inside a tightening swarm of Wespes, Gryphons, War Eagles and Harms trying to get her, the forward and tail guns all cutting loose at the same time, blinding flashes everywhere in the ghostly bluish-black of the hyperspatial band they’d all been flying in, Khryste bulling through one of them, 90s and 127s already pounding several Phooie Christopher Patten- class battlewagons out of existence, a quartet of Liberian Monrovia-class frigates spitting out FH-22s and Sidewinders as they slewed round on their AGAMs, Khryste flying between two of them like the Starcraft Pegasus slipping between a pair of Peep ships, letting go with all the forward guns, both enemy warbirds falling apart, the remaining two hosing the volume of hyperspace all round her with their Gatling 90s, the Liberian fighters and UAVs piling on her from all directions, as she just kept on fighting.

29 JANUARY, 2226 18:00:00 TAI

Captain Jillian Pollock looked down at the fitfully-sleeping form of a woman only a year younger than she was…nanos were inside her, repairing the extensive internal damage, while an IV fed nourishment to her clearly undernourished frame…bruises still marred her face, though the…other stuff…had been cleaned off her before Unbroken’s med team had even started working on mending her body.

Her soul, on the other hand…Jilly had seen it in her mind, a drag-queen parody of her lover brutalizing and humiliating her, the poor thing not knowing the difference, pitilessly broken through the most….

Sighing, the med team’s second in command dryswallowed, forcing herself not to cry…her job right now was to deal with this one’s pain, not dwell on her own.

A light touch on her right shoulder.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” Major Ryla Sedgewick, Unbroken’s chief flight surgeon, said softly from behind her.

Jilly couldn’t help but smile at that…it had been uphill the whole bloody time they’d been in Academy, Khryste making it so hard, and she never had to…it hadn’t been her choice in the first place, she knew that, but….

But, nothing…they were going to get married, she wasn’t going to hold anything against the woman she’d always known she’d wanted to share the rest of her life with….

“Yes, ma’am,” Jilly said out loud. “How did you—“

“I’d wager it’s all over the ship by now,” Ryla replied.

“We’ve only—“ Jilly started to say, Ryla chuckling, reminding her,”news travels fast onship.”

“Especially,” she added,”when it’s good news.”

“You guys set a date yet?” she then asked.

Jilly shook her head.

“The battle-ready blew off before we could get that far,” she said, still looking down at Jennifer Duncan’s body thrashing about, face twitching as she relived everything all over again, Jilly sighing again, as she found herself selfishly thinking about her own mum, lying in that same damn bed a month ago, beaten down, distorted, broken, dying in such an ugly….

She shook her head, Ryla now putting her arm round Jilly’s left shoulder, holding her, giving her a gentle squeeze.

“I miss her too,” she whispered…they hadn’t talked too much about that since Mum had died here on their med deck, rescued too late to be saved, Jilly having to be the one who had to terminate life support when it became inevitable that her life was, in fact, over.

Another sigh, heavy and wet, Jilly cursing herself for not holding it in, this wasn’t the time or the place, she had duties to perform, the ship was in the middle of combat, for Christ’s sake.

She nodded her head in reply to what Ryla had just said, looking away from their patient, at the holodisplays showing her status, at other holos over the workstation terminal, showing the status of the med deck’s local power grid and lifesystem, past those to the escape station hatch at the extreme starboard end of the deck; Snowbird had fitted that one with a modified form of the standard-issue shitcan, designed to hold the med team and six patients in automedics, a sign beside the hatch listed detailled instructions on what to do in case they had to abandon ship.

Of course, one hit in hyperspace, and there wouldn’t be any time to get their patient and themselves to the escape station in the first place…before, when combat took place mainly in normal space, there usually wasn’t time for that either, it being rare that a doomed crew had time to reach escape vehicles before their ship went up like a supernova….

Mum would’ve liked Khryste, it wasn’t as hard to like her, as she’d made it seem.

“I think,” Ryla said,”they would’ve gotten on rather well.”

“Yeah,” Jilly whispered.

29 JANUARY, 2226 18:38:20 TAI

She stumbled, picked up her feet, kept on running, even though her lungs burned.

She couldn’t even draw in a decent breath, not with this metal and leather thing locked round her chest, distending it, a pain like someone stuck a bunch of red-hot needles to go with the burning in her lungs every time she struggled to breathe.

Had to keep running, blindly ducking down alleys, through parkland, taking momentary refuge behind buildings, huddling next to dumpsters and recycling bins…only for a second, couldn’t rest but for that long, Mistress would find her, Her or one of the others, and it would be all over.

Gunfire rolling up and down the alley she’d been about to turn down, guards on one side, black- clad troops on the other…Mids, she thought they were, didn’t know for sure, wasn’t sticking round to find out, she just backpedaled, headed down a different way…she didn’t know her way round the residence level, Mistress only infrequently took her out in public, usually to Club Sappho, where She’d—

No.

She couldn’t let herself think about any of what had been done to her in the year since she’d awakened in the fuck tank on Block Alfa, dykes ganging her ‘til she said and did anything they wanted her to do, after which Mistress had come into the tank, told her her name was Darling from now on, and, from now on, she was Mistress’ to do with as she pleased.

She had to repeat that over and over, as she’d laid on the floor, p— Goddamnit, she’d already done decided she couldn’t think about that shit…she couldn’t think about any of it, had to block it from her mind, had to focus on finding a way out of here…after that….

She didn’t know…nor did she let herself think about that, no point yet, not when she was just running randomly, more lost with every turn she—

Oh, fuck….

She was standing at the opposite end of the alley she’d been running down, slapping Her cane hard in the palm of Her leather-gloved left hand, sneering at her, telling her,”we’ve been a naughty girl, haven’t we?”

She stumbled again, nearly falling down, as she stopped herself, started running away backward, Mistress taking Her time coming after her, ordering her to,”come here, bitch, come crawling on your hands and knees to Me, right now, and I might consider tempering your punishment with mercy.”

“Come here, you slag!” She then screamed, when she kept running, Mistress still walking, Her boots echoing down the ferrocrete. “Fuckin’ come here, now, before I fuckin’ make you come loud enough to be heard all the fuckin’ way to Mintaka!”

No choice now, she had to keep running, try to get beyond the range of the nerve pistol She and all the guards carried in addition to the canes which were their badges of office.

Mistress still didn’t run, Her stride steady, measured.

Determined.

Her boots echoing down the alley no matter how fast Darling ran, Darling stumbling again…and again, she just couldn’t get her feet back under her.

Her chest burned and stabbed at her, big blobs of color floating in front of her eyes, making everything around her seem surreal and disjointed.

Mistress’ boots echoed down the alley.

Then they stopped.

“Always had to make things hard, don’t you, girlie-girl?” She hissed in her ear, at the same time She grabbed a good handful of her hair, using that to force her facedown, ass up onto the ground, to do it so easily, Mistress letting her know,”a canin’s not gonna cut it, not this time,” at the same time She slid the tip of Her cane up and down the crack of her ass,”not this time.”

“Not—“ She was about to tell her again, when she kicked out, Mistress grabbing her hair even more tightly, trying to force her back down, cursing her, getting in a couple blows with Her cane, Darling kicking out again, bitch almost tearing her scalp off her head, Darling getting up, knocking Her ass down onto the ferrocrete, grabbing Her hair, as she got on top of Her and drove that bitch’s fucking skull into the pavement one, two, three, four, five, six, seven fucking times, Mistress grabbing at her tits, her face, whatever She could grab hold of to try and make her stop, Darling not fucking stopping, not even to suck down air, she just kept driving Her fucking head into the ground nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen times….

Her face twisting, floating in blobs of color, Darling no longer counting, she just kept on slamming Her head into the goddamn street, not even stopping when the motherfucker exploded like an overripe melon, and Her face came away in her goddamn hands, Darling just flinging the damn thing as far from her as she could, grabbing hold of Her head again, continuing to smash it up against the ferrocrete. Someone sobbing incoherently real close by.

29 JANUARY, 2226 18:50:08 TAI

“Baby,” Adel said, grabbing hold of the young woman, pulling her kicking, flailing and squalling at the top of her lungs off the corpse of the thing that had doubtlessly brutalized her,”baby, baby, it’s okay, it’s okay, it can’t hurt you now, hear me, it can’t hurt you now!”

Adel fucking lying through her teeth when she’d told her that…it wasn’t okay, it never would be, and it had already done all the hurt it needed to do….

One of her people whispered Jesus’ name—like he ever fucking gave a shit—as she looked down at the dead motherfucker with his face all bloody, raw and sporting random patches of bioplastic…his fucking head…it seemed Jesus was as good a word as any to describe what that looked like.

“Rest of its face is over here, Brigadier,” her top kick, Sergeant Major Leanna Kimbel, said off to her left.

She added, a few moments later:

“I’m not sure, but I think that’s Martin Newcombe.”

“H-helga,” the young woman in Adel’s arms stammered out through her sobs,”H-helga the T- terrible, that’s what t-they called her, s-she’s the w-warden of t-the….”

She trailed off, Adel nodding her head in reply.

Not a goddamn thing else, she repeated to herself.

For any of them.

29 JANUARY, 2226 19:00:01 TAI

“…she laughed in our faces,” Stephan Brown said to His Ellen fucking Degenerate, “when we caught up with her and her girlfriend in Tybalt Island, showing absolutely no remorse for anything she’d done.”

“But,” His Ellen replied, doing her lines like a good little girl, her voice dropping into the background, the holo showing that skank-nasty little Heather being led out of the courtroom in handcuffs by the plug-ugliest uniformed fucking bull dyke He’d ever seen in His life, the little bitch looking back at her baby Jenni, sitting just off-camera, “as your book, The Girl Gangster, and, my own expiriences as a lesbian both point out, Colonel, that’s just par for the course for our kind.”

“Yes, it is,” Brown replied from offstage, the plug-ugly jerking that skank away, throwing her ahead of her and offstage. “In recent studies conducted by the newly-formed League Ministry of Feminine Corrections and commissioned by the Special Lesbian Sex Crimes Tribunal, we have found all you females fit the textbook description of sociopathic behavior—“

“My therapist,” His Ellen chirped up, the foreground scene lopping back to the visual of the murders,”always told me that was just one of the many symptoms of my underlying lesbian pathology.”

“And,” Brown replied, that black-hearted fucking bitch of a goddamn lesbian sex killer now beating down on her bitch in the foreground,”there is no more pathological a lesbian than Jami Lanier herself…it comes as no surprise that a search of both Heather Savidge’s and Jennifer Duncan’s bedrooms both produced identical copies of Lanier’s Confessions Of a Lesbian Sex Killer, both bookmarked to the same pictures, the same identical passages highlighted and underlined in blue pen in both books…they even scrawled the same identical comments in the margins…Savidge’s copy was stolen from the library of the library of the Yukon Regional Youth Development Campus in New Whitehorse, where she’d been incarcerated following conviction on charges of both sexual assault against a female and possession of controlled substances, while her so-called lover stole hers from the library of the YDC in Flyntsboro where she’d been transferred following the incident you and your viewers have already seen.”

But which Disney Group were rerunning anyway, ‘cause that was the will of the He who was over all others.

“Yes,” He whispered, chuckling to Himself, watching bitches do what they always fucking wanted done to one another.

—endit—

Empty Cans And Charred Remains “i remember cats on fire, gasoline, a burning spiral i’m standing underneath the night, fighting back with all my might empty cans and charred remains, find them in the heat of day on the top of deadman’s hill this is what I know of shame forever.” Indigo Girls, “Dead Man’s Hill”

29 JANUARY, 2226 21:27:06 TAI

The final casaulty report floated before Commonwealth Forces Chief of Staff Rebekah Lee Tilghmann, Chairman of the Joint Military Command, as she stood in the shambles of the Hell Star’s operations center.

Of the 610,523,943,463 women forced to suffer assorted sadisms and perversities at the hands of fucking drag queens…262,525,295,689, or less than forty-three percent of them, had been found alive, liberated, more or less by JMC forces who’d bled themselves dry on the surface of Tartarus’ rockball core, the hellish surface of its sole satellite Dis and in hyperspace in and around the Proxima Centauri system.

Of the 985 and three-quarters million grotesqueries pretending to be women, the Hell Star’s entire population of guards, warders and butches of the real inmates had been killed, Martin Newcombe himself —the last in a long line of Helgas—having had his brains bashed out by his latest victim.

Of the half billion League troops and spacers committed to denying the JMC forces victory in this system…less than four hundred thousand had been taken alive, most fighting to the bitter end, hellbent on taking their enemies with them to that end.

Succeeding only too bloody well…of the six hundred twenty million, nine hundred thousand JMC spacers and troops committed in the past month or so, ninety-four and a quarter million were now dead, three times that many wounded, none of them ever able to sleep a peaceful night’s sleep again.

The Joint Military Commander looked away from the casualty report, into the haunted eyes of the woman who had been Lord Jim’s de facto military governor before the handover of power to a civil government installed during the chaos of the recall elections last month…her brigade had taken a prohibitive fifty-four percent casaulties in the fight to take the last of the Hell Star’s twenty-six cell blocks and nine “special purpose containment facilities….”over eight thousand killed or wounded, the rest….

“Ma’am,” Brigadier Adel Lancecrow told her,”I’ve got my intel people working on trying to ID the prisoners…those sons of bitches took their names from them, assigned them ones straight outta the goddamn pornos, made each of them believe that was the only identity….”

“Made them believe a lot of things, ma’am,” the Avalon general then added. “Sorry, I….” “No,” Rebekah whispered, laying a hand on the other woman’s shoulder.

Sadly shaking her head, telling her there wasn’t any need to feel sorry.

To save it for the enemy.

29 JANUARY, 2226 22:01:00 TAI

Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier stared out into the master holodisplay of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken, as her ship hunted down and killed the remnants of the enemy force which had attacked them.

The JMC intel datastream played across her left-hand command holodisplay, letting her know the fighting on Tartarus was over, heavy casualties all round, less than half of the women condemned there liberated at the cost of nearly a hundred meg worth of JMC troops and spacers…the girl they’d recovered from that Movie Board frigate was sleeping—more or less—on the med deck as nanos repaired the damage done her body…Ryla adding there’d been more grevious damage done to her heart and soul, that probably would never heal.

But, the commander of the Unbroken had already known that…only too well….

Tachyon-impregnated, hyperdense masses of monomolecular carbon hissed out of the five- thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate’s ten 457-millimeter railguns, each finding a target, smashing it into little sparks to rain down out of hyperspace back into normal space, her weaps officer, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson telling her commander,”that’s the last of ‘em….”

“…Boss?!” Stevie whispered, as all she could fucking do was shake and quake and gak up in her suit as she worked the astrogation and piloting holodisplays, Bearclaw Station behind her, in enemy hands, all those Mids, their wives and children, God only knew what she’d abandoned them to….

“Jami?!” Stevie pleaded, Jami feeling hands on her arms, wrenching herself away from them, as….

…she shook uncontrollably, trying to speak, not even able to do that, her stomach churning and boiling over, Jami sweating in her suit, forcing out the words,”t-transferring c-command to a-a-astrog- gation,” as she freed herself of the command conn, concentrating on getting the fuck off the astrogation deck and through the inter-section connector.

Just in time to start puking up in the sink on the relief deck, Jami having had enough presence of mind to unseal her suit before she got sick in it, holding on to the kitchenette as the shakes got worse, so bad in fact that the AG harness built into her suit of Commonwealth grey was cutting out, the kinestethic sensors receiving feedback too erratic from her body to process, her head pounding and ringing with pure, white pain, as she dug her fingers even harder into the countertop.

Her stomach was sore now that she’d gakked up everything there had been to gak, Jami using the sink’s sonic cleaner to get all the vomit out of the basin—least she had the sense to put away the dishes she’d washed before the battle-ready had blown off—her hands still shaking, stomach still queasy, head still hurting like a son of bitch, but she’ll be all right, Stevie needed to take care of the ship right now, she’ll be all right.

Baby, she thought, still holding onto the kitchenette, just take care of the ship.

29 JANUARY, 2226 23:26:08 TAI

They took shelter in a roadside park a little over three klicks north and west of Jesup. MiniNatRes’ budget having been what it had been during the Zellner administration, the park was overgrown with creeper vine and bogbushes, obscuring it from the ten north- and westbound lanes of Terranova Highways 23, 84 and 301.

Out of view of the others, especially his old friend Jay Todman, Lieutenant Colonel Carson Selkirk coughed his brains out, woozily standing back up after all the bluish phelgm he could hack up had been hacked up.

Nodding his head sadly, wiping his face, rejoining the others, the rock in his chest tightening.

His body was rejecting his niece’s t-RNA, which, ‘til now, had been holding the Lindsey’s disease slowly killing him at bay…he didn’t need a doctor to tell him that….

“Carson?” Jay asked, as he approached the picnic table where the Midnight Sun reporter and the nine women of Carson’s Commonwealth Forces Intelligence Arm field recon team were sitting.

“I’m fine,” Carson replied, First Lieutenant Meghan Polk, looking at the grill next to the bench, remarking,”I sure wish we could light this thing up, been a while since I’ve had good barbecue.”

“Agreed, Leftenant,” Carson replied, pulling a DB ration from his backpack, tearing it open, sniffing the flavor wafting in puffs of steam from the self-heating foil package…beef vindalhoe, Carson could just feel the curry searing his nose hairs, and he hated to think about how it was going to feel coming out the other end.

Oh, well, he remarked, unclipping his messkit from his equipment belt, it’s food, and I don’t think they’ll let us into the damn Moot House for a porterhouse dinner, now, will they?

The nanos in the messkit grew a fork from the handle for Carson to attack the vindalhoe with, Master Technical Sergeant Kimba Bledsoe, wolfing down the DB ration in her hand, remarking,”mmmm, steak and potato, my favorite.”

“I got a rock,” commented Sergeant Shawn Gyllenheal, sitting on the table, devouring her meal of bangers and mash, Lance Corporal Anne McGowan going”what?!” through a mouthful of tuna casserole.

“An old comic strip,” Jay, halfway through a DB meal of chili mac, explained,”pre-AWS, featuring a group of misshapen kids, the central one being a bald-headed one named Curtis Brown, something along those lines, who’s always either fucking up or getting fucked over.”

“About the size of it, Mister President,” Shawn replied quietly, staring off through the bogbushes,”save his name was Charlie Brown…I remember seeing a vid with him when I was small….”

She trailed off then, finishing her meal, putting the empty foil back in her backpack, grabbing hold of her Browning M6 assault carbine, ears pricking up at the sound of traffic—mostly ground traffic, thank God—thundering down all twenty lanes of blended highway running through the middle of the Wayne County seat, the first of three Sam & Bill’s just at the city limits…the front lines were another seventeen klicks or so to the north and west, the JMC easily overrunning Hinesville and Fort Stewart, forcing the 25th Shock Army from the field, once Carson’s team had successfully reduced much of the post and the 25th’s gear to nothing.

The Phooies and the Reggies had brought up their 66th Field Command and 23d Army respectively from Jesup to reinforce the Yankers at Ludowici, halting the JMC advance and turning it into bloody stalemate these past few days. “Anything we should worry about, Shawn?” Carson asked, Shawn answering,”no, Boss,” after a few moments’ hesitation,”mostly civ traffic, few citizen militiamen about, but they aren’t aware of our presence, no League cops or soldiers anywhere, least not yet.”

Carson nodded.

The real reason for Shawn’s tension coming through the filters of his suit…the “containment” areas—what had been called projects once upon a time(not a hell of a lot of difference….)were five to seven klicks further in…this was his homeworld, Marley’s atmospheric pressure was lower than Terranova’s, 1.16 atmospheres, as opposed to one and a half.

The rest had olfactory gear designed for the much higher-density atmospheres to which they were native…for the moment, they would be spared.

For the moment.

Carson turned back to his second…she had a fraternal twin sister on board Unbroken’s drive room, Carson had served with both her mothers when he’d been her age…three decades ago, and no fucking time at all to be a kid…his old friend was next to her, one hell of a lot older than the couple of years that separated him and Carson, the proverbial man of constant sorrow…he hadn’t been the same since he’d come back from Genjii, Carson hadn’t even come round to discussing what Derreg had told him on his way to the gallows…he just had to hear it from him, it hadn’t been enough for his old friend and fellow man of constant sorrow to tell him the woman he’d loved now more than ever had fucking died for nothing, had been snuffed out simply because the bastards who’d murdered her couldn’t even stand to face the truth, that their only objective had been death for everyone all round….

Sadly, he nodded his head, turning back to Shawn…she’d drawn back even more inside herself since the incident in Hinesville, though she’d let slip enough snippets for Carson to determine she’d not had any childhood, happy or otherwise, growing old in that godforsaken biz that had ended up taking Jessi from Jay…in his place, he would’ve gone to Derreg, heard it from him, probably would’ve handled it just as well, but, damn….

He sighed, the tightness in his chest worse than it had been, it would get worse still as the disease reasserted itself.

There were greater tragedies, however, than his own impending death.

He only had to look as far as those nearest him now to realize that.

30 JANUARY, 2226 02:19:34 TAI

Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon bit down on her lower lip, as she felt Unbroken’s landing gear crunch down into the tarmac of one of New Seattle International Starport’s landing pads, Squadron Leader Lanier’s voice coming over everyone’s links, telling them to stand down until further orders.

The eight other flight engineers comprising the ship’s drive room dispersed immediately, leaving their boss lady standing next to the Rittermark jenny a few seconds, wondering if what she was going to do was really—

Didn’t matter whether it was or wasn’t, in the final analysis…she wanted this, had wanted this for four years, only she’d been too stupid and scared to let things be….

…cheap liquor and bad liver as she threw a lit cigaret on her tits and screamed for her to d—

No, goddamn you, she snapped at herself, her AG harness lifting her up off her feet, hyperlag kicking in, she felt like a hundred and eighty, dead fucking tired, and that didn’t matter either. All that mattered was Ariel finishing what she’d started, Unbroken’s chief flight engineer unsealing her suit once she was through the inter-section corridor and on HabOne, most everyone else already gone to their quarters and to bed.

Ree, on the other hand…her second was turning to enter her quarters, stopping, looking back furitviely, sighing, hemming, hawing, turning back to face Ariel….

…bending her over the railing, jerking her panties down, shoving her—

…Ariel giving her a peck on her cheek, drawing just as quickly away, not knowing just what the hell she’d just done.

“What was…that…for?” Ree asked, her voice hopeful and uncertain in equal measure.

“W-w-wh-what I-i-i….” Ariel stammered…fuck, now she couldn’t even talk, she was just standing there like an idiot, trying to come up with the words, when all she really had to say was….

What she’d said just now.

That Ree was a beautiful lady, who she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

Neither one of them believing she’d said that.

After a long silence, Ree asked her:

“Are you sure?”

Ariel replying:

“H-h-hell n-no.”

Biting down on her lower lip again, she looked for the right thing to say, not even certain there was such a thing, blundering ahead with whatever the fuck came out of her mouth:

“B-baby, I-i’m still s-scared of w-what this m-means, w-what’ll become of m-me…y-you…u- us…if I t-take this leap, i-if you actually still love m-me after every stupid f-fucking thing I’ve done in the last four years to hurt you enough to make you h-hate m-me, ‘cause I couldn’t come up with enough courage to stand here and tell you how I f-feel….I-i wish I could take everything b-back, I’ve been such a stupid bitch, while a-all you’ve ever been to m-me….”

She trembled, as she sighed, looking away from Ree, down at her hands not doing a damn thing except fidget and tie themselves into knots.

Ree put one of her hands on top of Ariel’s two, whispering:

“Why don’t you c’mon in, luv.”

30 JANUARY, 2226 03:14:08 TAI

She didn’t play her guitar nearly enough.

Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads sat crosslegged in her wife’s bed, trying not to make a sound, watching as Jami sat in her workstation chair, Pooh Bear in her lap, her hands working the strings of the old red steelwood acoustic guitar she’d bought another lifetime ago in Sheridan, her eyes staring far away, her voice a whisper as she sang another song predating the American World State: “Some bright morn-in’, when this life is o’er. I’ll fly away. To that home on God’s celestial shore, I’ll fly away. I’ll fly away, o’ glory, I’ll fly away. In the morning. When I die, hallelujah, by and by. I’ll fly away….”

She trailed off.

“I know,” she whispered,”it’s morbid as hell.”

“I don’t know,” Stevie replied softly, her wife absently stroking Pooh Bear’s head,” I kind of like it.”

“Your mum?” she then asked.

“She used to sing me to sleep sometimes,” Jami whispered, swallowing, smiling, starting to strum the guitar again,”though she had to do it softly, so as not wake Daddy up….she had a real pretty voice….”

“Damn,” she swore, realizing she was playing the tune to another old song, this one they both knew only too well.

“I like that song,” Stevie whispered, reaching out, putting a hand on her wife’s knee.

“I sang it every time I fucked up and tried to push you away from me,” Jami said, looking past the wall of her quarters.

She sighed, turning to look Stevie in the eye.

“Ariel came and talked with me ‘bout her and Ree Moseley,” she said softly. “About how I finally stopped fucking up and let you into my life….”

Another sigh, Jami gently patting her wife’s knee, swallowing, smiling—something else she hadn’t done a great deal of lately—whispering:

“I haven’t regretted it once…I just hope she has no cause to regret, she is…they both are such good people, they deserve a chance….”

“Yeah,” Stevie agreed, putting her hand on Jami’s.

“They set a date yet?” Jami then asked.

“They just proposed a few hours ago, luv,” Stevie said, chuckling,”they haven’t even had time to let it all sink in, let alone do any planning.”

“It’ll be good to have something to celebrate on this ship for a change,” Jami remarked, nodding her head, patting Stevie’s knee, Stevie giving that hand a gentle squeeze.

“Yeah,” she whispered back,”it will.”

30 JANUARY, 2226 04:00:00 TAI

Meghan whispered Jesus’ name when they entered the periphery of one of Jesup’s housing projects/containment areas…right behind the Wal-Mart situated at the center of town, a warren of prison- brick houses and narrrow streets with tallgrass and creeper vine pushing through the fissures in the ferrocrete, walled off from the garishly lit-up MegaCenter and the other businesses along Terranova 84 by electrified chain-link fence, barbed wire and AG shielding. As I’ve said, Carson, looking at this miserable scene through a stand of tallgrass, not a whole hell of a lot of difference.

If Jesus had had a damn thing to do with this shit, it just proved Carson had been right not to believe in the long-haired bastard all along…fucking DNSB Blitzpoleizei and citizen militamen were slapping, lasewhipping, groping and cursing a line of chained and nerve-collared women covered only in welts, sores, filth, and he didn’t even want to think what else, back into the prison-brick houses, each girdled in more enegergized, barbed-wire fencing and AG shielding, Brit Royal Marine Special Colonial Containment Regimented Assassains—sans their heavy-infantry combat suits—guarding each gate, taking their turn in pinching, slapping, groping and calling their victims “slags,” as they helped herd them back into their cells, fifteen and twenty to a hovel….

“Like all the others,” Master Technical Sergeant Kimba Bledsoe’s voice whispered over his link,”we’ve come across, houses have been gutted on the inside, rebuilt so that they hold….cells, no bigger than….”

She trailed off, Meghan reminding her,”they may have sentries in this tallgrass on the lookout for snoops such as us.”

“She’s right,” Carson remarked,”either human or electronic, everyone keep alert.”

Stating the bloody obvious, but they had to focus on the job at hand, not on the nightmares that would tear at them later on…taking point, Carson led his team and the Mid reporter single-file through the tallgrass, just quickly enough so the blades wouldn’t slip through their shielding and snag on their suits, maintaining a parallel track to the compound, swearing under his breath, as they reached the end of the tallgrass, a stand of trees all that separated them from the back of the Sam & Bill’s, AG lorries backed snugly up against every loading dock, Microsoft Security thugs trolling in pairs, the Wal-Mart drivers gathered along the ledge of the store’s second story, their cigarets adding to the otherwise inadequate lighting conditions in the backlot.

Behind them, the concentration camp was lit up in a harsh roar of white, floods installed everywhere inside the compound, more than enough to blot out the suns when they rose again, sure as hell more than enough to make the eleven of them easy pickings, as they moved slowly along the fence line, no more than maybe a meter or two between it and the trees.

Son of a bitch!

He damn near had a heart attack before he realized the ground was shaking simply because the front lines were now that much closer to him, a fact not lost upon the men inside the compound, Carson watching them scurry about in even greater numbers, combat sleds and armed ground vehicles speeding towards all four sides of the camp, automated weapons—mostly Gatling 90s and 25s—starting to track movement along their arcs of fire.

Kimba letting him know that the double row of kinetic-kill devices underneath them had just now armed themselves.

And, that their triggers were pressure sensitive, gravitationally sensitive and command detonated.

By the time she’d finished reciting that litany of disaster, all of them were high up in the trees.

“The streets are mined as well, aren’t they?” Carson said, not asking.

“The whole bloody camp’s saturated with KKs,” Kimba replied, the thunder of the front lines even louder and closer than before, sirens by the bushel screaming their heads off inside the compound, Carson watching SCCRs leave off guarding their assigned areas and haul ass for whereever their suits were being kept. Behind them, four Mountaindove Sprague main-battle tanks pulled into position, their dual 203s, 127s, Gatling 90s and 25s sniffing round in every direction.

“Y’all switch off your harnesses and jump for it!” Carson said, finding the manual override on his chest plate by touch, turning off his harness, jumping for his life and praying to whatever that the KKs inside the compound were set exclusively to command detonation…and that nothing would be there to alert those controlling the KKs to set them off once he, Jay and all his people were through the shielding—and, he didn’t even have time to wonder whether he was falling slowly enough to slip through—over the fence and on solid ground.

More or less solid ground, Carson breaking off the f-word as he fell through an open manhole, right on top of some dumb jacker of a county maintenance worker, the two of them hitting ferrocrete and hitting hard, Carson hearing someone interject,”son of a bitch!” his multispectrum torch lighting up a huge fucking power tool being driven towards his faceplate by the pair of meaty hands gripping the sumbtich like a ballbat.

The tool clattering onto the deck instead, the maintenance worker attempting to smash his skull open exploding in a shower of blood, bone and grease as Carson reflexively pulled the trigger and let him have a ten-round burst from his Browning M3 assault railer at less than point-blank range.

Switching his AG harness back on, Carson moved away from the one he’d coldocked, hearing sounds of a brief scuffle up top, the rest of his team and Jay descending the manhole to join him, Meghan telling him,”the jackers guarding them didn’t have a chance to give any sort of alarm, we were on them before they could react to you falling through the open manhole.”

“Stuff ‘em all down here,” Carson told her,”tie ‘em down, close it up behind you, do it quickly and quietly.”

“Already on it, Boss,” his second told him, Carson watching as the Mid reporter and the remaining eight Commonwealth Forces recondos uncerimoniously dump the five citizen militiamen on top of the unconscious maintenance worker, pull the manhole cover over them, quickly loop monocarbon rope round wrists, necks and ankles, bind them together as they were and move out ahead of him as fast as their reactivated AG harnesses could propel them.

Carson nodding his head as he brought up the rear.

30 JANUARY, 2226 04:18:09 TAI

Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Rhiannon Moseley had said nothing, as the woman she’d always knew had been the one for her told her everything about her life on that bloody planet, about the best friend she’d been madly in love with, only they’d both been too afraid to say anything….the ugly rumors which had gone round concerning poor Meredith and the supposed bad-ass dyke of the town, rumors which had led the animal who’d trapped Ariel in such monstrous perversity to brutalize her further, to impregnate her with his child in a final, spiteful attempt to bring her down.

Rumors which had driven Meredith to take her own life and Ariel to almost do the same.

“They had the fucking nerve,” Ariel told her, balling her fists up, sighing back her own tears,”to ask me why I wanted to do this to myself, why I was trying so goddamn hard to keep them from keeping me alive…why Meredith had blown her brains out that night, when they were the main ones who’d….”

Another sigh.

“Her last letter,” she said slowly, her voice quavering, Ree taking one of her flailing hands in hers,”is in the safe in my quarters…I’ll s-show it to you, later, if you want.…s-she told me everything, said she was s-sorry for the way she f-felt about me….goddamn bastards fucking gloated over her being dead, that crazy bastard—“

“I shouldn’t talk about her uncle like that,” she said, shaking her head.”God knows after everything he’s been through….”

She trailed off, started over:

“Anyway, Carson Selkirk was right about that, they’d all had come to her funeral just to fucking gloat….that dirty son of a bitch, Frankie Baby Spiers, fucking delivered a sermon about how her having those feelings had done her in, how any girl who liked other girls was gonna end up on drugs or in a gang or prison or something j-just as bad.”

She swallowed, staring up at the ceiling of Ree’s quarters, at the fibre-optic light guides still dimmed to night cycle…Unbroken’s second engineer could’ve asked the ship to override the enviro programming and bring the lights up full, but Ariel hadn’t asked, and the semidarkness seemed more appropriate somehow.

“It was Carson,” Ariel finally spoke after a silence,”who’d given me that letter the first time, when I was in the hospital…I’d thought for sure it’d been destroyed or taken into evidence when the Gnats and the TSID tossed my room or when the Movie Board rented it from Daddy, used it in their coverage of a trial I never got…somehow or another, my Aunt Shirley had managed to hold on to it, she gave it to me last time I was on Terranova....”

She trailed off again.

“What about your baby?” Ree asked. “Have you—“

“There was no baby,” Ariel replied. “Damn thing of it all was I couldn’t have kids, Ree, Caledon indigo dye’s a carcinogen, it’d gotten into my ovaries somehow, infected them with cancer….”

She stared down at her feet.

“I’m still ashamed to say this,” she added,”and you’ll probably think a lot less of me for saying it, but me finding out I couldn’t have kids was about the best news I’d ever heard….”

She looked back up into Ree’s eyes, whispering:

“Baby, you just don’t know…it killed my mama to see her girls done the way she was done, slapped down as hard as they slapped her down…it hurt like hell to have her turn her back on us, to hate us, but I can’t hate her for that, it was the only goddamn way she could survive, I knew that….Ree, given a choice between having to learn to hate my own daughters, dying a little every day ‘cause there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do for them…and, not having to worry about that, ever….”

Ariel was right…Ree didn’t know.

She couldn’t.

“I can’t judge you,” Ree whispered,”not for that.”

Ariel gave her friend’s hand a gentle squeeze.

“That night, after they’d buried Meredith,” she continued,”a girl named Yolanda Owens ended up coming out…after she stood up for me…I don’t know what became of the woman she loved, I did see enough of what passed between them to realize it wasn’t what everyone said it was…my daddy was screwing me with his fucking dildo when the Gnats burst in later that night, beat me down, told me I’d fucking raped and murdered Yolanda in some kind of Satannic ritual underneath the full Judas, tossed me in the back of their War Pig…last thing I remember was all of ‘em ganging me, e-even their fucking h- hounds—“

Ree whispered the name of God in reply, Ariel telling her He hadn’t a bloody thing to do what had happened.

“I woke up in the tank on Witch’s Tit,” her friend went on, starting to shake,”a half-dozen dykes raping and beating me down, telling me I was poot, that my crying and squalling wasn’t gonna work on my own f-fucking tri-tri….”

Ariel letting Ree hold her close, shush her, stroke her hair as all she could do was shake and sob uncontrollably against her breasts.

30 JANUARY, 2226 04:31:16 TAI

She cradled Winnie the Pooh against her with her right foot curled up inside the chair, Jami still absently strumming whatever tune came to mind, starting to sing from time to time, as Stevie sat on the bed with her long legs tucked beneath her, her auburn hair spilling down in ringlets round her shoulders, her hazel eyes dancing with reflected light, her smile….

Jami sighed, not able to help smiling herself…they should both be asleep, they’d been up for two days, give or take a couple of centuries, the lag from adjusting from being in hyperspace to being in the past to being in hyperspace again to being in normal space in the present should’ve hit them hard.

Probably would once they’d both made up their minds to go to bed…no hurry, the squadron were stood down for a few days, while JMC shifted gears on Tartarus, going from fighting a bloody battle to the tasks of treating and evacuating the wounded, identifying the inmates—survivors and dead—informing families of those killed, cataloging the atrocities which had taken place on that miserable hole over the past 187 years….

Another sigh.

“And,” Stevie said huskily, completing her wife’s train of thought,”it’s not even started, not really.”

“I know, baby,” Jami, reaching out blindly, taking Stevie’s hand in hers, squeezing it gently.

“You wanna go out?” she then asked.

“It’s half-past four in the morning, luv,” Stevie said.

“Later on today,” Jami explained,”after we’ve both gotten some sleep…whereever you wanna go, movies, dinner, dancing, shopping, walk in the park, doesn’t matter.”

“You know,” Stevie said,”come to think of it, we haven’t gone riding in ages.”

Jami chuckled.

“Surprised you still want to, after the last time—“

Stevie burst out laughing:

“Oh, you mean the time where you plowed us right into Lake Blackbear, on Liao.”

“Yeah,” Jami said, chuckling, blushing as she ducked her head down,”that time.” “The Mid FedPolicemen were all just shaking their heads at us,” Stevie reminded her, still laughing,” as they fished us out of the middle of the bloody lake, both of us soaking wet, just because you had to drive like a blinkin’ maniac down FedHighway 222 at three times the speed of sound—“

“Baby,” Jami said, “I didn’t plan on missing that last curve; damn thing just came up at me out of nowhere. Mids could’ve at least let someone know they were going to reroute that highway.”

Stevie chuckled, bending over and stretching to give Jami a peck on the cheek, whispering:

“I also remember that it was ever so much fun getting warm and dry afterwards.” sending cold shivers up and down her wife’s body by blowing in her ear, Jami giggling like a kid.

“Baby, stop,” she said, still giggling, Stevie, of course, blowing in her ear again, Jami turning round, Stevie telling her,”oh, no, no you don’t, no, you don’t,” as Jami began tickling the soles of her feet, putting both Pooh Bear and her guitar on top of the workstation, Stevie laughing hysterically as she reached underneath her wife’s arms.

Both of them falling on top of one another on the deck, the two of them continuing to tickle one another, rolling round on the floor, laughing insanely the entire time.

Finally, Stevie, heaving, her face red, said,”I-i-i give up.”

“Me t-too, baby,” Jami, just as red-faced and panting for breath as her wife, said, the two of them wrapped round one another, lying on their sides on the plush grey carpeting.

Stevie brushing some of Jami’s straight blonde hair along her cheek as she kissed her briefly on her lips, leaning her head against hers, whispering:

“I haven’t regretted it either.”

30 JANUARY, 2226 04:41:13 TAI

“Shit!” an AFEG Army Striker swore, just before deuce and a halves hosed his sorry ass all over the pavement, Carson clouting a couple of citizen militia thugs upside their fucking heads with his M3, drawing his Browning M2 rail pistol with his free hand, smashing out the faceplate and front teeth of a sausage sucker in the process, splattering his gay Teutonic butt pirate lovers all over the place the instant he pulled the trigger, his people and Jay already mixing it up with an assorted crew of soldiers, cops and citizen militiamen, an A Faggot lying dead at Carson’s feet, his brains dashed out from the manhole cover lying alongside his misshapen skull.

Carson knew he would be dead as well if he hung around in one spot for too long, moving forward, both weapons superheating as their infinity drivers compressed artificial grav to infinite enough to drive trucks into folks at the speed of light, his own shielding more colors of the rainbow than marshmallows in a box of Lucky Charms, and he didn’t want to think about all the damage the ones getting through were doing as they tore into his suit, his bones and whatnot.

Not that he had the luxury of thinking, being fully engaged by half the fucking League in the middle of some rat-infested, vine-overgrown, miserable fucking sewer of a goddamn ghetto as he was, Carson’s AG harness hurtling him headlong into more enemy by the second at nearly 130 kph, Carson blazing away with the M2 when the cannister in his M3 flung itself away from the weapon white-hot, steaming and spent, the veteran of too many days like this reloading the rifle one-handed, picking back up from where he’d left off in less than no ti— RIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPP!!!SZZZZZZZZ!POP!!

That got his attention, just briefly…just fucking long enough for some screaming clod of a Brit Royal Marine SCCR to try and take his head off with the butt of his Palmer/Walker IAW, Carson taking his off instead with a ten-round burst that emptied the cannister in his M2, a slow, steady guappo!guappo!guappo!guappo!guappo! blasting the shit out of this place, Carson fumbling to reload the pistol quick as he could, just barely getting the fresh cannister in there before he would’ve been overwhelmed by enemy on all sides of him.

Damn!

His vision blobbed in places, his multispectrum torch switching back on as the floods died just like that, a roaring inferno shooting up into the night sky from about three meters behind and to the right of him, his Earther ears picking up the sounds of small-arms fire from all over the prison camp, along with more guappo!ing and things going BOOM!

And the deep-throated roar of a sixteen-cylinder Rolls-Royce Cali coming this way, quick, Carson not even able to wrap his brain round the Humber War Pig smashing its way through one of the buildings to his left, even as it blasted a pair of Volkswagen SKW.34 combat sleds blazing away at it with their quad 90s and Gatling 25s, its turreted 127 tracking and pounding a pair of British Land Rover Bison combat sleds converging on its right flank, the fourteen-fives which had taken out the Blitzpoleizei sleds—there were four of them mounted inside the front windscreen next to the driver—hosing the sidewalks and street clean of League troops and Yanker citizen militia, its twin front-mounted power lifters grabbing hold of another sled full of sausage smokers who’d tried to get in close, hurling the bastards screaming over Carson’s head, where the fourteen-fives obliterated them.

Women and men, a hodgepodge of weapons and armor, poured out of the back of that War Pig, all guns blazing as they charged the enemy all round Carson and his people, Carson shooting his way through enough of the bastards to catch up to Shawn, M2 and M6 just throwing off heat as she tore screaming through the fence surrounding one of the hovels, splashing motherfuckers left and right, Master Medical Technician Mary Blagg right behind her, her M2 and M6 bluish-white as they covered Shawn’s entry into the building, Carson, in turn, covering Mary, hollering over the link for her to “get your ass inside, now!”

He caught a glimpse of a shot-to-hell CAG-137 Prometheus touching down in the middle of it all, a pair of fourteen-fives in the cargo door and four more in a ghetto-rigged turret in the belly, banging away, providing cover for more women coming down the rear cargo ramp with their weapons firing full-bore, before he ducked inside the remains of a ten-meter thick monomolecular carbon door, the stench of piss, shit, come, infection and death overwhelming his filters, featurless monocarbon doors on either side of him in the dim light, Shawn already stabbing through the shielding on one of them with her deactivated laser lance, firing it up and slicing it open once she’d slipped past the field of coherent grav, releasing more of the stench into the air, Carson not allowing it to get to him, turning to a door on his right, doing what Shawn did, ducking into a pitch-dark room one meter by one meter by fifty centimeters(according to his scanner readings) his torch shining on a frightened, naked, filthy thing cowering face down, ass up in shit on the goddamn floor.

His turn to take the Lord’s name in vain, as he scooped her up, holding her best he could with both weapons still in hand, bringing her out into the gloom of the hallway.

30 JANUARY, 2226 07:18:26 TAI

Ariel supposed if a man had been writing this, he would’ve had the two of them already in bed together.

Instead, the two of them sat on the floor alongside Ree’s bed, their backs against the frame, still talking. Holding hands, both of them punch-drunk with fatigue and hyperlag, neither one of them wanting to stop, even if the conversation consisted more of silences and sighs than anything else.

Ree knew everything there was to know about her, all the demons which still tore at her mind, fed her lies about what girls who like other girls did to one another, what monsters they became….

“If I’d known,” Ree whispered,”maybe I wouldn’t have been such a major pain in the ass back in T-school.”

“Maybe?!” Ariel chuckled.

“Maybe?!” she repeated, looking into Ree’s eyes, not looking away this time.

Another peck on the cheek, Ariel telling her:

“That’s part of the reason I fell in love with you in the first place, baby, you aren’t shy, about anything, you throw yourself headfirst into life…the holo of you throwing darts in Zellner’s face, the one from graduation, it’s on the workstation in my quarters….”

Ree blushed, grinning idiotically.

“What was the name of that place anyway?” Ariel asked.

“The Spanner And Sprocket,” Ree replied, still blushing, still grinning. “Rumor round New K.,” New Québec, on Firestar,”was that the very first QMG started it up after she retired nearly 150 years ago.”

“I didn’t,” she added,”always go out and party, you know?”

“I said that to hurt you,” Ariel whispered.

“Most nights,” Ree said, nodding,”I took walks round the city, ‘specially through Les Halles Nouveau…Firestar is a beautiful world, like New Utopia, but…it’s so big, mountains and green all round, no matter where you went, you could always see the Gardes Bien, see the trees and the garden terraces all along the slopes, a couple of the pensions if your eyesight was really good….”

“What is New Utopia like?” Ariel asked. “I’ve always wondered.”

“Lots of hills,” Ree said, “and lakes fashioned from the impact craters…cobblestone paths…you know there’s no vehicles of any kind allowed on New Utopia, same as in Sheridan or New K—“

“Yeah,” Ariel said softly, Ree continuing:

“Anyway, the buildings the first inhabitants of the colony left behind, like the old Government House, are millions of years old, really beautiful stonework, the building materials obviously brought in from offside…they have a heavy, solid look, like castles, but on a smaller scale…most of what we’ve built onside mimics what we’ve found…place is all over trees and grass….”

“You’d have to see it for yourself,” she said,”to know what I’m talking about…I’m a better engineer than a poet, I’m afraid.”

Ariel nodded, Ree playfully remarking,”well, damn, you didn’t have to agree with me.”

“You are a good engineer,” Ariel whispered, giving Ree’s hand a gentle squeeze, smiling.

“Best I’ve seen,” she added. “The best,” she repeated, grinning as she gave Ree’s hand another gentle squeeze.

—endit— Nothing Satisfies Me But Your Soul “No wealth, no land, no silver, no gold, nothing satisfies me but your soul.” Traditional, “O Death”

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 12:01:27 TAI

“—was removed from the Chatam Regional Youth Development Campus and transported immediately to the Union Women’s Maximum-Security Penal Colony on Witch’s Tit,” TMS’ Suzann Lawler’s voice said in the background, the foreground showing that sick fucking little bitch Heather Savidge deep-throating some other bitch with a goddamn dildo in the showers, fucking humping that little freak, making her fucking beg for damn monkeybone,”following an incident where she forced a fourteen- year old girl to engage in lesbian sex with her and other inmates,” now that bitch was shoving her fucking dildo in that girl’s ass at the same time she made her douche out a black stallion’s stinking-ass poot with her tongue-studded tongue,”before cutting her throat with a knife guards say was smuggled out of the dining area,” fucking bitch shoved it up in that shit, even as she sliced her fucking throat open with what looked like a sharpened butter knife, laughing while the other one fucking rasped and moaned, still going at it even after the bitch had croaked.

“Sick fuck right there,” Marc Bevill, colonel in the Baldwin Volunteer Militia, said to himself, sipping on his coffee, as he sat at the high counter of the Pootie House on Terranova 441, turning so that he was looking behind the line at the half-naked little hoochie girls shaking their barely-covered asses as they fucking gave their customers some fucking service for a damn change, every goddamn one of ‘em acting like that was the last thing she wanted to fuckin’ do, when everyone knew damn good and well all ‘em pootie-poots working up at the Pootie House was nothin’ but a buncha damn whores.

Mostly League regulars and citizen militiamen like himself in here for lunch, a few civs here and there, the few who had permission to either eat out or go home during their lunch hour, the rest having to either brown bag it or settle for whatever the vending machines at their work gave them…Zellner had gotten strict about that shit, ever since all ‘em fuckin’ traitors had defied Him and gone ahead and voted a month ago, helping that black bitch Cyndi McKinley and all her Commie dommies try and force out the Governor the fucking majority of the Terranovan people had chosen to lead them.

He nodded his head as some Hans on the stretch end grabbed hold of a Cooter House hoochie’s hair, dragging her underneath his table, shoving some Wurst up in that cooter head, little bitch thrashing about down there like having something in her mouth was the last fuckin’ thing she wanted, one of the other Hanses sitting at the table with him jerking ‘em grey thong panties down and whaling away on that ass, calling her “Schlampe” as he told her to fucking be still and take what was coming to her like a good little girl.

“Was in der Hölle?!” the youngest one of ‘em, a real pretty blonde boy, asked as the building shook from an explosion real close by…Commies done took Eaton Town, JMC advancing towards Wesley at a good clip down 441 and along Baldwin County Highways 22 and 49.

The Hans shoving his bone in that bitch’s pussy chuckling, as did Marc, when they caught one another’s eye, his buddies slapping the shoulders of that pretty blonde boy, joking with him in sausage smoker at the same time they took turns slapping Schlampe’s fat ass and sticking silverware up in that shit, the one she was sucking off telling Marc,” We will make a man out of him, ja?”

“Got that shit right, Hans,” Marc replied, nodding his head as he finally pulled out of Schlampe, acting like she was choking on his seed, when it was fucking dribbling out the corners of her nasty fucking mouth. “Damn sure got that shit right,” Marc repeated.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 12:31:09 TAI

Someone was screaming in Captain Rachel Kelley’s voice for her people to move forward.

That being the last thing the thirty-five year old Commonwealth Forces Field Arm company commander wanted to do.

What she was doing anyway in spite of herself, her Browning M3 assault railer spitting out a blue line of two and a half millimeter hyperdense monocarbon slugs at the speed of light, the AG harness built into her suit of Commonwealth grey propelling her through the ranks of enemy standard infantry at 130 kph, trucks tearing through their shielding and hers, her shoulders, one knee, chest all exploding outward in a barely-noticed cloud of pinkish froth, her shielding black and blue, something which also went by barely noticed, Rachel smashing in the faceplate of a Yanker who’d gotten too close, her Browning M2 rail pistol blazing away at six more of the bastards, Rachel not remembering even deciding to draw the weapon, it didn’t matter anyway, it was there in her right hand, the grip of the M3 in her left, both weapons superheating, blistering her palms through the gauntlets of her suit.

That didn’t matter either.

What did matter was the movement she saw from the corner of her left eye, the sensors and electromagnetic spectrum intercept gear woven into the fabric of her suit confirming what she’d glimpsed.

“Heavy weaps,” she shouted over her link, even as she cleared the way ahead of her of enemy soldiers,“your opposite number’s setting up on that ridge, five hundred meters to your left, take ‘em out!”

“Fire in the hole!” 2d Lieutenant Andra Murad’s voice shouted in reply, the entire hillside along Terranova Highway 441’s ten northbound lanes now a roar of blue-hot light, as the eighty ninety- millimeter Gatling man-portable artillery systems Andra and her heavy-weapons platoon had between them tore into it, bringing parts of it down on the heads of the troops fighting below, Rachel pistolwhipping a Yanker slashing at her with his laser lance, smashing in his faceplate at the same time her M3 tore a bloody, greasy, misty hole through a platoon of his comrades, 90s, 127s, 203s, 406s and 457s whizzing past her from both directions, more roars of harsh blue-white light shaking the ground, making for more screaming over her link.

Too damn many of those screams were those of her own people, intermixed with the exultations of Yanker citizen so-called militiamen hiding in the woods and firing from ambush with everything from tribarrels to 90 millimeter railguns, Lance Corporal Sage McWhorter, standing beside her, cutting loose with a buzzing blue death ray from all twelve contrarotating barrels of her Browning M4, turning scrub, trees and creeper vine into sawdust, one of her HQ squad’s Gatling 25 gunners swearing, as more citizen militia thugs, men and boys, boiled up out of the ditches and what remained of the woods on either side, pouring down in a mass, Rebel-yelling wave, all guns blazing, one of them shrieking “oh, bay-bay, puh- leeze, puh-leeze, puh-leeze put that big gun in my filthy lil’ mouth!” as he shoved the barrels of a Barrett DSH twelve-millimeter assault railer in Rachel’s faceplate, Rachel seeing an afterimage of him and his weapon as she turned him into so goddamn much fertilizer with her M2 at less than point-blank range.

He’d been nine, ten, maybe, that had made an impression on her, even if she had to take out too many like him during the past couple of months on this foetid boghole of a planet.

Even if she had borne witness to what things like him had done to girls the same age, a little older.

So goddamn much of this business which is necessary, she had time enough to observe, too goddamn little of it which is right. The commander of Delta Company, 3d Battalion, 2d Regimental Combat Team, 3d Brigade of the 51st Cor Leonis Volunteer Combined Arms Division sighed, no more time to spare on any further observations, as she kept moving forward, both guns blazing.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 12:43:18 TAI

Her Mark VI Heavy Infantry Combat Suit’s four arm-mounted 203 millimeter railguns, shoulder and shoulder-turret-mounted 127s, head-, chest- and shoulder-turret mounted Gatling 90s and head and chest-mounted Gatling 25s cleared the ten eastbound lanes of Baldwin County Highway 49 of the column of Liberian M19 Taylor II tanks that had been advancing on her batttalion of Avalon heavy suits.

The Liberian standard infantrymen deploying from the M114 Tubman III armored-personnel carriers which had been directly behind those tanks hosing Major Janey Lunden’s AG shielding down with hyperdense deuce and a halves driven into it at the speed of light.

The Gatling 25s making short, bloody work of them, more trucks flying into her shielding from the embankment on either side of her, a line of DNSB Teufelhunds coming at her fast, driving 203s, 127s, 90s and 25s into her shielding, even as the sausage smokers on board those Schwerpanzers flew from their bellies, spitting fire at her with their assault railers, Gatling 25s and 90mm Gatling MPARs, Janey blowing those tanks apart, taking out the DNSB Panzerinfantrie even as they tore through her badly stressed shielding, burrowing into the suit’s fifteen-meter frame, systems going offline all over the place, secondary systems just as quickly switching on line to take their place, the nanos in the suit’s auto-repair system desperately working overtime to repair the rents and the damaged system, the AG drivers in the soles of the boots moving her forward, through the burning wreckage of the Teufelhunds, the twenty-eight year old Avalon soldier working the control holodisplays in front of her, feeding as much power from the antimatter reactor as she could into the shielding, black and blue gradually giving way to clear.

Screaming Ghurka heavy suits jumping on her by the hundred, all of them waving giant-sized monocarbon vibroblade choppers around as they charged, Janey doing some screaming of her own as she blindly let fly with all her suit’s weapons, moving as fast as the AG drivers could move her, desperately kicking out with her left foot when she saw one of those knives come straight for her faceplate.

One and a quarters, deuce and a halves, twelves, 25s and 90s slammed into her shielding from everywhere even as she was fighting her way through every Ghurka Wrong Dong Phooie had in his ranks, Champion MBTs and Warthog APCs swooping in behind the bastards, driving everything they had to drive into her shielding, Janey feeding more power from the antimatter reactor, ignorning the screaming warnings of being blown to perdition from her suit, whose radar and ESI gear were now zeroing on the origin of those other rounds hitting her…Yanker citizen’s volunteer militiamen, thugs with all the overkill entitled them under their first freedom, taking cover in the woods and creeper vine on either side of the highway.

More of the bastards were riding along the shoulders and down the median strip of this county highway, civilian ground vehicles tricked out with Gatling 25s and 90s, tarbabies and stonwhites hanging out the windows blazing away with their long guns, little regard even for their fellow combatants, fucking playing chicken with the heavy suits, ducking in and out from underneath the AG drivers of the tanks and APC, heedless of the possibility of being flattened like soda cans by the backwash.

It would’ve been ridiculous given any other circumstance.

It wasn’t ridiculous now…only unfortunate.

Maybe even more than a little stupid.

She opened fire with every weapon her suit mounted, feeding power to her shielding, steadily moving forward. 18 FEBRUARY, 2226 13:02:19 TAI

Three klicks outside of Valdosta, they took cover behind a stand of trees screening the riverbank.

Lieutenant Colonel Carson Selkirk watched the convoy of AG lorries thunder down the Midnight River—flowing south from Atlanta Three to Midnight Bay, where it emptied into the Sea of Martinez— heavily and hastily-armed g-skimmers providing escort, the combined backwash roiling the river and sending the chompers, littlefish and notturtles still calling it home scurrying about in a panic, a notturtle getting caught up underneath the AG drivers of one of the skimmers, its supple, leathery body slowly mashed to pulp and spread along the surface of its backwash, something the jackers in the other skimmers did not fail to take notice of.

“Food and medical supplies, sir,” 1st Lieutenant Meghan Polk reported from the opposite side of the river,”no munitions, weapons or other military gear.”

“We let it go then, Leftenant,” Carson said tersely, scanning the area locals had dubbed Seven Bridges—a name shared with the entrance into Flyntsboro via the Hawkinsville Road—since seven bridges, denoting the twisted knot which was the intersection of Intercounty Highways 16, 75 and 95, spanned the river at this juncture.

Though the enemy weren’t ass enough to run their convoys along any of the highways surrounding the beseiged city of Valdosta, a bare nine and a half klicks from Midnight Bay itself, home to both Moody Terranovan Republican Aerospace Force Base and the ChryslerVolksRoyce automotive plant sprawling all over Seven Bridges and was, now that Terranova Southeastern had been shut, the largest employer in the South Coast.

With the California-Winchester plant, sharing the Seven Bridges area with Say-Fowl-Royce(as they called it in sausage smoker)a damn close second, both factories now churning out munitions for the League forces and citizen militiamen in the South Coast, driven back towards Seven Bridges and Valdosta by JMC forces coming at them from four directions for what promised to be the bloodiest fighting in this part of Basseterre to date.

That was saying something…when the JMC had planned Operation Zeon—their codename for the invasion of Terranova—ten years ago, the most optimistic outcome still had them losing anywhere from half to three-quarters of a gig worth of troops in the attempt, taking KKs, guerilla/terrorist ops by civilian males, and resistance by regular League forces on the homeworld of one of its charter members all into account…Tau Ceti had shelved those plans for a decade, but, soon after Zellner’s abortive attempt to take the Middie rigs and the Homesteads, the JMC had started updating those plans, referring to the revised invasion plan as(what else?)Operation Char.

Everything had been revised for Operation Char, including the projected losses…JMC had expected to lose at least one to two and a half gig worth of ground forces alone, taking into account a decade’s worth of buildups, resentment and the “we coulda won the war if only….” mentality multiplied by as many times as there were Yanker males on the continent of Basseterre…they were past the upper end of that optimistic projection, into the middle of the next most-optimistic scenario, four billion good women and men killed in the last two months on Terranova itself and counting…add in the losses from the fighting still raging in the Archipelago and the action at PTH 1932….

“…you were, perhaps,” Basem remarked, as the two of them sat in the hole in the wall, knocking back straight shots of José Cuervo,”expecting them to be covered head to foot, as the urban legends about our people dictate.”

“Yeah, actually,” the sixteen-year old Commie Forces second lieutenant—wearing “ borrowed” civs over his greys— remarked, his mind still on the women and girls wearing very little, in spite of everything he’d heard about the ragabones. “The abyiah,” Basem explained, after another shot of tequila,”my young friend, exists merely to promote the lie women want to dress like sluts and whores, when, amongst the former colonies, we dress them most like sluts and whores, to justify everything we do to them…nearly two centuries ago, we used it to make ourselves believe women were waging bloody war for the right to be sluts and whores.”

He looked furitively round the dark, smoky little room, whispering drunkenly,”you’re not supposed to know that, by the way….”

“Gotcha,” Carson, more than a little tipsy himself, replied, knocking back another shot….

…one hell of a thing to think about, the night spent getting legless in that dive in al-El Asima, on beautiful Hellhole el Sabah, nearly three and half decades ago…Bas was gone too, taken out by one of the sons he’d trained up in the ways of ruthlessness his father had trained him up in…only Ibrahim was still alive now, last time Carson had seen him was in the Fairweather in Sheridan, just before he’d come back here a couple months ago, poor bastard still hadn’t recovered from what had happened, not a fucking dinar to his name, thanks to Abdallah voiding Bas’ will and going fatawa on baby bro’s sorry ass…as a matter of fact, they had a run-in with a couple of ha-Satan right there and then, mullah motherfuckers not giving a shit that they were on the Commonwealth homeworld, in the most popular restaurant in its capital city, and they hadn’t a hope in hell of making it out alive….

An annoying buzz coming over his link had him shouting for everyone to hunker down, now, Carson himself holding on to his half-acre of planet, as the sky rained tachyons, photons and van Gripstra particles, and the insides of his tightly-closed eyelids flashed brilliant white round the edges, the percussive WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM! shaking the ground, knocking things out of trees on top of him and slapping him against the ground.

“A bit late with the noonday gun, aren’t they?” observed Jay Todman over his link.

“Fighting’s hotted up in local hyperspace as well,” Carson replied,”getting more difficult for our forces to run interference for that fat hangar queen of a starcraft,” the Chelonia, a geriatric Sprague 150- series commercial transport converted into a gunship carrier,”so she can get her birds into striking position over Basseterre.”

“Won’t be long now,” he added,” before they start sending Preads and War Eagles out to intercept, if they haven’t already done so.”

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 13:13:00 TAI

“Enemy fighters and UAVs inbound!” Punky Miller, Republican Union Armed Forces Starcraft Chelonia’s weaps officer, shouted over the link, even as she was working her holodisplays, deploying OWP-15Es, Gatling 90s, 127s, 203s and 406s, pulsing the AG force beam through all four banks of emitters to fight for the life of her ship.

Barbara Berenbaum, the Chelonia’s command astrogator, stared straight ahead at the master holodisplay and her own command displays, both showing a swarm of Yanker War Eagle fightercraft and Predator UAVs launched from Terranova and from several Yanker warbirds closing rapidly with the 121,716-ton Sprague 150-series cargo hauler retrofitted and rebuilt for war…the overhaul her turtle had undergone at Espérance had done away with the jury-rigging and improvisation, handcrafted systems taking the place of lashups, ASC-130s taking the place of her hodgepodge of barely held-together spaceplanes, a battalion of War Eagle fighters added to her arsenal, Rittermark generators grafted onto her collection of ortillery platforms, secondary Rittermark field coils making it possible for her to use her railguns in hyperspace and to more effectively accelerate and maneuver in hyperspace.

Still, she was big, clumsy and slow, even in this realm composed entirely of tachyons, the evasive action being undertaken by her S.A., Kara Hultgren, akin to keeping blackflies and fangbugs off a carnosaur’s back. “Crap,” she heard her now-fourteen year old weaps officer whisper.

“Barbara,” she then said,”we’ve got Phooie Wu-Lungs and Mountaindove Vancouvers inbound, along with their fighters and UAVs.”

“How many?” Barbara asked.

“A lot,” Punky replied, Barbara seeing for herself “a lot” meant two, three squadrons’ worth of both types, King Cobras, IS.3037s, Harms and Gryphons already picking off Chelonia’s fighters and ortillery platforms, 90s and 406s flying towards her turtle at c times ten and a half meg.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 13:16:58 TAI

“Fuck that!” snapped Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier, Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken’s weaps officer firing on two Mountaindickheads even as her commander gave the order to “take ‘em out, Leftenant!”

Equally unnecessary were her orders for the rest of her squadron, their fighters and unmanned aerospace vehicles to pile on and keep the enemy off that turtle’s back, that turtle twisting, turning and fighting for her life against all those enemy warbirds, fightercraft and UAVs, her own fighters being blown out of hyperspace left and right, some of her gunships peeling off from their target, hauling ass back to their parent craft to aid in her defense.

Unbroken’s ten 457-millimeter railguns drove two hundred masses of hyperdense monomolecular carbon—each of those 63 metric tons—into Wu-Lungs, Vancouvers, Harms, Gryphons and UAVs at ten and a half million times the speed of light, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads furiously working the astrogation and piloting holodisplays, trying to keep the five thousand-ton Dauntless-class frigate in hyperspace in spite of all the violence riling it up like a sea in a storm.

The command holodisplays showed her what Prue was already shouting into her link, more enemy warbirds converging on the Chelonia, the Unbroken and her squadron, vectoring 90s, 406s, UAVs and fighters towards them as they came, Stevie twisting and turning the ship every which way, 457s striking home in every direction, a Dope King Los Angeles-class battlewagon falling apart before Jami’s eyes, a six- pack of N.C.O. Manassas-class frigates flying through the violence of his passing, raining fire down on the Unbroken, loosing pulses of coherent artificial grav from the forward emitters to sweep aside their fire, the Gatling 90s taking care of those rounda that got through, her 457s hosing the bastards down, the ship getting clear enough to take out a Californio John Frémont-class frigate about to get the drop on the Chelonia, Chelonia’s own Gatling 90s and 127s turning his FH-4 Wraith fighters and Coyote IV UAVs into so many sparks falling back down into normal space.

A squadron of sausage smokers fell upon the turtle from along Unbroken’s zero-eight-two, Stevie whipping her ship round, Prue getting them in her sights and cutting loose with the 457s.

At the same time an Albion-class gunship carrier came screaming into the fight, her company of modified War Eagle hyperspace fighters tangling with the DNSB Wespes at the same time her 48 ASC-130 gunships headed for targets on Basseterre itself.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 13:28:24 TAI

Shit!

Look at ‘em cadets run like a buncha damn anklebiters after their nest got knocked over.

Chuckling, clutching his Beretta Twin Deuce dual-barrelled assault railer even tighter against him, Marc watched the sky come apart and rain pieces of itself down upon Wesley, those pieces exploding in a blue-white flash when they hit… Terranova Military College was all fucked up, they never did fix the old Capitol building after it had been damaged at the start of the war two months ago…now, there wasn’t any point, the rest of the old Capitol and every other building on campus was nothing but a bunch of smoking craters now, ground defenses scanning the sky, looking for something to talk back to, even knowing the bitches wouldn’t give ‘em that, they’d rather hide in hyperspace, do their damage from there, instead of coming out and fighting like a man would’ve.

Marc snorted, turning away from the Terranova Military College campus, back towards the front windshield of the Humber War Pig in which he rode shotgun, one of five dozen rumbling south down 441, switching his grip from the Twin Deuce to the firing triggers of the fourteen-fives quad-mounted in the front just below his side of the windshield…there were four more on each side of the Pig, backing up the turreted 127s and 203s up top, his driver controlling all those.

The Pig’s sixteen-cylinder Rolls-Royce Excalibur roared with power, as they accelerated towards the intersection of 441 and 49, Marc watching a quartet of former National Police ACV-137X2 Spectre gunships—modified by the militia’s mechanics same as the Pigs—streak past and overhead, their 14.5s, Gatling 25s, 90s, 127s and 203s already pounding the shit outta ‘em Commie dyke bitches behind the sixty War Pigs now smashing through the gates of what had been TC&RU2, before the TSID had broken bat on ‘em howlers two months ago, some little girl, not wearing a goddamn thing but a fucking collar round her neck, running across his holographic gunsights, titties bouncing every which way, Marc crushing down on the firing triggers, all four of ‘em fourteen-fives pumping 580-kilogram masses of hyperdense monocarbon at fifty rounds per second per gun into that nasty piece of fucking pussy at the speed of light, turning that little slut into a mist of blood, bone and grease, at the same time his driver stroked a button on his holodisplay to send the rear cargo ramp crashing down, and the three dozen men crammed in the rear of the wheeled armored personnel carrier screaming out of the vehicle, charging into the containment areas with all guns blazing.

The Pig still rumbling forward, the three 203s and three 127s in the top turret getting into the act, hurling more masses of hyperdense monocarbon into the administration building and into a fenced-off area in the middle of the main campus, a muddy plain covered with nasty bitches chained by their necks with their stinking ass pooties up in the air just a’ wantin’ it, Marc cutting loose with the fourteen-fives, burning cannisters piling up all round his feet, as he just kept tracking and fuckin’ ‘em whores up g—

“Sunnuvabitch!” his driver screamed, as a clanging like a huge bell going off shook Marc’s head, followed immediately by a WHOOMPH!ing sort of noise, the Pig lifted up off its ten wheels, flipped over and over to land on its back with CRUMP! Marc finding himself hanging upside down by the straps of his seat, his driver lying in a wet, broken heap on the ceiling.

Marc furiously struggling to get out of his seat as Led Zepplin vibrated what remained of the wheeled armored personnel carrier.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 13:41:08 TAI

Delta/3/2/3 of the Hard n’ Fast Fifty-First had caught up to their Lynxes just before they’d stormed the former campus of Terranova College and Republican Union University, now turned into a death camp housing women and girls by the hundreds of thousands.

Yanker dicksuckers and their League allies all too eagerly running round, trying to kill them before the Commonwealth Forces could deliver them what little aid and comfort they could.

No.

By God, not on her watch.

A Yanker citizen militiaman fled the War Pig Andra’s heavy-weaps platoon had holed, firing his Twin Deuce assault railer behind him as he ran off towards one of the dormitories, a final burst from someone’s Gatling 90 finishing the Pig off, as Rachel set off in the same direction the Yanker had, her headquarters squad close on her heels, fire raining down on them from all corners, soldiers, Blitzpoleizei, Reggie pissboys and Yanker militia thugs rushing down on them at the same time their comrades holed up in the buildings fired on the Commonwealth Forces standard infantry from ambush.

Rachel consulted holodisplays floating in front of her suit…nearly every building on campus had been converted into kennels to house women, every wide, open space turned into massive pens where they would be chained by their necks, until—

And, if she let herself think about scenes she’d seen too often in her almost three months on this foetid bog of a planet, she’d only distract herself from the important duties of taking out the enemy and keeping her people alive.

A Mark VIII Lynx belonging to Delta Company swung into position midway between the buildings which were pouring fire down upon Rachel and her people, the armored fighting vehicle’s eight quad 25 turrets ripping loose a buzzing fusillade cutting through the outer faces of the building, the Lynx spinning like a top on its AG drivers, the dual 127s on the secondary gun deck and in the two ball turrets co-axial with the 203s in the main turrets joining the Gatling 90s in the main turret and the troop bay in hosing down enemy soldiers out in the open, the twin 203s duelling with a pair of N.C.O. Shelby III main- battle tanks, Rachel screaming for those of her people on the ground with her to leapfrog the Lynx and storm the buildings, Delta Company’s commander and her HQ squad pouring through a blasted-down door about sixty degrees to her right, all weapons blazing, a squad of AFEG Army Strikers running right into their fire, vectoring some of their own towards her people in the narrow corridor, another squad joining Rachel’s as they kept right on going.

Through another blown-out door, into another, slightly-wider hallway, a classroom building, judging by the bulletin boards and whatnot still hanging on the walls, the stench of death, pain, fear, excrement thick in the air, overwhelming the filters of her greys, Rachel taking point anyway, her M2 and M3 both at the ready as she moved up the hallway.

Out of a door marked 340, about three, four meters ahead of her, some…thing…in jeans and a green belly shirt was dragging a naked young woman along the floor by the fucking leash it held in its hands, screaming “c’mon, ya bitch!” at her, stomping on her with its high-topped tennis shoes, jerking harder on the leash, its victim now thrashing, grasping at the lead, struggling to breathe, the fucking thing just screaming for her to “c’mo—“

Just before the son of a bitch exploded, sprayed all over the goddamn place by a burst from Rachel’s M3, the poor thing which had been struggling on the leash tearing at it, shivering as she regarded Rachel with one wide-open, one half-swollen shut, blue eye.

Rachel wishing there was something else she could do, as she commed for a medic and kept moving down the hall.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 14:04:29 TAI

“AG pulse-deflection system back on line,” her suit told her, as pulses of coherent artificial grav swept incoming fire away from Janey in all directions, Janey returning that fire, covering the advance of the Mid and Donvanian standard infantry pouring out of their Wolverine and Vanguard armored fighting vehicles onto the grounds of the Union Central Criminal Psychiatric Hospital, Janey’s 203s obliterating the front gates of this particular corner of Hell, along with the guardhouse between them and much of the ferrocrete, monocarbon and barbed-wire wall on either side, the Avalon heavy infantryman moving in closer, head and chest-mounted Gatling 25s and 90s taking on enemy troops and militia thugs charging at the standard infantry in the open or sniping at them from ambush in nearby buildings, the 127s taking on enemy troops and vehicles further out, the 203s duelling with enemy MBTs and armored personnel carriers, Janey consulting holodisplays in front of her, frantically working the ones on either side, making sure she didn’t hit any building where the inmates of this miserable place abandoned by the God of her enemies lay huddled.

Which was nearly every building on the grounds, plus exercise yards and any other outdoor area easily converted to pens like the ones—

She fought that down, neither the time nor place for it…unlike the Brokedown Palace on TB, there was no room inside for the heavy suits to maneuver, too great a risk of them harming those they were trying to liberate, which was why she was out here laying down covering fire while the standard infantry went in and risked their lives doing what had to be done…less than half a klick away, an open fucking sewer walled off by AG shielding and barbed-wire fencing, thousands of women, if not more, chained by their necks inside its confines, mired so deep in filth they were probably drowning in it, and she couldn’t do a fucking thing except snipe at the bastards outside the fence with her Gatling 25s, couldn’t do anything to the miserable fucks inside the fence, doing the best they could to implement “zero-survival” policies, not without hurting their victims.

It was a cruel irony…three years after the Liberation, she’d become a heavy suit simply because those things were just so freakin’ powerful, AG shielding that could shrug off just about anything thrown at it and weapons that could deliver a massive retaliation against anyone stupid enough to even think of fucking with her…now, eleven years later, here she was, too goddamn much power to be of any use to those she’d swore would never suffer as she’d suffered at the hands of their common enemies.

A cruel irony, but she didn’t have any time to dwell on it or to feel sorry for herself, there were others here in a hell of a lot worse shape than she was, that was where her focus needed to be.

Her 203s blew away a quartet of British Legionnaire MBTs and the Warthog APCs they were shepherding, the 127s taking care of a pair of Arab Merkava V AFVs caught in the act of spilling their troops onto the compound, the Gatling 90s making short work of a brace of Scorpio combat sleds full of Yanker Ranger Light Infantry and Bradbury’s hounds, the Gatling 25s continuing to lay down support for the Donvanians who’d made it to the open sewer and were now struggling with the men inside for the lives of their victims, Janey continuing to move through the field of combat the entire time, her AG pulse- deflection system sweeping aside fire vectored her way, the AG shielding radiating all colors of the rainbow as it took the hits which still got through, Janey retraining all her suit’s weapons on whatever targets of opportunity presented themselves.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 14:12:00 TAI

His suit’s radars and ESI gear screamed at him as he continued coughing his lungs up.

Of course, he had to have a coughing jag just as the enemy were coming down the river towards his position, not much of a surprise there.

“Take the fuckers out!” he managed to scream in something resembling his normal voice, even as Carson sealed up his suit, took aim with his M3 and squeezed the trigger as hard as he could, vectoring deuce and a halves into g-skimmers, combat sleds, Terranovan Republican Coast Guard swifts and AG lorries carrying hydrogen, weaps, gas cannisters, parts for the various combat vehicles and other military gear used by the opfor currently holding the Seven Bridges area, Carson hearing explosions by the bushel, but not sparing a glance to see whether or not he’d actually hit anything, reloading and hauling ass at the same time, everything from one and a quarters to 203s removing his previous position entirely from the surface of Terranova’s main continent, the bluish-white hot roar overloading his faceplate’s polarization for a few seconds, as he took up another firing position somewhere else, banging away with his assault railer even before his sight returned.

And, he found himself floating above the middle of the goddamn river, where everyone could see his sorry Fall Line ass, trucks slamming into the backs of AG lorries and blasting them sky-high, a bright white and red-painted Coast Guard swift turning round on its drivers, even as the quad-mounted Gatling 25s on its ass end were vectoring buzzing blue death rays at him, the turreted 203 mounted at the extreme end of the bow quickly coming to bear, along with the 127s on either side, the quad 90s in the four cupolas on the forward cockpit and at least one of the quad 25s in one of the rear cuploas, the black spot in its forward shielding making the grin of the sub-lieutenant standing behind the clearcarbon of the forward cockpit that much more evil.

Until Carson drove ten trucks through that black spot, exploding his knappy head all over the dumb jacker actually driving the swift, Carson bulleting himself through the weakness in the forward shielding, drawing his M2, taking out the pilot and all six gunners in the cupolas, the asshole manning the rear quad 25s deciding to try and take him, paying for that mistake with his life matter sprayed all across the surface of the river, Carson sitting down at the pilot’s station, working the holodisplays, fighting the swift’s simple comp as it attempted to lock him out and shut itself down, managing to blankfile his way into command, turning the swift around, pounding AG lorries, g-skimmers, swifts and combat sleds still in it with the 203 and 127s under his direct control.

Fighting the swift as the planet continued shaking underneath its drivers, Seven Bridges still getting the shit blasted out of it from hyperspace, parts and pieces of starcraft raining down upon the river’s surface and the surrounding wood, setting nearly everything it touched alight.

Including the polymer deck inside the swift’s open cockpit, Carson feeding power to reinforce its shielding at the same time he found the commands to trigger the fire-suppression system, breaking off the f-word as five more swifts swung round to bring their big guns to bear on him at a close range they were closing with each passing second.

Dryswallowing, he threw every erg of power he could spare into his drivers, aiming for and destroying the swift in the middle of the flotilla, darting into the position it had occupied, the 127s hammering the two on either side, burning wreckage bouncing off the now-reinforced shielding, the 203 locking onto a Scorpio combat sled skidding round to try and take him on.

A fifteen-round burst from Sergeant Shawn Gyllenheal’s Browning M6 assault carbine blackening its shielding along its back end, a second burst slipping through the weakened shielding to scatter the Scorpio’s blazing remains across the river, the nineteen year old woman just fucking standing there, staring down the bastard behind a quartet of fourteen-fives in the bow of a g-skimmer coming straight for her at over two hundred klicks per hour and accelerating.

“Son of a—“ Carson managed to interject, before Shawn took aim, drilling the fourteen-five gunner and the pilot with a single burst, calmly reloading her weapon as the remaining Yankers on board struggled to gain control of the vessel and take her out.

Deuce and a halves in two converging blue lines ripping the skimmer apart in another blinding bluish-white hot flash, Jay and Meghan moving on Shawn’s position from opposite sides of the river, the remainder of Carson’s team emerging from cover to join them, the eleven of them the only ones still standing in the midst of fire, destruction and carnage.

“We got ‘em all, Boss,” Meghan said over his link, Carson sighing a “yeah,” in reply, before telling the rest of them to get on board the swift and moving them downriver.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 14:21:08 TAI

All the gobstoppers gone, Latacha Gipson continued working the holodisplays in front of her, vectoring 90s and 127s from the three turrets under her control at everything Sweet Jane’s tachyar was lighting up in hyperspace and on the surface of Terranova below her.

This was the second ship Shirley Dixon had named Sweet Jane, the first—a ghetto-rigged KSC- 117—had been blown out of the sky over Eaton Town during the recall elections, after its Rittermark generator had burned out and left them stranded in normal space, the two of them escaping just barely in time, fighting and hiding their way from Eaton Town to Gray, which—proving the old adage that God really did look out for drunks, fools and babies—was securely in Avalon and Commie hands by the time they’d finally made their way there.

That had been too close, Tasha knowing she’d get closer still, not wanting to, not now that she’d finally had gotten up the nerve to let herself love Kishana(and vice-versa), hardest thing she ever had to do was to leave her again and rejoin the Chelonia, worried that she was just using this as an excuse to run away like she’d done so many times before, worried about Kishana thinking that, she didn’t ever want to hurt her like that again.

But, Tasha knew she had to do this thing…and, right now, she had to put all that to the side, worry about accomplishing their mission and getting through this, Sweet Jane’s weaps officer working the holodisplays, the dorsal and ventral turrets rotating every which way, four of each turret’s six 127s dual mounted on ball turrets on either side of the remaining two 127s and the four co-axial Gatling 90s, greatly expanding each turret’s arc of fire, which was good, ‘cause every ten enemy warbirds, fighters and UAVs she took out got replaced with a quickness by twenty, thirty more, the four Gatling 90s in the tail turret taking on even more enemy machines, Tasha pulsing the output of the gunship’s AG force beam through each of the four banks of beam emitters in rapid succession, sweeping aside incoming fire, Shirley juking them in every direction, even as she worked the three forward-mounted 203s and the six Gatling 90s in the wings, blasting more of the enemy out of the sky and back into normal space in little bitty pieces, Sweet Jane’s pilot shouting over the link,”just worry ‘bout keepin’ ‘em off our backs while I turn the big guns loose on the ground targets; I’ve got a clear shot at ‘em.”

“’Kay,” was all Tasha had time to say, motherfuckers coming at them from all over, the twenty- four year old woman watching them pile on the Chelonia, her guns stabbing out into hyperspace to blow those bastards away, that squadron of Commie warbirds fighting tooth and nail right beside her and her rapidly-diminishing complement of War Eagle fighters, those of the Chelonia’s complement of 288 Nightwings not assaulting targets on the surface of Terranova aiding in the defense of their parent craft, along with the company of War Eagles dispatched from the Albion carrier slugging it out with her Gatling 90s, 127s, 203s and 457s, while her company of gunships joined the Chelonia’s in attacking enemy forces and facilities throughout the continent of Basseterre.

Tasha just concentrating on keeping those sumbitches from taking her gunship out, loosing more pulses of coherent artificial grav through the emitters, pumping 90s and 127s into local hyperspace, closing her eyes tight when several struck home at once, and the ship started bucking and shaking all round her, Tasha cursing—she’d promised herself she’d try to stop that, for Kishana’s sake and NaTanya’s—as she opened her eyes back up, hands still working her holodisplays, driving masses of hyperdense monocarbon into the motherfuckers at c times ten and a half meg, sweeping aside as much of their fire as she could with sustained pulses from the AG force beam.

Not even time enough to ask God to look out for her one more time so she could get home to Kishana and her baby.

18 FEBRURY, 2226 14:28:51 TAI

Commonwealth Forces Cadet Rose of Sharon Watson stabbed down hard on Redjack’s master fire-control button, driving her Mark IV Osprey-class hyperspace fighter right into the knot of War Eagles, Grey Ghosts, Gryphons, Wespes, Wraiths and God knows what else swarming all over that ASC-130, the fighter’s six 127s and twin forward-mounted Gatling 90 driving masses of hyperdense, tachyon- impregnated monomolecular carbon into the sons of bitches, even as the Gatling 90 in the tail opened up to engage a brace of enemy fighters climbing up her ass, the beam emitters on all four sides throwing off pulses from the AG force beam jenny to sweep aside as much incoming fire as possible.

The sixteen-year old first-year cadet working the piloting and astrogation holodisplays, juking like crazy to dodge the rest, even as she overflew the Nightwing she was trying to help out, 90s and 127s tearing into a pair of Johannesburg-class frigates entering the fray, catching one just as he’d been about to let loose with fighters and UAVs, Rose of Sharon engaging the ones launched by the second warbird, even as tachyar let her know fighter detachments and unmanned aerospace vehicles from a good half dozen more enemy frigates were coming straight towards her.

She could’ve done without that bit of information, cursing herself for only the umpteenth time for ever volunteering to serve with Unbroken’s fighter detachment, outstanding debts or no, sighing when she realized—for only the umpteenth time—there wasn’t any point in cursing, she just had to take what she had and do the best she could with it.

“Here we come, Redjack,” Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Heather Scott, her team leader and the detachment’s second, said over her link,”hold tight!”

A little late for that, Rose of Sharon had time to think, as she twisted and turned through hyperspace, drilling enemy fighters and UAVs left and right with her guns, finding herself scraping the port side of a Sakruan Musashi-class frigate, blasting him to Hell and gone without a second thought, driving 127s into an Arab al-Husayn at even closer range, ducking sharply down and to the right to avoid incoming fire from somebody’s Gatling 90s, all her forward guns slamming into something, scattering it across hyperspace and back into normal space, Rose of Sharon furiously working the piloting and astrogation holodisplays, fighting her own ship, trying to keep from falling back into normal space herself, as local hyperspace churned and roiled all round her.

Redjack’s 127s took out several enemy machines about to pile on another Osprey before Rose of Sharon could even think to—

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 14:40:00 TAI

“They have won,” his Governor said on the HV in Wilbur Owens’ office in the former Griffin Student Center. “We leave the Homesteads, our mission unaccomplished, our attempt to lift them up from the dirt and the depravity into which those deadly females had cast them down into aborted before it could even begin to bear fruit, but, what is that to them, I ask you, what is liberation and enlightenment to them —“ “—they manufactured evidence, told lies of offworld troublemakers,” His prime minister said in the holoprojection sharing space with His,”inciting revolt, just so they could prosecute their bigoted, hateful, feminist agenda against an innocent people who only wanted a voice in their own government, and all they got from them, from the lesbian calling itself Governor of our Union, was to have their organs turned into the voices of them that weep—“

“—Cynthia McKinley and her band of offworld terrorists, aliens who seek to foist an alien agenda upon all of us, has succeeded in their goal of forcing us from the Homesteads, in using terror to try and force the majority of the Terranovan people to install her in an office none of them have any business holding, and, when you would not do what Mistress asked of you, she and the ones she calls Mistress resort to more terror, more violence, more slaughter, more rape and murder against our women in retaliation—“

“—while we were distracted by this pointless war in the Homesteads, she and the women who she must call Mistress have embarked on a campaign of wanton destruction and outright subversion in our home soil, a campaign falsely-named Guy has allowed to go on while squandering resources to beat down loyal citizens of this Union—“

The terminal of the former Chief Judge of the Central Judicial District of Terranova and sitting member of the Special Lesbian Sex Crimes Tribunal bleeped for his attention, Owens remarking,”finally,” as he stroked the call button on the input holodisplay and said,”yes?”

“Governor Zellner for you, sir,” the voice of his clerk replied, the building shaking and the lights dimming as another explosion thundered nearby. “Finally,” Owens repeated, his Governor’s greying at the temples, beautifully masculine holoimage chasing away the speeches Bauer and He had made two hours ago.

“I’m busy, Wilbur,” Guy Thomas Zellner, Governor of the Union, said,”so make it short.”

“Sir,” Owens said,”you may or may not be aware that Wesley is now under attack by enemy forces on all sides—“

“All sides?!” He asked. “My understanding was the Commies came down 441 and the Avalons, Mids, Donovanians and swamis came in through Baldwin County Highways 22 and 49.”

“Commonwealth Forces Eighth Field Command and the Horizon Third Army,” Owens said,”have just been sighted in Hardwick and moving north from there along 441, while—“

“—the Russians, the Aussies and the Japs are coming at you from the east,” He finished, nodding His head. “I’ve just received that intelligence.”

“Your point being?” He then asked.

“You have already evacuated the other members of the Tribunal, Sir,” Owens started to ask, his Governor replying,”and you want to know why I haven’t sent for you.”

“You’re no longer,” He added,”of any use to Me, Wilbur.”

“Sir?” Owens asked, not believing his Governor would just abandon him, after everything he’d done for Him, his Union, his genetalia and the Work.

“After everything,” he insisted,”I’ve done, you can’t just aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

He was on the floor, flopping around like a chomper on the deck of a g-skimmer, screaming like one of them, tearing at his clothes, pissing and shitting all over himself like one of them, his Governor shouting down at him:

“Everything you’ve done, everything you are, all of it’s nothing but dirt beneath the feet of the He who is over all others! Everything you are, everything you have done , nothing more than filthy rags that do not hide your nakedness and your shame from My sight! Do you get me?!”

Owens tasted blood in his mouth, his vision a ruddy haze as all he could was scream, twitch and soil himself before his Governor’s beautiful, beautiful face.

…it was his fault.

He stared down at what had once been his Pappaw, thrashing about on the floor, soiling himself, sobbing, screaming, begging for the mercy his Pappaw had taught him a bitch didn’t fucking deserve, Uncle Roger staring at him, at the pathetic creature dying slowly at his feet, the mouth of his Pappaw’s brightest student frantically working, but nothing was coming out of it, Guy just sitting on the edge of the desk, looking at the both of them….

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 14:48:20 TAI

…the Governor of the Union laughing, as He watched that bitch Wilbur Owens die as one of them.

“Was he really,” Bradley asked, standing behind His shoulder in the Executive Council chambers aboard His Capitol,”of no further use to us?” “He would’ve been useful,” He told the Supreme Commander of His forces, before knocking back a waterglass of vintage Kentucky.

“Then—“ Bradley started to ask.

“You already know the answer, Bradley,” He said simply.

“Because You could,” Bradley said quietly.

“Because I can,” the He who was over all others replied.

“Because,” He whispered, the thing once known as Wilbur Owens continuing to come live in 256- bit true color,”I have the right.”

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 15:15:06 TAI

She took little notice of the trucks tearing through every part of her.

Rachel’s attention was more on the young woman the bushy-moustached, Bryllcremed hair Yanker was holding by her matted, filthy hair, less on him and the smoking barrels of the Twin Deuce assault railer in his other hand.

He jerked on the young woman’s hair, chuckling as she whimpered, rumbling at her “kno’ you like th—“

The thirty-five year old company commander in the Hard n’ Fast Fifty-First didn’t hesitate, squeezing the trigger of her M3 as hard as she could, the Yanker’s head coming off in a reddish-grey cloud.

As her grip on her weapon slackened, and she fell.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 15:18:27 TAI

She didn’t feel a thing, oddly enough.

There was just a bright, blue flash after she’d leapfrogged over the women running across the compound, into the path of the Yanker M51 Powell main-battle tank, the barrels of its twin 203s scraping her chestplate as she landed and let fly with everything she had.

That had been her, scared, naked, shivering, abused, twelve years of her life like that in the ghettos of New Attica, before Jami Lanier and the Unbroken had set all of them free sixteen years ago, she’d become a heavy suit so she could do the same for other women and girls, and that was what she’d done.

Everything was okay, then….

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 15:22:08 TAI

“You son of a bitch!” Carson screamed into the burning woods, watching helplessly as Shawn fell in slow motion onto the deck of the swift, fucking hole blasted through her head the size of a grown man’s fist, her dying spasms causing her to pull the triggers on the quad 90s she had been manning, turning even more of the woods on her side of the river into kindling, Meghan and Master Medical Technician Mary Blagg moving to catch her, though, of course, there wasn’t one fucking thing any of them could do for her now.

Carson trying anyway, stabbing the button on the swift’s piloting holodisplay that made the starboard 127 cut loose with thirty sixteen-ton masses of hyperdense monocarbon which obliterated even more forest, but probably not the sniper whose Longarm Two had taken the short, tragic life of Sergeant Shawn Gyllenheal…after everything she’d suffered through, she should’ve….

“…had a fucking chance to live,” he found himself whispering, the rock in his own chest starting to harden, as he struggled for air, shakily sniffling away his own tears, swallowing his own grief.

Cursing himself for having to lock it all down, for not even being able to give her a decent burial right now.

They were behind enemy lines, and they had a job to do.

That had to come first.

—endit—

In The Midst Of Death “In the midst of death, we are in life, Hastings.” Dame Agatha Christie, The A.B.C. Murders

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 18:01:05 TAI

“…and lesbiannism,” His jackbooted, black-leather suited Cynthia said into the holocams,”is now the law of my land, and will be enforced by any and all means necessary; women and girls will be married only to other women and girls, and I am not afraid to use force to make that so.”

Guy Thomas Zellner, the He who was over all others, chuckled in satisfaction as he watched the actress He’d ordered cut and pasted in the exact image and likeness of that black bitch daring to call itself Governor of His Union, continued doing her lines live in 256-bit true color, Zellner watching this from the HV in His penthouse atop the Governor’s Tower aboard the Terranova:

“Moreover, I have outlawed the existence of the male gender and any hint of masculine behavior; all men are to stripped of any and all civil rights, removed from their jobs and homes, denied wealth and property and brought forthwith to feminization centers now being established throughout the three-county area now firmly under the control of my forces; once there, they will undergo complete gender conversion and retraining, before being married to various women throughout human space.

I have further authorized a Man-Hunting Attachment Force to begin the rounding up of those males who attempt to escape or otherwise defy the New Order; anyone rendering aid and comfort to a male shall have the privilege of suffering the same penalties as he does, there will be no mercy for those females who continue betraying their gender.

Victory for the Feminazi!” that last being immediately followed by her right hand shooting straight out, hand flat, after she’d struck herself hard in the chest, little Rachel English being a good girl and doing her lines, before the holocams in the TMS studios in Vargas, on Marley, dissolved to the swarthy face of His Prime Minister, Micheal Bauer, who had this, amongst other things, to say:

“They have forced us to waste our time and efforts on ‘peace-keeping’ missions on Twice-Born and on pointless wars of oppression in the Homesteads, simply so we are divided and distracted and unable to prevent Guy Zellner and her feminazi allies from using terror and murder and subversion to unlawfully seize power in Bibb, Flynt and Martinez Counties, to use the females deeply insinuated into our military to seize control of two of our most important military bases, along with their massive stockpiles of military vehicles, starcraft and munitions, and, now, with the help of their Governor, who they have kept in power through acts of terrorism aimed at the very mechanism of our democratic system—“

“Goddamn, Micheal,” He remarked,” you use enough big words there, buddy?”

“Not the best speech Cobb’s people have written for me,” Bauer replied, as he stood behind Him,”I’ll grant You that.”

“—we have been forced,” He watched Himself say now,”to abandon our brothers in the Homesteads to the depravity and oppression of the matriarchy through the actions of a determined, powerful minority of dangerously ultraradical feminazis who have used Michelle Bauer—illegally-installed as Prime Minister of our Union, after she failed time and again, to convince the majority that she would make the better Governor of us two—they used her, Rachel, as a catspaw to achieve their evil ends, and those evil ends, as that black bitch has just so brazenly told the worlds, include killing us all, first and foremost, destroying our culture and everything we have achived in millenia of toil and struggle, and turning us into more of them, forcing us down into their immoral, indecent, incorrect parody of civilization and culture, just as Satan himself, when cast down into the fires of Hell, immediately established a mockery of God’s own Kingdom! ”

“However,” Bauer said sulkily,” he seems to have saved his writers’ best efforts for You.”

“Mmm, hmm,” was all the reply He felt like giving His Prime Minister, the Governor of the Union not taking His eyes off the epitome of masculine beauty which was His face.

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 01:16:06 TAI

“Thought I’d find you still here,” Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier said softly to the commander of Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken’s fighter detachment.

“She was just….” Senior Astrogator Khryste Pollard started to say, voice going altogether, Jami nodding her head, whispering,”I know, baby.”

The commander of the Unbroken moved from the hatchway of the inter-section connector between the relief deck and the ship’s first habitat deck, padding her way over to the kitchenette, taking two cups down from the cupboard, a plain one and her Winnie the Pooh mug—a birthday present from Stevie, from when she’d been trying to make it difficult for her to get close….

“Coffee?” she asked, already fixing hers, rummaging round in the icebox for either a Corona Real or a Caffeine Madness, finding a half-liter can of the latter, pouring that in at the same time she stirred in some hot chocolate mix, Khryste remarking hoarsely, “you do yours like Mama used to.”

“Old Moot House waitress’ trick,” Jami explained, not really needing to, her half-sister had done her time in the Moot House same as she had, from what both Uncle Carson and Auntie Neesha had both told her, Khryste telling her she knew all that, taking the cup—which Jami had done the same way as hers —from her auntie’s hands as Jami turned round to bring it to her.

“Thanks, Boss,” Khryste, who still didn’t know the relationship between Jami and her mama, whispered, nodding her head as she walked back to the sofa, where she’d been sitting since comming Susan Watson, telling her her daughter had been killed in the line of duty, Jami sitting down at the chair opposite the coffee table from the sofa, sighing…that should’ve been her doing that, she’d told Khryste as much, but she wouldn’t hear of it, the first-year cadet—would’ve turned seventeen this coming Saint Patrick’s Day— had been one of Khryste’s pilots, so the final responsibility of informing her mama, her lover and the rest of their family was hers. Fighting on the surface of Terranova had quieted down, for the moment, the League forces on the South Coast, dug in east of the Midnight Line on the North Coast and retreating rapidly towards Sparta in the Fall Line were regrouping after losing Wesley and Valdosta in yesterday’s bloody fighting…the death toll on planet and in local hyperspace stood at seven and quarter billion, more than what had been lost in eight months of fighting on Big Sky during 9YW…her uncle had commed her, no one else to talk to, or understand, what it was like to lose someone under your own command…in his case, a young woman not much older than Khryste here, who’d suffered just as bad at the hands of some thing calling itself Mistress, some goddamn fucking thing that bastard Guy Zellner and his bitch Micheal Bauer both had the audacity to accuse her of being to others….

She sighed…what all three of them, her, Khryste, that poor girl who never even had the chance the two of them had had, had probably thought of themselves, before others had stepped in and shown them they were better than what would keep on hurting them until it was all over and done with, had given them both the courage to keep on overcoming what had been done just so they could have the one simple thing they’d wanted all along.

Stevie had been there for Jami, holding her while she just sat there, cried, blaming herself for what had been her fault, in spite of her wife’s insistence to the contrary…Khryste had let Jilly in enough for her to do the same…hell, they were going to get married soon, the happiest thing anyone on this ship had seen in too long, Stevie was busy with all the arrangements, coordinating everything with Khryste’s mama and her wife, as well as Wing Commander Grey and the rest of Jilly Pollock’s surviving family—tradition dictated either the second in command or the ship’s most senior officer handled the arrangements for any onship wedding—leaving Jami to handle the marrying part….

Before that, though, she had to be the commander of this ship and Khryste’s aunt, both obligations putting her here on the relief deck, offering what handholding she could for the commander of her squadron’s fighter battalion, before both of them went downside, held the memorial service, trying their best to offer what comfort which could be offered to Rose of Sharon’s grieving family, to try and make what sense that could be made of her being taken from people who loved her very much.

Even after all this time, the commander of the Unbroken was damned if she knew just how in the hell she was supposed to start doing any of that.

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 01:38:07 TAI

“Stepping out to Eden, yeaaa, bro-therrr, stepping out to Eden, yeaaa, bro-therrr,” Doc Severensen and the Space Hippy Band sang as they flew one of the Starcraft Freedom’s Mongoose attack shuttlecraft down to the planet they’d thought resembled that fabled Ethiopian garden, Lieutenant Colonel Carson Selkirk’s eyes not on the HV in his living room, but on the holopad on the coffee table in front of him, projecting a letter he had no idea how to write and even less on just where to send it.

The Gyllenheals had been in the biz even before there had been a biz, according to what little data Intelligence Arm had been able to come up with, his friend Jay Todman—using his contacts inside Vargas —coming up with little more, all of it depressing…her old man had been a pay grade one, low down on the Movie Board food chain, mainly doing dyke roles in pornos…he’d murdered her mum in some cheapjack “lesbian” S&M snuff filmlet that finished up as window dressing for one of billions of BDSM Net sites, proceeding to do same to her…she’d come out, in spite of him, and, out of desperation, he’d sold her to a running buddy of his who’d femdommed on the side, just as Shawn had said once….

His chest hurt even worse than before when he sighed, his friend of over three decades’ worth of misadventure looking up from the rocking chair where he’d been sitting, wanting to ask.

Asking something else instead:

“That must’ve been what was on, the day your sister….” “Yeah,” Carson replied, Jay remarking,”most people hang on to whatever reminds them of those close to them who are gone…why your niece collects everything Winnie the Pooh, for example….”

“Yeah,” Carson repeated, turning his full attention back to the letter…even if her old man hadn’t done the worlds a favor by getting himself killed in some drunken, drug-fuelled gay lovers’ quarrel over which asshole got to host the gerbil derby this time, would he even have acknowledged his daughter’s existence…or prefer, like that rat bastard Curtis Dixon, not to talk about her at all….

Probably the latter, he thought…so far, the words “To Whom It May Concern:” the standard regret to inform line.

And “In the short time I’ve known Shawn” with entirely too much white space after that…no one left to send it to, even the girl she’d had the courage, once upon a time, to love, had just dropped off the face of Creation after Shawn had been sent down into her version of Hell, nothing more known about her except she’d been the daughter of another pay grade one….

Jay was strumming the Eden song on his ever-present acoustic guitar, while Doc and his hippies were getting their bare feet burned off from Eden’s corrosive soil and killed from eating poisoned pieces of forbidden fruit, the three women huddled on the deck of the Mongoose, just a waitin’ for Dirk Jameison, Commander Houck and the ship’s navigator, then-Ensign Al Bester—whose jackbooted feet were unaffected by Eden’s corrosive soil—to save them from the magnitude of the error of their ways, as used- car salesmen in Flyntsboro often liked to say, with Al’s ex-girlfriend, Carolyn Sanderson, hugging Al’s waist while still on her knees, rubbing her short, black-haired head against his crotch and telling him how sorry and wrong she was….

“I was watching this,” Carson said slowly, picking up the mouse and navigating back to the home page of SRO Net node,”that day…Abby was still asleep, it was ten o’clock, she was supposed to have already been up, if she wasn’t, and if she didn’t have the house shipshape when Dad came home…I went in her room to try and wake her up….except….”

Another sigh, Jay continuing to strum the Eden song on his guitar.

“It fucking sucks,” Carson remarked.

“Tomorrow,” he added,”we’re going to say empty words and fire shots over her casket, just before it gets loaded onto an assault transport outbound for Cor Leonis, not a damn soul there to meet her on the other end, except the pallbearers…no one’ll be there to see her off as she gets put in the cold ground of an alien world…while we, Shawn’s replacement in tow, go back behind enemy lines and back to our jobs, not….”

He trailed off, finally deciding he didn’t want to watch any more SRO, shutting the HV up, looking back up into the eyes of his old friend, realizing he’d said the wrong thing without meaning to… Jessi was dead and buried in Vargas, in a way not of her liking, the people who’d cared most about her not even able to see her off, while the ones who had been there had just been there to gloat, same as always.

“Man, I’m sorry, I should’ve—“ Carson started to say to him, Jay putting up his hand, shaking his head.

Quietly playing a tune which was way before the American World State, something called “Diamonds and Rust.”

“This,” the Mid reporter whispered,”is what I have left to cling to, her song, she taught it to me, and she sang it…she had one hell of a voice….”

“I remember,” was all the reply Carson could make to that, as he turned his full attention back to finishing the letter. 19 FEBRUARY, 2226 04:16:00 TAI

Khryste sighed, brushing the ends of the ladder as her AG harness lowered her gently down onto HabThree…before she could grab some sleep, she had one more thing left to do.

It should’ve been amongst the first, but the shock had overridden everything else, leaving her unable to act effectively…in the last few months, she’d lost too many under her command, and it still hurt, especially one not much younger than she was, one whose life she’d helped save, only to watch it snuffed before it could realize its full promise.

She walked tailward along HabThree…she was a damn fine pilot, would’ve made a good officer, always eager for any way possible to serve her Commonwealth, knowing too well everything which was at stake if she failed, if she didn’t fight hard enough….

She stopped at the door she’d wanted to stop at, hesitating before stroking the buzzer…Khryste didn’t even know if she’d had anyone, either on ship, back on Terranova or elsewhere, never had the time to get into it with her about that….

Sighing, she stroked the buzzer, Master Flight Sergeant Shawn Lucille Grey’s voice asking,”yes?”

“It’s me, baby,” Khryste said. “I just wanted to talk to you, if—“

The door slid open, Shawn Lucille—same age as her niece—sat in the chair on her workstation, long legs folded up under her, dark eyes staring past her commander, through the wall opposite both of them, Khryste sitting on the rumpled bed, trying to find a starting place.

“I-i-i fucked up,” Shawn Lucille said, stammering out the words,”all there is to it, Boss…I got sloppy, let those bastards get the drop on me, and poor Rose paid the price for that, trying to get me out of the trouble I’d gotten myself into.”

“I was falling in love with her,” she added, after a pause,”that’s the real bitch of it all…I-i never said anything to her, both my mums said to take it slow, she’d been through so much…she was a very easy person to get on with, to fall in love with, she was so sweet, kind, strong, focussed…we were friends, I was willing to let it go at that, if she wasn’t comfortable with anything else….”

She sighed, wet and heavy with grief…Khryste reaching out, putting a hand on her knee, giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Baby, there wasn’t anything you could’ve done,” she said, not the right words to say, the truth nonetheless,”I watched the telemetry from your fighter and from Unbroken’s own sensors a dozen times, and I can tell you that little…you did everything you were supposed to.”

“So did she,” she added.

The commander of Unbroken’s fighter detachment let go of Shawn Lucille’s knee, staring down at the carpeting in her quarters, sighing, shaking her head, telling her:

“I don’t know what else to say, except that.”

Looking back up, she saw Shawn Lucille absently nodding her head, as she stared up at the ceiling.

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 06:26:27 TAI

Even he hadn’t deserved to go out like that. Cynthia McKinley, Governor of the Republican Union of Terranova, turned away from the contorted face of Wilbur Owens, late Chief Judge of the Central Judicial District of Terranova, pulling the sheet back over him, sighing as she looked at the row upon row upon row of sheeted corpses—most of them female—taking up every spare inch of the former student union’s atrium…Wesley, where it had all started, was in their hands now, the cost too high, always too high….

Always too high…she was so stupid to have actually believed things had changed ten years ago, when she’d first been elected to her seat in the General Assembly, believed all the Movie Board’s hype about things being different for women now, about them having finally won(as many times as we’ve heard that in our lifetimes, and we all should’ve known better)now that Tau Ceti had shown the men in New Whitehorse the magnitude of the error of their ways, as David Coors so often liked to say….all those years before, standing up for the women of ABC City and Flyntsboro’s other legalized concentration camps as a student activist, then as a lawyer, then as a fugitive from Guy Zellner’s justice, and, yet she was fool enough to believe a man who could rape and murder someone he supposedly loved could actually repent of his sins.

The whole fucking planet had paid dearly for her foolishness…and, not just them, the Commies as well, always them, they felt obligated to step in every time Zellner and his mob got out of hand, because, nearly two hundred years ago, they’d made the same mistakes she had.…Cathi, just as much a figurehead and a scapegoat as Cynthia had let herself become, was still missing, had been since Zellner’s attempt to blow up the Fall Line had blown up any chance he’d had at enforcing Amendment 42 instead, no hard intelligence as to where she was, JMC was doing everything they could to track her down, but they had a war to fight against men she’d been stupid enough to believe.

She looked up at the deserted shops and snack bar lining the upper part of the atrium, Commie Forces soldiers standing guard every few meters or so, weapons at the ready…her people were to blame for that, the Commies finding out the hard way during their first visit to this planet that if they didn’t guard their dead every second, they would end up desecrated by the folks they were trying to help….

“Hey,” Juanita Barrett, formerly Colonel Juanita Barrett of the National Police’s Fulton County Command, before she’d been set up to burn eight and a half years ago, said, as she came up to her.

“Commies said I’d find you here,” the head of the newly-formed Terranovan Buerau of Criminal Investigations remarked.

“How’s it going, Nita?” Cynthia asked softly, not taking her eyes off either the dead or the women guarding them.

“Slow,” Nita replied, her voice cracking.”Painful…those motherfuckers were staging their show trials right up to the end, everything they done’s been recorded.”

“Everything,” she repeated.

“I’ll have a full report for you on that soon as we’re through,” she then told her Governor.

“I really came to talk to you about that other matter,” she added. “AFVC, National Police, TBCI and the Mids have all been going over every meg of data recorded by the TSID’s Internal Surveillance Center ever since that the AFVC stumbled onto it a month ago…you can’t grant full pardons to either one of ‘em, like you wanted to.”

“Why not?” Cynthia asked.

“For the simple fact neither one of ‘em ever been convicted of anything,” Nita replied,” least not ‘til after they both got sent to Witch’s Titty…it’s probably gonna be that way with most, if not all, of the ones….” She trailed off, Cynthia remarking, after a pause:

“The ones who weren’t lucky enough to end up like this.”

“Ain’t that,” she then bitterly asked her closest surviving friend,”some shit?”

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 07:00:58 TAI

“Just another sterling example,” He watched Himself say,”of how the females will do anything, especially turn on their own subhuman kind, in order to enforce the dogma of political correctness in the place of good, honest, Christian values.”

“That,” nasty little Hannah Donner said, crossing her booted feet, letting that mini slip to show the worlds her stinking-ass poot,”was the response Terranova Governor Guy Zellner, Chairman of the League’s Executive Council, had to the news that University of Terranova head cheerleading coach Marilou Braselton had been fired for holding pre-game prayer meetings, retaliating against cheerleaders who were, as Braselton herself put it, ‘insufficently Christ-like in character,’ and holding Bible studies at her home which her cheerleaders felt obligated to attend.”

The He who was over all others watched CBS’ Early Morning Show, as the redheaded pussy did her lines like she was supposed to, telling the worlds all about the mannish fucking dyke bitch He wanted them all to believe was a cheerleading coach at UT-Nova in Athens, about how she discriminated against some black piece of pussy ‘cause she was Jewish and liked nothing better than mowing down some prime gefilte fish on Saturday night, though Hannah, like a good girl, did her lines in such a way as to play up the religion angle and play down the pootie angle, putting it in there just long enough for His target audience to believe bitches hated the very idea of going down on other bitches.

Knocking back some Kentucky and kike, the Governor of the Union watched as the HV dissolved to Micheal’s stupid face, standing in the same press room He had just left, doing his lines:

“Of course their Governor objects to decent men rooting out those interested only in holding others captive in the bonds of ignorance and superstition…history has proven, time and again, that when unenlightment rules, when all science and technology are outlawed and destroyed, when all books have been burned, when all intellecutals have been sent to the camps, they thrive, just as they did during the time of the American World State, when Hillary Clinton, buoyed by the religious fundamentalism and sheer ignorace her feminist movement had enforced through terror and misrule of law, seized absolute power over all the nations of Earth, and turned it into a mass grave for her amusement and the amusement of her lesbian lovers…so great was the enforcement of ignorance by this so-called moral majority, that they even sabotaged the American and European space programmes—just as they were on the cusp of escaping the bondage of Earth and its Solar System—just so they would have an excuse for banning all space travel altogether, for keeping us grounded in the quagmire of ignorance and prejudice in which they need in order to survive.”

See, He thought to Himself, carving up one of the two livers on the plate in front of him, spearing a chunk of liver and one of the six lightly-poached eggs with His fork, Cobb’s people don’t save their best materiel just for Me, Micheal, they throw you a few good speeches as well, and that one’s about the best I’ve heard.

“—as they enforce a Christian faith so hateful of and inimical towards natural masculine affections,” Bauer continued prating,”they inflict the most disgusting feminine perversity upon us and themselves as well…these Bible studies, as these Bible studies inevitably are, were nothing more or less than once-weekly Walpurgis Night observances, where these females, commanded by their lesbian dominatrix, would recite passages from their books before indulging in acts of lesbian sadomasochism often involving the sexual humiliation of either freshman cheerleaders, or, as was the case with poor Jaclyn Steele, those girls deemed too fat, too ugly and/or too smart for their peace of mind.…as the cheerleading squad’s token duff—or ‘designated fat, ugly fuck’—Jaclyn was forced to be the bottom girl for all the other cheerleaders, submitting to vile acts of lesbian sexuality at the hands of even the lowliest of freshman girls.”

“They gonna show any pics of that, Guy?” His man asked, cinching the belt round the waist of the earth-toned bathrobe He’d bought for his birthday, tying it off in a knot before sitting down on the opposite end of the sofa from Him.

“Or,” he added, showing Him there was more to Matthew than a pretty face and a beautiful young body,”are they gonna wait on that, let our imaginations fill in the blanks, so that when they do get round to showing the pics of what ‘em nasty fucks do to each other, it’ll be that much worse.”

“Exactly,” He told him, not able to resist the urge to chuckle a bit.

“And, by the time,” Matthew then said, proving He had been right to take him under His tutelage,”they release the pix after that showing that fat, black cunt turnin’ out ‘em other cheerleaders for the lesbian sex-slave ring You’ll say she was helpin’ to run on campus, our imaginations will have already leapt to that conclusion, and we’ll have ‘em fucked on all sides.”

“Damn skippy,” said the He who was over all others, before shoving the forkful of liver and egg in His mouth.

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 08:18:04 TAI

Rhonda gave her wife’s hand a gentle squeeze, Susan Watson not able to see a goddamn thing but blobs of red, yellow, blue, green, grey and black wobbling about.

“It’s all right, Mama,” Lexie whispered, holding to her mother’s other hand, the eighteen-year old girl’s voice as choked with grief as Susan’s.

Eight figures in red and grey lined up alongside the blur which was the Commonwealth Tricolor folded into a right triangle, wrapped in black cord with a Black Star inside it and mounted on a pedestal where Rose of Sharon’s grave would’ve been had there been a body to bury…two more figures in red and grey stood on either side of the pedestal, one of them Carson Selkirk’s niece…his brother had died saving their lives three months ago…now, her sixteen-year old daughter had….

Rhonda and Lexie both held on to her as she shook and her knees gave way, Pastor Johnson clearing his throat, repeating words from Ecclesiastes he’d had entirely too much practice saying lately… Jami Lanier and the others who’d served with Rose had spoken well of her during the service, the hero of Black Mountain, Bearclaw Station and Espérance breaking down during her eulogy, struggling to find the words, same as the commander of her fighter detachment and a young woman Lexie’s age, who’d told everyone that she’d been in love with her, that she never even got the chance to say anything to her about that, before aplogizing for being so selfish, clearing her throat, telling everyone there only one thing mattered, in the end, that being Rose of Sharon was a good and decent woman who any one of them would’ve been proud to call her friend….

Susan sighed, sniffling down some of her tears….the church had been packed to the rafters with Commie Forces personnel, people who’d either worked with Susan out at the plant, with Rhonda at the university, with Lexie, Rose of Sharon and Suschenka at the Moot House, with Josh out at Trane-Lennox or with Rhonda and Susan both during the short time they’d been hooked up with the the Joint Military Command’s Intelligence Coordinating Staff and the ICLU respectively…there’d even been a few of Lexie’s professors and fellow students who’d come all the way from either Cor Leonis or Rover Seven, to say nothing of the half of Wesley still alive after all the shooting had stopped. Even Assem—Governor McKinley had been there, was still here, with all the other people Susan still could not believe had come to Culver Kidd Veterans’ Memorial Park just to say goodbye to her daughter.

”Re-day!“ a woman’s voice barked out, snapping Susan back to here and now.

”Haim!“ she added after eight sets of clack!clack!clack!s echoed in the clear spring sky.

”Fire!“ she ordered, eight assault railers firing into the air, waiting for her to shout “Fire!” again before firing a second time, waiting again for her order before letting loose a final volley.

There was the stomping of feet into wet grass, the slow, quiet, mournful voices singing “Auld Lang Syne,” as Carson’s niece walked slowly towards the Tricolor, gingerly picking it up, turning on her heel.

Walking towards Susan, shaking hands reaching out to hand her all that was left of her daughter, a trembling voice stammering out the words,”b-baby, I’m s-so s-sorry, I-i….”

Susan letting go of wife and oldest daughter long enough to hug her.

Whispering thank you as she let go and took the flag from her unsteady hands.

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 10:08:50 TAI

“I fucking hate funerals,” Carson whispered, the progress of the disease Major Ryla Sedgewick thought she’d beaten evidenced by the horrid sound his chest made with every word.

Unbroken’s chief flight surgeon sighed, shaking her head, looking back at the results floating over the workstation terminal in the med deck, as if the results were going to transform themselves by magic into something more to her liking.

They didn’t….her fault, offering her old friend and former commander hope, not doing all the research she should’ve done, missing the most obvious damn thing…what they’d known for the last two centuries or more, what even the fire of the goddamn American World State had failed to burn clean from their memory.

There were two chromosomes separating a heterosexual man such as Carson from the women on which Marilois Lester had based her research…more than enough for his niece’s t-RNA to work for a while in reprogramming his autoimmune system to fight off the virus killing him…before the programming wore off, and his immune system, acting on missing and corrupted genetic information, quickly forgot everything it had learned.

“Ryla,” Carson said softly, Ryla realizing with a start that he’d been looking her in the eye the entire time she was trying to come up with some way of telling him,”I already know…I figured it out, more or less….”

“Carson, I—“ she started to say, her friend getting up off the bed he’d been sitting on, walking over and putting his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “You tried, no matter what happens, that’s what counts, you tried.”

“I’m not giving up,” she whispered, patting his hand.

“Ryla,” Carson whispered, still looking her in the eye,”please don’t do this to yourself.”

“I’m not giving up, Carson,” Ryla told him again, more steel in her voice than she thought she could muster up, given the circumstances. “I’ve lost one friend to this fucking war already.…no more.” “No,” she repeated,”more.”

Taking the pnuemo from the workstation, she fired its full charge into the arm he still had on her shoulder.

“It worked,” she explained,”on a temporary basis…hopefully, it’ll work long enough for me to come up with a permanent solution.”

Patting her shoulder, her old friend and former commander simply nodded his head.

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 13:05:11 TAI

The suns started setting, when Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon found a bench to sit down at…right across the street from a Moot House, its parking lot deserted, shades drawn, a couple of the windows actually having glass in them still, a couple of Allied Forces Volunteer Constabulary standing guard at the door, their Bravo Boxy AG sled parked at the c-store behind Unbroken’s chief flight engineer.

Moot House never closes, she thought idly, sighing, staring up into a red Judas further away in the sky than he had been…by the end of the month, he was going to be gone for good, the separation between Delta Trianguli’s second and third planets widening until they were at apogee, after which it would take another eight years and an odd number of months for it to begin looming in Terranova’s night sky again.

They’d yet to go to bed together…Ree understood, told her she’d wait forever until it was right for Ariel, and Ariel was uncertain if it ever would be, she still didn’t have clue one as to what in the name of God she was supposed to do, only what she would never do to Ree, what she never wanted done to her again.

She ignored that part of her cackling inside her head, telling her that was how girls who loved other girls were supposed to get off, dildos, whips, licking vaginas and assholes, the whole fucking nine… Ree, bless her heart, was no help on this, she’d never….

Yeah, she was a virgin, saving that for that one special and right person in her life, and she still believed Ariel was that one, in spite of every stupid thing Ariel had tried to do to push her away, because Ariel knew Ree was the one she wanted to share the rest of her life with….

She sighed cold smoke into the night air…yeah, Ree was a virgin, nothing like the slobbering, horny things men liked to write about and feature front and center in all their pornos, and Ariel was embarassed to say that surprised her, she still had a lot of things to sort out.

She sniffled, her next sigh heavy with tears…funerals reminded her too much of Meredith, of chances never given nor taken…Shawn Lucille Grey had sniffled down her pain, told everyone it didn’t matter that she never got to tell Rose of Sharon just how she’d felt about her…no one would ever know if Susan Watson’s second-oldest child felt the same way about Shawn, if she’d been in love with anyone, she should’ve had the chance, after all the hell that black bastard Horace Williams(who she hoped was burning in the hottest fire Hell had to offer right now)had put her, her sisters and brother and her mama all through.

Same as Tracy and Yolanda, as Meredith, as her own sisters…Margo was okay, still hadn’t found anyone to share her life with, probably never would, she’d lived through Ariel being sent away, Ronnie hounded to her grave, Kay and Angela broken without a second thought, Mama dying slowly after they’d already killed her soul…all that on top of what she’d been put through….

A third sigh, Ariel looking back down at 441, mostly deserted, a few civilian vehicles driving slowly along all twenty debris-littered lanes, military AG vehicles and troops cautiously making their way along the road, wary of ambushes, KK devices and every other possible danger still lurking in the shadows to get th— Fuck!

She jumped three feet in the air before realizing it had only been Ree laying her grey-gloved hand gently on the right shoulder of Ariel’s dress reds.

“God, luv,” Ree whispered,”I’m sorry, didn’t mean—“

“Baby,” Ariel said, after getting her heart back under control, turning to take Ree’s hand in hers,” you’re fine, I just had a lot on my mind, wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to what was going on around me.”

“I was worried about you,” Ree explained. “You went off by yourself after the memorial service —“

“Had a lot on my mind, like I said,” Ariel replied, Ree walking around the bench, sitting down next to her.

“I was thinking mainly about what Shawn Lucille said,” she added, Ree telling her,”I’ve already said I’d wait, ‘til you were ready.”

Ariel flushed, trembling slightly when Ree put her right hand on her left thigh, sighing, smiling, as she laid her hand on top of Ree’s.

“I know you did, baby,” she whispered,”and I know you will, I….”

“…you still like gurls,” she said, standing over Ariel as she lay huddled facedown, ass up, on the floor of the Tail’s dressing room,” even after everythan’ we done to you?”

“What a stupid fuckin’ ho’ you is,” she added, grabbing Ariel’s hair….

…shut the fuck up, she ain’t like that, she told the voice in her head, giving Ree’s hand a gentle squeeze, Ree looking at her with wide, trusting eyes.

“Truth of the matter is,” Ariel whispered,”I’m scared to death at the idea of having sex with you, but…I-i want to at least try, even if I don’t know what I’m doing, even if I end up locking myself in the damn bathroom all night, I want to t-try and l-love you.”

“I-if y-you….” she said, shaking, laying her free hand against Ree’s cheek, Ree nodding her head.

“Okay,” she whispered after a silence.

“Okay,” she repeated.

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 14:07:19 TAI

Captain Jillian Pollock put her arm round her future wife’s right shoulder, the two women standing quietly in front of the marker erected in Rose of Sharon’s memory.

Khryste blamed herself, knowing there wasn’t a bloody thing she could’ve done differently that would’ve undone this…she certainly could not have stopped her from volunteering to take the place of one of the too many the woman she loved had lost under her command during three months of war, cadets volunteering for combat duty had been a long-standing tradition in the Commonwealth Forces, some of the other JMC armed services as well, manpower was always desperately needed in wartime, and the cadets could learn while doing(same as they did in the MedServices Arm even after graduation)…when this war had erupted, as a matter of fact, the Defense Staff had comissioned the entire second-year cadet class, some of the first-year cadets as well, sending them out into the fire, Rose of Sharon’s being sent into combat wasn’t any different, Khryste should know that.

Easy for me to say, she admonished herself, she wasn’t one of mine…commanders take each loss personally....

Her thoughts trailed off at that point, Khryste patting the grey-gloved hand holding her by her shoulder, drawing herself in closer to Jilly, leaning her head against her.

“They never had a chance, baby,” she said out loud, Jilly knowing she meant Rose of Sharon and her Auntie Lucy, her fiancé running what might’ve been—what should’ve been—round and round in her head…no one on ship had known Auntie Lucy felt that way about Rose, no one would ever know how Rose had felt about her…the few times Jilly had seen the both of them together, they’d gotten on very well indeed, but she knew from her own expirience that love wasn’t always that easy, especially when….

“When,” Khryste finished for her,”one of them’s been through what Rose of Sharon’s been through.”

“Baby,” she added,”I know I haven’t made it easy for you—“

“You had your reasons,” Jilly said, giving her love a gentle squeeze.

“I had no excuse,” Khryste replied simply.”I should’ve—“

“Are you going,” Jilly whispered, giving Khryste another gentle squeeze,” to keep apologizing, throughout our marriage, for what really wasn’t your fault, luv?”

“For,” she added,”what I forgave you for, even in the worst of times?”

Her love’s only reply was to bite down on her lower lip, staring down at her feet and the ground.

Then looking back up into Jilly’s eyes, smiling nervously, her body all wound up, as she laid a hand gently on Jilly’s cheek, turning so she could kiss her full on her lips.

Thank you, she whispered in her future wife’s mind, as she hugged Jilly round the waist.

Thank you, she repeated, kissing Jilly again, leaning her head against hers.

The two women silent for a long time after that.

18 FEBRUARY, 2226 14:16:20 TAI

It was still standing, still in business in spite of everything.

Jami and Stevie—both of whom were wearing civs now—sat in one of the tables looking out on MLK, the two of them holding hands across it at the same time they ate their sandwiches…after school, when she was little, Mama used to take her here to McCall’s, in Old Town’s Commercial Circle; they had a good hour to themselves before Daddy left the base to come home, and they’d better be there by the time he did get—

The commander of the Unbroken broke that thought off as soon as she thought it, taking a huge bite of her roast beef and tomato sandwich, dripping with thousand island dressing, Stevie reaching across the table with a wetwipe to daub dressing off the corners of her wife’s mouth, Jami unable to keep herself from giggling, which, of course, made Stevie smile broadly.

Which, of course, made Jami goosepimply and warm all over, making her giggle some more. “For someone as pathologicially neat as you are, luv,” Stevie remarked, picking the half of a ham and swiss on wheat she’d been working on back up, “you eat some of the messiest things.”

Jami giggled some more, before telling her wife—again, but she didn’t mind—“baby, a sandwich just ain’t a sandwich, ‘less it’s sloppy and dripping and falling apart all over the place.”

“It was a good idea,” she added,”to come back to Freeman Lang for lunch, instead of eating in Wesley. Thank you.”

“You needed to get away from there,” Stevie said softly, tearing her half of sandwich into halves,”from being the commander of the Unbroken, to actually laugh and be happy, if only for a little while.”

Jami patted her hand, smiling, whispering,”thanks, baby.”

“My job,” Stevie replied, half-serious, fingertips brushing Jami’s. “Both as your wife and your second in command.”

“I rather like my job,” she added, brushing a stray blonde hair away from Jami’s face, Jami telling her,”you need to eat that sandwich, instead of tearing it up into little bits.”

Stevie smiled again, taking one of the fragments of ham and swiss and popping it in her mouth, Jami taking another bite of her roast beef and tomato—one of two, both of them hold the knife—following that with a spoonful of McCall’s famous homemade chicken noodle soup, the waitress, employing a skill most waitresses(even Jami)seem to have been born with, coming by with a pitcher of sweet tea and asking if everything was all right at the precise moment both women had their mouths full.

Putting up her hand, Jami chewed and swallowed her bite of sandwich and spoonful of soup, telling their waitress,”everything’s great, baby,” as she held out her glass for a refill, telling Mitzi—what the nametag on her grey t-shirt said—thanks.

“I’m fine, dear,” Stevie said, when Mitzi offered her a refill on sweet tea, holding another fragment of ham and swiss between left forefinger and thumb, “thank you.”

“Lemme know if y’all need anything,” Mitzi then said, moving on to the next table in her station, Jami finishing up her first sandwich, eating some more soup, sipping her freshly-recharged glass of tea.

Sighing, as she looked into her wife’s light hazel eyes.

“What?” Stevie, her laughter soft and light, asked.

“Just thinking about you, love,” Jami whispered, taking hold of Stevie’s hand again.

“Thinking about you,” she repeated, smiling.

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 15:08:00 TAI

“Even as the University of Terranova cheerleader scandal deepens,” Carolyn Minh’s slant-eyed pussy said for Him and those who followed Him,”the Terranovan Security and Intelligence Directorate has uncovered shocking evidence of an extensive lesbian conspiracy virtually controlling Terranova Southeastern University’s Pittman College of Education; this, as you may know, is the same institution which produced the infamous sexual predator Mary Kate Walton, convicted just last year of sexually abusing a twelve-year old boy and serving only seven months of a ten-year sentence before being reinstated as a teacher in the Fulton County school system.” His yellow-skinned piece of poot paused for a moment, her Governor waiting for TMS to fucking cut to the chase, to the footage of bitches doing what bitches always fucking did when there weren’t any men around man enough to make their pussies ri—

What the fuck?!

“What the fuck?!” He demanded of the HV when, instead of what He’d asked for, fucking Francis Mulloy’s fucking sorry mick self was running his goddamn hairy fucking cooter right in His face:

“This is Station VOR5; we interrupt your regularly-scheduled masturbatory expirience to inject a bit of truth into your daily lives—“

“You miserable, traitorous, goddamn dicksucker!” He screamed, hurling his drink at Mulloy’s fucking bonesmoker, the glass bouncing off the edge of the AG field of the hologram, smashing into the wall behind Him, Mulloy ignoring that, running his fucking mouth:

“You already know Mary Kate Walton—the real one, not that poor Sally Damien had cut and pasted for Jenni Graham, the tabloids, the skinrags and the Lifetime movie—was found on Tartarus by Avalon forces, bashing in the skull of what she thought was Helga the Terrible, but was really just some miserable bastard cutting and pasting himself to look like what he wanted to believe was—“

“Goddamn you, shut up!” his Governor foamed and slavered at Mulloy, but, of course, the bitch just wouldn’t fucking mind him:

“—doubtful she’ll ever fully recover from what was done to her, that she will ever be quite herself again, while her ‘victim,’ poor, poor little Vili, fresh from his appearance on The Early Morning Show, where he got to ogle Reneé Sofer’s crotch while she did the lines beaten into her, has inked for himself movie, book and recording deals guaranteed to numb what passes for his conscience over what he did to her simply because she tried to stand up for herself and the girls she was forced to watch dumb themsel—“

With a scream, the He who was over all others drew His California-Winchester M2149 rail pistol from inside His grey Armani suit, driving truck after truck into that traitorous, ungrateful goddamn bitch, until the HV exploded in a somewhat satisfying shower of photons.

Breath ragged, froth cooling on His lip, the spent cannister burning a hole in the Grade One Axeminster, the Governor of the Union then screamed into his workstation for Bradley to fucking find VOR5 and take it off the fucking Net for good, or by God, He was gonna shove something in him he wasn’t gonna fucking like.

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 15:15:00 TAI

“Enough of that, though,” Francis Mulloy said, Jay Todman watching him from a corner booth in the Denny’s on 441, the Mid reporter picking at the cheeseburger and fries he’d ordered.

“Before we go, I’d like to say a few words concerning Sergeant Shawn Gyllenheal of the Commonwealth Forces,” Mulloy added, pausing,”killed in yesterday’s bitter fighting on the South Coast of the Terranovan continent of Basseterre.”

“She was nineteen,” he added,”already seeing more than anyone should’ve at that age…she was the daughter of Charlie Gyllenheal, a failing actor at the end of a line of actors stretching back into the days before the American World State…nothing much there, she grew up in Vargas, in the tenements and other seedy establishments on Melrose Avenue, where the poorer and less talented of our actors lived and worked, mainly in pornos, usually playing dyke roles, as Charlie often did…those of you needing visual aids to wank yourself to sleep by may remember his performance in such classics as Vampire Sisters of Phi Screw U, Whip Me, Chain Me, Any Way Ya Want Me, Spoiled Brat Girls’ School, Mean Girls On da Block, and, at the absolute zenith of his career, a bit part playing the female gladiator lasewhipping Viki Pratt’s bare breasts in an episode of the sci-fi series Caligula 2525…he preferred spending his vast periods of unemployment drinking, drugging, raping and toruring the actress whose contract he’d purchased for cheap —finally snuffing her for ‘artistic value’ or twenty-five sterlings a fuck, take your pick—and the daughter he forced her to give birth to.”

Jay sucked down some soda through a straw, eating a couple of fries, Mulloy adding:

“At the age of eleven, Shawn and a girl named Ashleigh Fairchilde—daughter of another jacker playing dykes to pay the rates—became close friends, too close for the comfort of either father, the men running the school which they both were attending and, ultimately, Sidney Deal and his jackboots. You may have seen Ashleigh on HV, but ‘til now, even she hadn’t any idea of what became of poor Shawn.

Well, I’ll tell you all, whether or not you want to hear it…her father had a mate who liked to dress up in leather, lace and bioplastic and call himself Mistress Nightshade…her father sold Shawn’s contract to this Mistress Nightshade, who ran what those into that sort of thing call a dungeon on the intersection of Melrose Avenue and Rodeo Drive for men seeking punishment so they could feel better about being miserable shits and for fathers, husbands, boyfriends, what have you, who wanted Mistress to make their girls hate women as much as they did…day and night for seven and a half years, the only name, the nicest name, she was ever called was ‘Girlie,’ as she endured abuse and humiliation at the hands of what she thought, almost up to the end, was female…I’ll leave the particulars up to your imaginations.”

The whole restaurant was quiet now, as Mulloy paused again, continued:

“One night, seven and a half years after she’d first been sold to Mistress Nightshade, she was on her knees in a cage, men screaming all round for Mistress to show them what women were all about, Shawn begging for her frail life, as she was told she was nothing compared to a man, that even other women easily grew bored with her, Mistress wrapping a garrote round her neck, certainly would’ve strangled her, had Shawn not found it within herself to fight, kicking out, knocking her tormentor onto the floor of the cage, ripping off his appliances to find that he was a bloke after all, just before she cut his thorat open with the very garrote he was going to use to kill her…she hid for months in the underbelly of the city, surviving however she could, Deal’s jackboots hunting her down, the ICLU finally getting her offworld to Firestar, where something in her prompted her to join the Commonwealth Forces and to choose field reconaissance work, possibly the most hazardous duty in the Commie Forces…she rose to the rank of sergeant through the dint of her own efforts, sent to Terranova to join the fighting there, telling her teammates only bits and pieces of what drove her, never completely opening herself up, not even to them… from what those who briefly served and trained with her say, she kept to herself, not even letting herself have friends, much less letting anyone into her life enough to love her.”

“And,” he said, nodding his head,”that’s how she died, people, alone in the company of others, never having a childhood or a chance to grow up, never letting anyone in, her head blown off by a sniper without her even having a chance to fight back.”

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 15:22:01 TAI

“I’m telling you all this,” Francis Mulloy, formerly TMS’ top anchorman, said,”not just to clue you in on what we all have to fight against…but to answer that question nagging at your minds, as to why a bloke like me, with everything in the worlds at his command, would choose to chuck it all out the window and spend the rest of his days a hunted, harried fugitive, risking his neck for brief oppportunities to speak on their behalf.

Shawn Gyllenheal’s history, repeated hundreds of millions of times, in hundreds of millions of ways, is that reason.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed in Ree’s quarters back aboard Unbroken, Ariel watched him then say, alarms and the familiar whine of an infinity driver in the background,”those are the sounds indicating we are out of time, for now; this is Station VOR5 signing off.” And the holo briefly turned to snow, Ariel staring down at her fidgeting hands, her and Ree stripped down to boxers and t-shirts for the past couple hours since they’d gated back aboard ship, but, that was as far as it got, for now, the two of them spending much of that time talking, watching HV.

Ariel trembled, flushed, felt good, all at once, as Ree, sitting beside her on the bed, whispered,”you don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” for only the umpteenth time, Ariel tenatively reaching out….

…grabbing her by her hair, bending her over the railing, pulling her….

…putting her hand on Ree’s knee, looking into her kind, smiling face, bending over a little bit to kiss her full on the mouth, holding it for the longest time, Ree kissing her back, the two of them getting up, holding on to one another, hands racing up and down one another’s back.

Ariel shuddering, tingling all over, something down there stretching itself taut, though, for the life of her, she didn’t know what the hell it was.

She wrapped her right leg round Ree’s waist, the two of them pressing closer to one another.

—endit— The Kingdom Of Heaven “Pangloss sometimes said to Candide, ‘All events are interconnected in this best of all possible worlds, for if you hadn’t been driven from a beautiful castle with hard kicks in your behind because of your love for Lady Cunegonde, if you hadn’t been seized by the Inquosition, if you hadn’t wandered over America on foot, if you hadn’t thrust your sword through the baron, and if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from the land of Eldorado, you wouldn’t be here eating candied citrons and pistachio nuts.’

‘Well said,’ replied Candide,’ but we must cultivate our garden.’ ” Voltaire, Candide

19 FEBRUARY, 2226 22:26:19 TAI

Ashleigh O’Connell stared down at the headstone in front of her:

SHAWN MARIE GYLLENHEAL SERGEANT, COMMONWEALTH FORCES INTELLIGENCE ARM ASSIGNED TO 11994TH FIELD RECONAISSANCE TEAM, FAITHFULLY SERVING HER PEOPLE DURING THIS SAD TIME OF WAR. BORN ON THE 6TH OF JUNE. 2206 KILLED IN ACTION ON THE 18TH OF FEBRUARY. 2226, THREE KILOMETRES FROM THE CITY OF VALDOSTA, ON TERRANOVA. JOHN 15:13 her chest heaving, as she sighed, the headstone of Cor Leonis granite and the single black star at its apex wavering in her field of vision, as she wept for the girl she’d loved as a child.

The nineteen-year old former Terranova Media Syndicate reporter swallowed, sighing again, biting down on her lower lip, her knees buckling…ever since that night, when Deal’s jackboots had stormed their secret place, had dragged Ashleigh screaming from Shawn’s arms, she’d never stopped thinking about her, what was being done to her, even as she’d been raped and beaten into wearing the garish costumes and doing the lines of a newsgirl Sally. She nodded her head absently…a fucking drag queen of a dominatrix had done terrible things to her mind, body and soul for nearly eight years, Jay Todman had told her that, about Shawn fighting for her frail life against the she/he/it about to fucking strangle her to the cheering of other men screaming for Mistress to show them what it meant to be a lesbian.

The Mid reporter, after he’d told her that, after he’d tracked down VOR5’s current location in space and asked to speak to her, had then said in the short time he’d known her, she’d kept most of that pain to herself.

And, she’d died alone in the company of others.

It wasn’t fair.

Goddamnit, it wasn’t fair!

“No, it isn’t,” she heard a woman’s husky, broken voice whisper from behind her, Ashleigh realizing she’d screamed that out loud, the words still echoing in the night sky, her hands hurting from being so tightly balled into fists.

Relaxing, Ashleigh turned to face…the Commonwealth prime minister herself, the Commonwealth Seal hanging loosely by its pin from the blazer of her slate-grey pantsuit, her eyes staring far off into the distance, her dark hair scattered all over her, her face…Jesus Christ, she looked like hell.

“It’s not fair at all,” Angelique Gault repeated softly, her voice choked with grief.

20 FEBRUARY, 2226 07:16:37 TAI

She kissed her sleeping lover lightly on her lips, as they lay intertwined, her right leg over Rhiannon’s left, Rhiannon’s left leg over hers, the two of them touching everywhere, the brush of her clitoris against Rhiannon’s—or, maybe the other way round, didn’t matter—sending electric currents all through her body.

Sighing, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon realized for only the umpteenth time how much of an idiot she’d been, for pushing sweet Rhiannon from her to begin with, for being too afraid and confused to take this step with her.

For her ideas as to what making love with another woman meant…even this, pleasurable and good and right as it was, wasn’t the end all and be all of it, she realized that now, even as she ran her fingertips down Rhiannon’s back, stopping short of her butt, working her way back up to the spot between her shoulder blades.

They’d made love that night three weeks ago, when all they’d done was sit beside her bed, held hands and talked, and every moment since the night she’d finally decided to stop listening to the evil voice inside her head and trust her and herself.

Laughing softly, Rhiannon’s voice whispered in her head, oh, luv, you weren’t being an idiot, you just didn’t know any better, there is a difference between the two, you know.

I do now, baby, Ariel thought back, shivering a bit as Rhiannon shifted position, her nipples brushing Ariel’s, her hands moving higher up, to the nape of her neck, the toes of her left foot ever so lightly tickling the hollow at the back of Ariel’s knee, her clitoris….

Ariel couldn’t help giggling, giddy as she was…no pain, no tears, she whispered, nothing like what they said, all you ever wanted to do was love me, I’m just so sorry it took so long for me to realize that, I wish— Ssssshhhhh, Rhiannon whispered back, kissing Ariel lightly on her lips, Ariel giggling again…the only thing she wanted to do was to love this beautiful person back.

To, one day, maybe, be worthy of what she’d so freely given her all along.

20 FEBRUARY, 2226 07:16:37 TAI

She woke to clear blue sky, her head in her wife’s lap, Stevie’s sure fingers stroking her hair as she smiled down at her.

“How long have I been sleeping?” Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier asked softly.

“Three hours, I think,” Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads replied softly, Jami’s long, blonde hair still falling through her fingers,”maybe four, I don’t really know myself, I drifted off for a bit.”

Jami made no move to get up just yet, though she stretched the legs hanging over the edges of the bench in the park in Payne City …they’d gone riding after eating lunch at McCall’s, no destination in mind, just rode around on her Sable 1500 motorcycle, Stevie holding on to her for dear life as she rocketed round in speeds well in excess of sound down Terranova 247—what some people called the Hawkinsville Road— coming into Seven Bridges, slowing way down when they went up Broadway into the heart of downtown Flyntsboro, cruising, especially round the back parts of town full of factories and businesses abandoned for two centuries, doing a little window shopping, rode almost all the way into Gray, turned round, ended up here in Payne City, an old Texprint Northwest mill town completely surrounded by, yet completely independent from, Flyntsboro…they’d had a very late supper, before sitting here and stargazing and watching the suns rise…last thing she remembered was staring up at first sunrise, as she’d laid her head in Stevie’s lap.

Grinning from ear to ear like she was doing now, as she stared up into those warm, hazel eyes.

“This was a good idea you had,” she whispered,”have I told you that, yet?”

“Several times,” Stevie replied, smiling back at her, twirling Jami’s hair in her fingers.

“We’re still stood down,” she then said,”by the way; I checked with Prue a while ago, we haven’t any new orders, not yet, at least.”

“Thanks, baby,” Jami whispered, grinning…nothing to do all day, except spend time with Stevie, something she didn’t do nearly enough of; her wife was right, she needed time away from being the commander of the Unbroken and her squadron…more importantly, she needed to be with Stevie, show her just how much she and the singularity which was their life together meant to her.

“Every day we’re together,” her wife whispered, still brushing strands of hair from Jami’s face,” you do that, luv.”

“Every day,” she repeated, sighing, as she smiled down at her.

Jami blushing and smiling nervously back in reply.

20 FEBRUARY, 2226 09:02:19 TAI

“How long have you been sitting out here?” Lieutenant Colonel Carson Selkirk asked his old friend, slowly pushing off on the ferrocrete of the driveway, putting the ancient swing into motion.

“Since first sunrise,” Jay Todman replied absently. “Or,” he asked, trying to make a joke, the Mid reporter’s hands strumming his acoustic guitar,”is it second? Never could keep that straight in my head.”

Carson nodded, holding on to the frame of the swing, leaning against it…he’d slept later than he’d planned, by about an hour or so, his wife was still fast asleep, didn’t dare wake her, the rest of his team in temp billets out at the ortillery base on Boy Scout Road, Shawn’s replacement arriving last night, right after second sunset, though without any orders for him(standard proceedure to bundle new orders with the new replacement)meaning he was at loose ends for some time.

“I wanted,” he said,”to thank you for—“

“What friends are for,” Jay told him, still absently strumming his guitar as he stared past him and the sky overhead.

“Least,” he added,”somebody who cared about her was there to meet her on the other end, and Mulloy was more than happy to make what he called ‘partial payment on the debt due the pair of you….’ ”

He sighed, Carson’s attention drifting to his old bluetailled cat, IC, lying in the shade of the softshell tree in the front yard, not even bothering to chase after the bobblebugs swarming round the wisteria bushes in full, riotous bloom on either side of the front gate…Karla was back at work at the Citizen’s Bank branch in Owensboro, her husband—ex-husband, rather—James had gone offworld the instant the divorce was final…that had been two, three days after they laid old Ben to rest…Esther had moved out soon after, up to New Whitehorse to help her daughter Teresa take care of her children and Tim’s youngest two…Tim had held it together long enough to see his father on his way before committing suicide two days after Christmas…she’d asked Carson to take care of the house ‘til she came back, and there wasn’t any telling when—if—that would be…Lynne had left Terranova for Liao a week ago, Gary letting their only surviving child, Tina, have the house, moving into an apartment in New Whitehorse, having gotten a supervisory job with one of the civilian construction companies tasked with putting the former Terranovan legislative capital back together again….

The war would toss aside more false fronts as it dragged on…he’d lulled himself into believing his neighborhood was a peaceable kingdom in this den of vipers, when he really should’ve known better.

The charred spot in the driveway was still there from where Johnathan Davis—roasting good in Hell right now—and some of his running buddies had come to “talk,” a day or so after Rover Four had been blown out of the sky, some of the grass in the ditch on either side burned away as well, as were a couple of branches on the redtip plant by the mailbox….

Nodding, Carson turned his focus back to his old cat…fat fucking thing he was too, snoozing away underneath the softshell tree…he tired easily these days, used to be able to chase after bobblebugs, tree moccasins, death eaters and tomatillos all day and still have energy left over to follow Carson around whereever he went…Annesha had taken her time to get used to having the cat around, fucking thing never did like Brad, fastening onto his ankle and biting down hard last time he’d showed his ugly face round here, Carson rewarding IC with an extra helping of raw egg and beef liver….

He chuckled at the memory, Jay asking him,”what?”

“Nothing,” Carson replied, “really.”

His turn to sigh…and, to make breakfast, nothing fancy, just eggs, sausage and maybe some French toast, if he had some confectioner’s sugar and vanilla extract.

He started back towards the front porch, that damn cat choosing that moment to wake up and follow Carson inside, Carson chuckling to himself again.

He really was well trained. 20 FEBRUARY, 2226 09:34:00 TAI

“…one would think the Terranovan government,” Doctor Ric Maier, late professor of theology at Terranovan Wesleyan College, said to TMS’ Carolyn Minh,”would be doing everything in its power to encourage a good corporate citizen such as Microsoft and its Wal-Mart Stores Division, instead of trying to penalize it on account of the creative ways its management and executives have tried to remain profitable, a few disgruntled workers complaining, because they had to work a little overtime or whining, because there’s not enough people to get the job done, instead of practicing teamwork, or, most ridiculous of all, because of mere sexual exploitation or the hysterical claim of such made by a few troublemaking, lazy females.”

“I mean,” Maier then added,”haven’t we had enough of Sunni Pate and her coven of lesbians trying to subvert one of the oldest corporations in human space for their own agenda; must Micheal Bauer and his liberal Republican cohorts insist on nibbling Microsoft and Wal-Mart to death with trivialities?”

Stephen Weiss, chief administrator of the Chatham-Midnight Bay Consolidated Government, sipped his coffee, blankly watching TMS’ morning show on the HV in his office on the Chatham County Government Center’s 315th floor, the holoprojections floating over his workstation terminal showing him everything he needed to know in order to run the consolidated city and county services.

Things such as the disposition of League forces within both city and county, the status of League forces now fighting a bloody stalemate with JMC units all along the Lowndes-Chatham county line, updates on Coast Guard units now patrolling the bay and the barrier islands, comm reports from citizen’s volunteer militias charged with police duties within the city and county.

The status of the containment areas which Guy Zellner had ordered created from Midnight Bay’s poorest neighborhoods and the abandoned campuses of the city’s three universities…most of the city’s population of one billion, twenty-four million(being women)were penned up in those containment areas, along with the women who had been attending the universities…the deathhouse, ironically enough, was not one of those containment areas, the League command taking that as its headquarters, moving all their generals, staff and support personnel there.

Weiss also studied the text of possibly the last announcement he would make…all of the City- County Commission, after much debate, had finally decided to go along with the proposal, they had all those people to think about, and, for once, that had taken precedence over idiot squabbles over who had pissed in whose cornflakes this time…he’d enough of that crap in Flyntsboro, everybody pulling at strings —well, everyone except Cynthia McKinley, but they’d just shouted her down time and again—everyone pulling at strings, including this idiot Ric Maier, and they’d all wondered why the city had lost most of its population, why the consolidated government didn’t have much legitmacy even inside Flyntsboro, why most of it had split off into independent municipalites and, most recently, why Brown and Reynolds were shutting down its Flyntsboro factory and relocating all their manufacturing operations to de la Vega, New Texas and Ventura….

Weiss nodded his head, studying the text one more time…how much good this would do, he didn’t know, and it didn’t matter…what mattered was he and the others had finally taken a stand, even if that only meant them being jazzed with the neural servos implanted in their skulls before being permitted to die…even if it meant worse than that, and the former professor of analytical philosophy knew too well the mad emperor Zellner was capable of worse.

Weiss nodded to himself, sighing, sipping his almost-forgotten cup of coffee.

Let him do his worst, then, he decided, banishing all the holoprojections from his workstation terminal.

Let him do his worst. 20 FEBRUARY, 2226 10:11:20 TAI

The Combat Center of the Joint Military Command’s headquarters on Papillion d.Nuits30468New Utopia was deserted, save for the members of the small Intelligence Coordinating Staff, a contingent of military and civilian personnel from the Commonwealth and her allies charged with ensuring the smooth running of the JMC by compiling intel and reports from units deployed on front lines from here to Mintaka, coordinating supply and resupply runs, paperwork and all the other millions of things, big and small, that an alliance at war needed a central administrative staff to coordinate.

And, for the Prime Minister of the Commonweath of Cor Leonis, standing on a barren, rocky floor nearly ten klicks beneath the rolling hills and grassy plains of the asteroid colony which had once been the capital of the Commonwealth—which was still the headquarters of the ICLU—staring at a hologram in the big terminal at the center of the Commonwealth Forces’ former War Room, the view of hyperspace surrounding the DM+50 1125 particularly depressing for the infinity of deadly kinetic-kill devices Zellner had equipped with Rittermark generators and linked to the existing System-Wide Mine Field.

The one which had ruled out any possible invasion of Witch’s Tit during all of the wars her Commonwealth had fought against the Rude Union and the rest of that gimcrack League of theirs, even the most optimistic projections made during 9YW putting JMC total force casualties at over ninety percent.

With a one hundred percent probability that the jailers of Witch’s Tit’s half-trillion plus female inmates would order them all killed at the first sign of any invasion.

Only making it more of a priority in her mind that this hellhole be liberated, no matter the cost… that murdering bastard Guy Zellner was there as well, his mobile capital parked in the system’s Aerospace Force Depot, his bloody SWMF protecting him from any attempt by her people to execute the death warrant she’d gladly signed following poor Cynthea Pollock’s being brutally, hideously, cynically degraded, broken and fucking used as bait to try and capture Jami, before her daughter had to fucking watch her die disfigured and destroyed on Unbroken’s med deck.…one shoots mad dogs, one doesn’t sit in judgement over them, Irma DeLong had said that time and again, and, this time, her people, angered by what had been done to Cynthea, still angry over the cold-blooded murder of so many on Rover Four, had agreed unanimously….

Putting that septic murdering pederast down was of secondary importance, however.…for 170 years, the fact that so many women could be openly tortured and tormented, without the Commonwealth Forces able, even with the other JMC powers behind them, to do a fucking thing about it had been worse than the Yankers thumbing their noses at them, a sore point which had gotten more sore during 9YW and the discovery of fucking Black Mountain, one that had made her and more than one member of the Defence Staff want to say to hell with the cost and storm Witch’s Tit with everyone they could spare, a view many in the Commonwealth Forces also shared.

“I was told,” Gerhard Kaufmann, President of the Swiss Federal Council, said from just behind her right shoulder,”that I could—Gött in Himmel, Angelique, please, tell me you aren’t going to—“

“Yes,” Angelique replied to another old comrade in arms,”I am.”

“Madness,” was the only thing Gerhard, who’d seen too much slaughter in his lifetime, had to say to that.

“The time for this,” Angelique replied,”is long since past, Gerhard…for 170 years, they’ve been flaunting this obscenity in our faces, and there can be no victory against them as long as they’re allowed to continue to keep those half trillion poor souls out of our reach, beyond any possibility of hope for deliverance…like all the other times we’ve fought the bastards, we’ll just end up with some half-assed, sorry excuse instead of a real resolution.” “This time,” she added, sighing,”it has to be once and for all, like we should’ve done ten years ago, instead of letting the slaughter at Tau Ceti stop us, knowing we were just prolonging the war as opposed to ending it.”

“Du hast stimmt,” Gerhard whispered after a long silence,”on all counts.”

“I just wish,” he added,” you weren’t.”

“As do I, Gerhard,” replied the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, still looking at the holoprojection of hyperspace surrounding Witch’s Tit.

“As do I.”

20 FEBRUARY, 2226 11:00:08 TAI

The smell of frying pork, flour, potatoes and pepper met Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Rhiannon Moseley when she stepped through the inter-section connector onto the relief deck.

Her love was standing over the stove, frying…strips of bacon breaded in flour, more strips already sitting on a paper towel on top of a plate next to the stove, another skillet beside that one popping hot all over the place as potato slices sizzled themselves to a crisp in butter and more pepper.

“Hey,” Ariel whispered, turning from her cooking to face Ree, gazing into her eyes, smiling softly, Ree smiling back, taking a step towards her, kissing her gently on her right cheek, whispering,”hullo, luv.”

“What’s for lunch?” she then asked.

“Terranovan fried chicken and home fries,” Ariel explained, Ree about to tell her—

“I know, baby, it isn’t chicken, it’s streak-o-lean,” she further added,”don’t know where the hell the name came from, so don’t ask.”

“Actually,” Ree said,”I was going to ask what streak-o-lean was.”

“Like bacon,” Ariel replied,” except it isn’t, best way I can explain it…just felt like—“

“I thought I smelled Terranovan fried chicken,” Squadron Leader Lanier said, as she stepped through the inter-section connector arm in arm with the S.A., both of them wearing jeans and t-shirts.

“And coffee,” the S.A. added, the Boss chuckling,”definitely could use that,” as she let go of her wife’s arm, walked over to the cupboard, taking her Winnie the Pooh cup and three others down from the shelves, asking,”anyone else on ship besides us?”

“I think,” Ariel replied, turning back to her cooking,” Genera’s running solo watch, but, that’s about it.”

“Damn,” she swore, a spatter of grease striking the right lens of her glasses, Ree telling her,”here, I’ve got those, luv,” holding them by their thin wire frame as she ran the lenes underneath the sonic cleaner in the washbasin.

“Thanks, baby,” Ariel said softly, as Ree slipped her lover’s(she just couldn’t believe it was true, after four years of hoping)glasses back on her beautiful face, the Boss looking sideways at them for an instant, finished fixing cups for all four of them, taking them two to a hand over to the coffee table, sitting down on the sofa besides the S.A.. “My manners suck, guys,” she then said to Ariel and Ree. “I’m sorry, I should’ve asked if y’all had enough for four of us, or was it…something…more…private?”

Bugger me, Ree thought, turning back to Ariel, she’s blushing, luv.

Ariel’s only reply was to grin widely, before kissing Ree lightly on her lips.

Oh, baby, the Boss’ thoughts came almost immediately, I’m so happy, for both of y’all.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Ariel said out loud, stirring the “fried chicken,” transferring the chips to a large bowl, taking two potatoes from the bowl in the washbasin, using the laser cutter to slice them into the hot butter, adding:

“I know, you guys were both worried about me…about us…about me finally getting it through my head that us would be the best thing for me….”

“Just,” the Boss whispered,”saw a lot of myself in you, sweetpea, I….”

Her shaky voice trailed off into a sigh heavy with emotion, Ree positively giddy with it herself, as she turned and kissed Ariel on the cheek again, running her fingernails up and down betweeen her shoulder blades.

Ariel was mopping her face with the back of her left hand, sniffling, smiling, whispering thank you, Rhiannon Moseley, for being gentle with me, for still being there for me, in spite of all the mean and stupid shit I did to you all those years, I can never make up for it, I can’t tell you enough how sorry I am for—

Sssshhhh, Ree whispered back, still drawing gentle patterns on her lover’s back through the cloth of the oversized sweat shirt she wore, Ariel whispering the three words Ree knew in her heart had always been true.

Saying them out loud.

20 FEBRUARY, 2226 11:15:06 TAI

“…began imitiating her, the black lipstick and eye shadow, the dark clothes, the darker music,” Rolling Stone’s Janette Reitman said on the HV, Carson barely listening, picking at the remains of breakfast on his plate, staring into his coffee,”even her fixations with lesbian serial killers, self-mutilation, vampirism and the Sisterhoods online live-action role-playing game.”

“Wondered,” Jay, sitting in the recliner in the living room, remarked,”when they were going to mention Sisterhoods.”

“I thought that cliché was so twenty-two-teens,” Carson observed, deciding to take a sip of coffee before spearing the last piece of sausage on his plate, the Sally forced to do lines for the oldest running entertainment news show in the biz continuing:

“—and in the circle which Jennifer Duncan, a shy, socially awkward, sexually confused seventeen-year old girl, normally associated with, bisexuality was chic, the occasional lesbian fling between girls—before going back to their boyfriends—just the latest fad, same as—“

“Off,” Annesha Griffin said, as she came into the room, white A-shirt over a pair of grey drawstring shorts—Carson’s grey drawstring shorts….

“What, wife-girlie?” she joked, his wife sitting in his lap, laying her right hand on his cheek. “You think these are yours?” she added, patting his cheek, smiling, whispering,”silly girlie, you wear the panties in the relationship, remember?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Carson whispered, leaning his head down into hers, Annesha playfully asking him,”and, why aren’t we stripped down to our panties like My naughty little slave girl knows she supposed to be?”

Taking the fork from his hand, she then asked him,”and, where’s Mine?! Girlie knows she cooks for Mistress, only for Mistress, that she gets fed scraps, if she’s a good girl and pleasures Mistress like she’s supposed to.”

“I’m sorry, Mistress,” Carson said softly, Annesha replying,”I know that, just as Girlie knows her thong gotta come off, right now, so she can take what’s coming to her for being so bad.”

She then kissed him full on the lips, whispering,”how are you, this morning, husband of mine?”

“Privileged,” Carson said, half-serious,”every time she sees her Mistress’ beautiful face.”

“We’re not playing that any more,” she said, after kissing him again.

She then popped the piece of sausage into her mouth, tousling his hair with her free hand while carefully chewing it, looking down at his plate, waiting until she’d got done eating that piece of sausage to remark:

“And, French toast, too…didn’t even think to make Me none…I really am gonna have to pop you on your cute lil’ butt, aren’t I?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Carson whispered, adding,”I’ll go make you up some, if—“

“I’m fine, right now,” Annesha whispered, kissing him again, using his fork to spear a piece of French toast from his plate.

“I swear,” she said,”I’m gonna have to feed you like I used to do Keisha when she was a baby… open wide, here comes Mister Choo-Choo.”

“Very damn funny,” Carson remarked, letting his wife feed him anyway.

Asking her, after he chewed and swallowed, “sleep well, babe?”

“Yeah,” Annesha replied, adding,” Lord knows I needed it, too.”

“Yeah,” Carson remarked,”way you’ve been running round like a chicken with your head cut off these past couple months.”

“Too much to do,” his sweet wife explained…an understatement if there ever was one, Annesha finding herself the Martinez County chief administrator and the “ranking” ICLU op on planet following the recall elections back in December of last year, and it hadn’t been long after she’d taken her seat in the House of Commons before she’d found herself on Cynthia McKinley’s Cabinet as both Secretary of State and Minister of Corporate Relations, helping the government in Flyntsboro try and scrape the crap off the fan blades.

“Speaking of which,” she added,”MiniCorp’s probably gonna end up having to ban all Microsoft’s operations from our zone of control; depends on what the Common Legislature decides when we meet later on today, and how we’re going compensate the people who are going to get screwed by it…that was Cynthia’s main objection to shutting down all those stores, all the associates who’ve done nothing other than show up for work being hurt by the stupidity of the jackasses in Rogers and New Redmond both.” “So,” Jay remarked,”they’ve confirmed it?”

“TBCI and AFID both confirmed,” Annesha replied,”the information the store’s security cameras uploaded to the TSID’s Internal Surveillance Center an instant before it was blown to hell and gone….”

She trailed off, staring down at her lap, Carson reaching out and taking her free hand in his.

“Forty-five thousand people,” she whispered,”many of which I knew…I mean, I never had any use for that drunkard Skeeter Warren, or for Big Gay Steve, but even they didn’t deserve to be blown up just to….”

She whispered the words,”those bastards,” before falling silent again.

20 FEBRUARY, 2226 11:32:00 TAI

Though, as a member of the Union Security Council, he was Field Marshal James Viscount Brannigan’s superior officer, Charles Olmstead IV, Commandant of the Terranovan Republican Coast Guard, was entirely too-accustomed the sneer of contempt in the eyes of the British Royal Army officer in actual command of what remained of League forces in the South Coast of Basseterre.

And, to the Brit’s disrepectful tone of voice as well.

“And,” he asked, turning away from holoprojections showing him the view of the fighting along the Lowndes-Chatham County line,”what can I do for you, today, Commandant?”

“You can stand down your forces,” Olmstead, committed to the path now, said calmly, his M2149 rail pistol in his right hand,”and surrender your command to me.”

“I can wh—“ Brannigan started to say, sputtering, the generals, officers and enlisted in the room with him all slackjawed and paralyzed the instant they realized what was going on, none of the jackers having enough presence of mind to go for their weapons, some of the sailors and officers the Coast Guard Commandant had taken with him into the deathhouse entering the room, Beowulf TAC-12 and Barrett DSH assault railers at the ready.

Brannigan’s shocked look replaced with an evil grin.

“I do believe,” he said, calm and collected,” there is another alternative.”

“Activate the neural servos of Commandant Olmstead,” he said to the deathhouse’s AI,”and anyone stupid enough to commit treason with him.”

His smile falling away, as the AI told him,”unable to comply, all neural servo remote-control drivers have been overwritten with a text file containing the words ‘Remember Garrison Sipe.’”

“Am unable,” the AI added,” to load backups.”

“Fine,” Brannigan replied, finally going for his weapon,”we’ll—“

“Sir!” a Wrong Dong Phooie Republican Territorial Army sergeant shouted from his station at the far corner of the room.” They’ve brought every single one of their craft into the harbor, sub cutters, patrol hydrofoils…they’ve even got their swifts moving in a line downriver, all their guns are trained on our positions within the city.” “Sir!” a Mountaindickhead shouted from the opposite side of the room.”We’ve got scattered reports of fighting inside the containment areas…and, I can’t raise any of the others on c—holy mother- fuck!”

The holoimage of the consolidated gov’s chief administrator now floated over every workstation:

“This is Stephen Weiss, chief administrator of the Chatham-Midnight Bay Consolidated Government. At this time, I and the other members of the City-County Commission urge all loyal citizens of this Union to take up arms against the lapdogs and murdering minions of an outlaw regime daring to call itself our government, against an unelected, illegally-empowered pedophile and assassain who employs terror and fear in the place of the democratic process he, at turns, denounces and pretends to support, a man who succeeded to office through the murder of his lover, who has held only one Gubernatorial election in the twenty years he has been allowed—that we have permitted him to occupy the Governor’s Mansion in New Whitehorse.”

20 FEBRUARY, 2226 11:36:28 TAI

“You dickless goddamn wonder!” He screamed, Rolling Stone’s article on a couple of lesbian sex killers pushed off the fucking Net by this four-eyed, turtleneck-wearing, loony-left wing liberal treasonous fucking bitch fucking trying to kick up sand in His backyard:

“—and, we have let him lead us into greater and more monstrous acts of depravity, simply because we are as cowardly as he is; I am just as much to blame for that as y—“

“Shut up!” ordered the He who was over all others, the fucking HV still showing Weiss’ fucking cunteater of an ugly goddamn face, bitch still running his fucking bonesmoker:

“—afford to be cowards any longer; there is only one direction that leads to, and that is the death of everything, everywhere we have built, and that is simply no longer accep—“

“Shut up!” roared the Governor of the Union, drawing his pistol and destroying the HV newly installed in His penthouse in a single motion.

Heaving, His body shaking, the froth cooling on His lip, He whispered,”that’s fine.”

Before ordering the Terranova to activate the neural servos of everyone in Chatham County and not to stop jazzing the bitches ‘til they were all stone-cold motherfucking dead.

“That,” He said to the smoldering remains of His HV,”should make perfectly clear just whose authority is le—”

“Am unable to comply,” His Capital dared tell Him.

“Goddamn you, why the fuck not?!” He demanded to know.

“Someone has replaced all copies of the neural-servo remote-control driver program,” the Terranova told Him,”currently running in my plasma matrices with a text file consisting of three words:

Remember Garrison Sipe.”

His only reply was a blood-curdling scream of barely-coherent obscenities.

20 FEBRUARY, 2226 12:02:21 TAI

The civil government and residents of Midnight Bay had not taken their city back without a fight. Even with the help of the entire Coast Guard, the ICLU workers in the area and the former members of the National Police’s Chatham County Command, the city and county’s citizens had had a time of it, and, not all of them had joined the revolt, too many of them preferring to fight for the murdering cocksucker they’d kept in office these past two decades.

However bloody it had been, the fighting had been short, less than thirty minutes after Weiss had risked his own neck with his call to arms, and it had all been over with, three thousand killed, ten and a half thousand wounded, virtually all of the inmates of Midnight Bay’s containment areas alive and well—after a fashion—the League forces caught off-balance and between hostiles on all sides, the threat of the neural servo neutralized, thanks to Olmstead’s former status as a member of the Union Security Council.

The resulting victory more or less bloodless, giving the Commonwealth prime minister and the others in the Combat Center some cause to cheer.

If only for a little while.

Mulloy and VOR5 were on the Net right now, rubbing salt into Zellner’s wounds, not ceasing for a second to remind everyone that Terranova’s third-largest city had been taken by Terranovans, with JMC forces intervening only near the end of the fighting.

Angelique studied the latest update on that situation the JMC intel datastream had to offer, that appearing in the central holoprojector alongside the holoprojection of hyperspace round Witch’s Tit…as she could’ve predicted, many of Zellner’s citizen militiamen within the city and county had elected to go underground, to cause trouble later on, while three battalions’ worth of Yanker Special Forces Command, along with a regiment of Ranger Light Infantry, had blown the causeway connecting Hilton Head Island with the continent of Basseterre and dug in, determined to fight to the last man and the last cannister of carbon gas, the resort and its environs a veritable fortress from which the JMC would have a hell of a time dislodging the enemy, even with naval and aerospace support.

“Far from over,” Gerhard observed, Angelique nodding her head in reply, eyes on the central holoprojector.

“Of course, Gerhard,” she said out loud, VOR5 already off the air, running like hell through hyperspace, League warbirds and pathfinders becoming progressively more adept at tracking down the modified Radio City-class roving observatory’s tachyar and T-Star transmissions, the former Jammers steadfastly refusing any JMC military escort, as that would taint their mission, even if the League already thought them to be dupes of her Commonwealth to begin with…she’d no doubt Zellner’s techs had already installed backups of the neural-servo remote-control drivers, not that the rabid animal so-called Chairman of the Excremental Council really needed that to control his all-too-willing co-conspirators…he would only make it more difficult for that control to ever be subverted again, putting a spin on this perceived betrayal on the part of the citizens of the Republican Union of Terranova that would make it look like seduction by the offworld, feminine minority, and that everyone in the Rude Union still loved their Governor….

He would make them pay for this small victory with even more blood and death all round.

That was his only true power.

…trying not to cry, Ariel walked back to her seat.

“I didn’t cheat,” she whispered to herself.

“You reached too high,” Meredith, sitting in the desk beside hers, whispered.

“I’m so sorry,” she added, after looking furitively around her to see if anyone had seen her whispering to Ariel…. 20 FEBRUARY, 2226 18:30:05 TAI

“…you would’ve liked her,” Ariel said to Meredith‘s grave, her voice cracking as she spoke, Unbroken’s chief flight engineer sniffling away her tears, looking up from the headstone, at all the others reflected in the waning Judas-light, Delta Trianguli’s second planet a little bit further out than it had been.

“She’s smart, beautiful, outgoing, not afraid of anything,” she whispered, looking back down at the headstone—someone had been busy cleaning the grass stains off the marble, whole place was considerably more kept up than the last time she’d come here—“the complete and total opposite of me, and I still don’t know if I’ll ever be worthy of her…I am gonna try, though, baby, even if I’m still scared of where it all might lead, even more scared I’m just going to fuck it all up.”

That was the damn thing of it all…that little voice was still in her head, trying to tell her fucking lies…then again, Squadron Leader Lanier had told her that was always going to be with her, that and the fear of screwing everything up with Ree, something to be overcome every day just so she could have what she wanted.

And, she wanted to be with Ree, as much as she’d wanted to be with Meredith then.

As badly as she missed Meredith now….

“Baby, I wish….” she started to say, sighing, dryswallowing, not wanting to say the next words, even knowing they were true, even if she wanted to spend the rest of her days with Ree….

She sighed again, whispered,”I really wish I could’ve been a little less afraid, that we could’ve had our chance to be together, you deserved better than being lied about and distorted and always having to hide who you were, only to end up being dragged out into the open anyway…I’m so sorry I couldn’t even be a friend to you, when you needed me most.”

It’s not fair, she thought to herself.

No, Ree’s voice whispered back inside her head, it isn’t.

“Oh, damn, baby,” Ariel, after jumping a mile out of her skin, whispered, turning to face her lover,”I—“

Placing her left hand on Ariel’s wet right cheek, Ree whispered,” I brought something …a cutting from the ones on the life-support deck.”

Ariel looking down at the flowerpot Ree had in her right hand…even in the fading light of Judas, she could tell those were—

“Violets,” Ree said, smiling, free hand still caressing Ariel’s cheek, whispering in her mind:

I thought we might plant them together, luv, if….

Closing her eyes amidst all the tears, Ariel nodded her head.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice near spent.

—endit—

1,000 Tears “We are all the sum of our tears. Too little, and the ground is not fertile….too much, and even the best of us is washed away.” Babylonian Productions, “Objects In Motion,” from the series Babylon 5

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 18:37:08 TAI

“…still covered in the blood of Heather’s murdered parents,” California Broadcasting Service’s Mona Brownwyn said, standing on the steps of the courthouse in Fayettville—or a reasonable fascsimile thereof,”the two lesbian lovers ate at the very Moot House where both of them worked as waitresses; workers and customers both recall them being high on dancer, huffing at least a hundred dollars’ worth of it in plain sight as they ate hamburgers and home fries scattered, smothered and covered and drank sodas as if they hadn’t just brutally raped and savagely murdered two people…one waitress even recalls Savidge grabbing her by her arm and forcing her down into the booth with her, right in front of her scantily-clad lover.”

“Heather,” a girl in a tight-fitting, halfway-unbuttoned Moot House uniform shirt, said in the thickest South Coast accent Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier had ever heard from a native of Bassterre’s North Coast,” grabbed my arm, jerked me down into the booth with her, started spanking my butt when I tried to get away from that bitch, telling me to ‘lay quiet and take it like a good lil’ girl,’ just before she untied my apron and pulled my pants and my panties down to the floor, shoving my face right up in her cooter…it was disgustin’, fuckin’ dyke was stickin’ her fangers in m’shit, slapping it as hard as she could, tellin’ Jennifer, ‘see, bitch, I can get any ol’ twot to do what you can do.’”

“Did anyone—“ Mona started to ask, the girl saying,”hell naw, Heather fuckin‘ got half ‘em bitches strung out on her, includin’ MacKenzie Meadows, the cook that was there that night, and Kelly Bullwinkle, the 17 t’slow girl…they all go to game every Tuesday night, fuckin’ made Lyssa—that’s our store manager—and her girlfriend, Pam Snyder—our district manager—give ‘em that night off.”

“Go to game?” Mona asked, the girl replying,”they go play Sisterhoods down at Liz Reed’s, where they’re all witches, werewolves,vampires and demons turnin’ each other out and doin’ all kinds a sick shit to each other and any girl they can trick into playin’ with ‘em…first dam’ thing Heather did when she saw a new girl with a nice ass and a good set a titties on the floor was to try and get her to go to game wi—“

“Off,” the commander of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken said, the workstation terminal on the ship’s relief deck shutting off, Jami sipping some more of her coffee, staring at the far wall…Stevie had nagged at her to take a break, for her own good…as her wife was often fond of saying, someone had to look out for her, and, she was right, she always was….

They’d spent the past eight days in hyperspace, at the edge of the DM+50 1125 stellar system, the commander of the Unbroken and her squadron spending much of that on the astrogation deck, trying to fill her head with work so she wouldn’t be able to think about what had passed there all those years ago. What was still going on now, what that fucking System-Wide Mine Field those Yanker sons of bitches had thrown up all round the system and in local hyperspace had kept her Commonwealth and their allies from shutting down…part of the reason her squadron were here, skirting the SWMF to see if they could find a hole in it or some kind of way to get around it without losing a large part of the invasion force JMC was planning on vectoring this way.

She sighed…her Uncle Carson and his field recon team should already be inside the DM+50 1125 Aerospace Force Depot, aboard that monstrosity her Daddy and Guy Zellner had, in a twisted bit of irony, dubbed the Terranova…Commonwealth Forces Intelligence Arm were sure the MiniPriz AI was on board that mobile deep-range base, Carson’s team having smuggled themselves onto the base in the belly of a CS- 5D making a regular supply ru—

She was already to the inter-section connector separating the relief deck from the astrogation deck before she realized the battle-ready klaxon had blown off.

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 18:41:04 TAI

“Talk to me, Leftenant,” her wife said, as she took her place at the conn, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads working the piloting and astrogation holodisplays underneath her hands, sending the Unbroken hurtling towards the four MCS-5T prison transports and the two wings of Freeman Lang-class frigates escorting them at ten and a half million times the speed of light.

“Those four birds,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson, Unbroken’s weaps officer and third in command, replied, the squadron’s twelve Dauntless-class frigates sending their Mark IV Osprey hyperspace fighters and Mark III Raptor unmanned aerospace vehicles ahead of them,”have nearly two hundred thousand female inmates between them, Boss, guarded by two battalions of Special Forces Command each.”

“And,” her wife, Unbroken’s electronic warfare officer, Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Genera Muncie, shouted,”two battalions of fighters apeice, they’ve just fired them out the escape stations; one wing of enemy frigates, plus auxiliaries, altering vector to intercept us!”

Stevie nodded her head, watching all those Preads, War Eagles and frigates come for them in the master holodisplay, Jami telling Genera,”launch jammer decoys, Leftenant; Rasalgethi from Unbroken, we’ve got the attention of the first enemy wing, it’s up to you to draw the second away from those MCS- 5Ts. Albion, Red Comet and White Base and Chelonia, wait ‘til we’ve got their undivided attention, then go for the transports, hard and fast and get ready for them to either double back or call out for help, one of ‘em’s bound to get through in spite of our best efforts.”

“Jammers away, Boss,” Genera reported.

“Closing to gun range!” Prue sang out, Unbroken’s 48 turreted Gatling 90s and ten 457- millimeter railguns all spitting blue fire as the frigate closed with four or five Freeman Langs and their consorts at once, Stevie furiously working her holodisplays, juking the bird in every direction at once, pumping tachyons through the secondary Rittermark field coils connecting the AG drive and the artificial- gravity attitude motors to the Rittermark generator keeping them moving through hyperspace, the ship accelerating even as she dodged incoming fire, Prue vectoring pulses of artificial grav from the AG force beam generator through the four banks of beam emitters, even as two hundred 63 metric ton masses of hyperdense monomolecular carbon from the ship’s primary armament tore through enemy machines at c times ten and a half meg, smashing them into little pieces raining back down into normal space, two hundred such projectiles hissing out of the 457s every second, the Gatling-barrel 90 millimeter railguns hosing the surrounding volume of hyperspace down with a total of 19,200 hyperdense monocarbon masses, each twelve metric tonnes apiece, travelling at the same velocity as the 457s, those rounds disposing of Preads and War Eagles, as well as those 90s and 406s which got past the AG pulses. “Rasalgethi and her squadron have the second enemy wing’s full attention, Boss,” Prue’s voice said over Stevie’s link, Unbroken’s second in command glancing at the squadron of Mid Polarises, their fighters and UAVs moving through the wing of Freeman Langs who’d chosen to stay with the transports.

“What about the carriers?” Jami asked.

“Chelonia, White Base, Red Comet and Albion all launching War Eagles and Nighwings on a wide front, running interference for their parent craft,” Prue reported,”allowing them to close to unassisted telegate range of the transports.”

“They’ve caught on, Boss,” Genera reported almost immediately after, Stevie watching enemy frigates, fighters and UAVs wheel round to try and take on the Chelonia and the Albion carriers, the commander of the Mid squadron screaming over the link,”Rasalgethi to all units, pour it on, keep those dicksuckers from interfering with the carriers! Remember the Antares!”

“Remember Garrison Sipe!” screamed Albion’s commander over the link, Unbroken charging deeper into the fray, Prue reporting additional enemy machines coming in fast on an intercept vector.

“Death,” Stevie heard her wife say over the link, the guns of her ship blasting more enemy frigates, fighters and UAVs back into normal space,”and eternal damnation to the Rude Union!”

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 18:46:00 TAI

“Avalon soldiers, onward!” Brigadier Adel Lancecrow screamed, her integral AG harness bulleting her towards the rift in spacetime now forming in the telegate on Commonwealth Forces Auxiliary Vehicle Chanson de Roland’s troop deck, the women of the 1st Battalion, 1st Regimental Combat Team, 2d Brigade, 19th Standard Infantry Division of the Planetary Confederation of Avalon’s 7th Army close behind her as they poured through it onto the cargo bay of a Yanker MiniPriz transport.

Catching the Special Forces Command butchers in the middle of killing their victims, too many of them dead and grotesquely strung up already, Adel ignoring that, screaming her head off, firing both her Browning M2 rail pistol and M3 assault railer full bore, the barely coherent cries of “Remember the Antares!” echoing inside her helmet, as she drove on, taking Yanker dicksuckers out left and right, more coming at her, blackening her shielding, multiple shouts of “fire in the hole!” on all sides turning the bay into more of a slaughterhouse than it already had been, neither side deciding to be particularly kind to the other, not after fucking Tartarus, not after everything which had passed before between implacable enemies seeking one another’s bloody destruction.

Trucks drilled through her chest and both shoulders, Adel seeing, but not feeling it, the veteran Avalon Defense Force officer moving forward, returning the enemy’s fire, killing sons of bitches as dead as they’d murdered too many of her people before and after the Liberation…she’d been torn from her mothers, she’d been two years old, and they’d torn her from her parents because they were women and they’d had her…she never did know what had happened to them, Avalon Intel had tried their best…she’d ended up almost as bad off as the poor things fucking chained by the tens of thousands, by their necks to the goddamn deck, dirty, filthy, bruised, brutalized, scared, wondering if anyone was going to help or care, wondering what was next….

She could answer that for them, she wished she couldn’t, thirteen years old before she’d found herself wandering the streets of New Attica’s startown, after years of being passed around various perversities presenting themselves as re-orientation therapy, they’d fucked her up bad, physically and spiritually, the local ICLU had had a hell of a time with her, when they’d found her….

She’d never stopped screaming, a veteran of interminable war driving a boot into the gut of a man- mountain of a tarbaby, taking his head off with a round from her pistol, her assault railer splashing ten, fifteen more of his friends, before its cannister flung itself hot, spent and smoking onto the deck, Adel firing the M2 while reloading the M3 single handed. Moving forward.

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 19:00:06 TAI

The Terranova’s south starport was a disturbed mound of activity, battle-ready klaxons splitting the air inside the AG field, frigates, battlewagons and fighters all lifting ship and going NGE, as Lieutenant Colonel Carson Selkirk and the other nine members of his Commonwealth Forces field recon team made their way behind g-plats lined all the way up to the fat gut of the Terranova Republican Aerospace Force CS-5D military bulk transport they’d hitched a lift on back at Little Grey Donkey, the transport’s cargo handlers and starport dock crews too busy watching the sky to notice them sneaking past, Carson taking point, his second, 1st Lieutenant Meghan Polk, bringing up the rear as they made their way to a pile of crates about half a klick away from their borrowed transportation.

“Glad to be out of there,” Lance Corporal Anne MacGowan whispered over the link. “Dark, spooky and crammed between pallets of crates lashed together with AG fields, not exactly first-class.”

“Starliners usually don’t call here, Lance Corporal,” Carson, peeking out over the crates at the rest of what Zellner was now calling Terranova, remarked. “Everyone, look sharp and can the chatter, we do happen to be aboard Zellner’s personal Death Star, in the middle of the most aggressively-defended enemy star system in all of human space. Please remember that.”

Jesus God…beyond the starport perimeter…fucking A, skyscrapers jammed almost into and on top of one another, the smallest of them four or five hundred stories high, with streets…yeah, as in the twenty-lane ferrocrete monstrosities he’d grown up with…stacked in an endless lattice of bridgework and off ramps, all of them choked with ground traffic and AG lorries, tanks and APC and gunships trolling overhead.

Almost obscured by the forest of buildings was a huge blinding metallic-yellow dome in the center of the cross, that dome sporting many of the Terranova’s weapons emplacements, plus a series of Gatling 25s and 90s designed for antipersonnel purposes….

“Coruscant,” Master Technical Sergeant Kimba Bledsoe whispered,”perhaps, would be more apt, begging the Colonel’s pardon.”

“Probably even has a Wal-Mart,” Lance Corporal Shania Tremble, Shawn Gyllenheal’s replacement, remarked, eliciting a “probably,” from Corporal Merirose Coughlin.

“Probably has several,” Carson commented, ignoring his own order to keep silent, as he continued looking out at the massive construct on which he and his team were standing.

He consulted what little telemetry Unbroken had been able to collect the one time she’d tangled with this fucking thing, nodding his head at where the holo said was a service crawlway running the ten- klick length of this section of the T-nova and leading directly into the command, control and government center underneath that dome.

If that information was correct, the hatch granting them access to that crawlway should be a couple of meters further—

There it was, an iris set flush with the tarmac, Carson motioning for the others to follow him, his sonic probe and various other lockpicking gear already in his hands.

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 19:04:22 TAI

“—typical of the arrogance for which Microsoft and its Wal-Mart Stores Division are notorious,” Mickey Buttfucker’s holoimage said from the Press Room several hundred stories above him in the Governor’s Tower,”the kind of mentality that is typical of the conservative Democrats and their feminazi handlers. Only they would dare describe securities fraud, unfair labor practices and outright theft as being creative ways of remaining profitable.”

Colonel Vernon “Skeeter” Warren saluted the Prime Minister of his Union with a fifth bottle of Venturan Floodplain grain, as he sat in the communications room of Zellner’s new Capitol, the commander of the 5th Combat Communications Group watching hundreds of transmissions shooting through hyperspace between the T-nova and the rest of human space, more holodisplays letting him know the status of the T-Star parked in station overhead and the neutrino uplink transmitters transmitting ol’ Cornhole’s little speech and that of his Governor up to the T-Star, which then poked holes into hyperspace, and wrapped those speeches up in Rittermark fields to be sent to other T-Stars all over the worlds.

“So, when are we gonna see some action?” some enlisted piece of shit asked a low-hump noncomissioned piece of shit, Skeeter answering,”boy, this is your action, right here in this room.”

“Keep an eye,” he added,” on that ECCO telemetery.”

“Like they’re gonna get through the SWMF,” the enlisted piece of shit dared talk back to Skeeter.

Like talking to the damn cart pushers back at the store, before they blew the fucker up round blitz time, per Rogers’ orders and Guy Zellner’s…enlisted bitches were almost as fucking lazy, what happens when you let females come in and start running things, just as things had started going to hell when old man Spinks brought that black bitch Annesha Griffin in to be a manager, and she’d used every dirty trick in the damn book to stay a manager, in spite of everything his man had done, every string he had pulled with his friends in New Redmond, to try and run her stinking ass pootie out of his store.…moment she got hold of the damn front end, she started coddling them bitches on the cart crew, getting them electric cart mules, hiring them extra hands, serving ‘em fucking Cryogenic in the coolers out front, firing the folks she didn’t like, just ‘cause they weren’t studying her dyke ass.

And, she were a dyke, Stephan sure enough had been right about that; his half-brother, her old man, weren’t nothin’ but whupped pussy with fucking lesbian sex killers and pussified drunkards in his family tree…and, they went and made her a damn co-manager, even though Skeeter had way more expirience and Bruce had assured him Rogers was going to give him the job…fucking uppity goddamn black bitch, store was overrun with more just like her, fucking Barbara Lipsey, Lakeisha, Val, that ugly-ass bull-dyke Tammy Burton, all of ‘em trying to undermine Bruce’s authority over them, scheming to get rid of him and put that black piece of fuckin’ pussy in charge ….

Skeeter took another pull from the bottle, before taking some more kike out of the left breast pocket of his uniform, putting the rest of the jack bag in the bottle before capping it back up and shaking it real good, opening it back up and taking another sip…better the store be blown sky-high than for ‘em bitches to gain the upper hand, that was the way Bruce had figured it out when he’d gone to Rogers with the plan to wire the store up with KKs and take it out with as many shoppers as he could cram in there during blitz…Rogers had taken it to New Redmond and old Rob Gates had taken it straight to the Man Himself, who’d gone for it like a kikedyke after some free rock to smoke up…none of ‘em bitches were a problem any longer, and Bruce had gotten kicked upstairs ‘cause his plan had worked out so well for everyone concerned.

Another enlisted piece of shit interrupted Skeeter’s thoughts by telling him that another shipment was comming the MiniPriz AI in the core room beneath their feet, Skeeter reminding the dumb bitch all that was handled automatically by the AI and the one on Witch’s Titty, they would give the people running that shipment the exact time they needed to be insystem, and that would be the time the SWMF shut itself down just long enough for the transports to stand off 1,000 klicks from the prison and gate their cargo into the tanks. Then, all those KKs would heat themselves back up, and, if those transports weren’t through gating bitches down to the dykes waiting to welcome them home, oh, well, that was their goddamn problem.

He took another swallow of reddish-brown liquid, his eyes on all those holoprojections in front of him, zeroing in on some little bitch wearing a tuxedo and black lipstick, holding the lace-gloved hand of some other hoochie, wearing black eyeshadow, black lipstick, a collar and a lace-curtain dress that didn’t leave a goddamn thing to the imagination, yet another bitch saying in the background:

“—brought her to the prom as her date, but, to the students and faculty of East Valley High, that really was nothing new. Last year, her date had been—“

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 19:09:28 TAI

“—Kelly Bullwinkle,” Julianna Chen—doing a special for MHVid—said, before Captain Beth MacDowell, Commonwealth Forces Auxiliary Vehicle Chanson de Roland’s chief flight engineer, shut it off, trying not to look too hard at the master holodisplay, concentrating instead on working the controls keeping this 65,120-ton military transport in hyperspace even as heavy fighting raged around and inside him.

“Son of a bitch,” she swore, the ship’s AI trying again to take control from her, Beth just barely able to keep him from loading backups of corrupted authorizations files into his plasma matrices at the same time she fired pulses from the AG force beam jenny through the beam emitters to sweep aside incoming fire, the enemy having been given positive orders to take out the transports to prevent the women chained worse than fucking animals inside their bellies from knowing anything even remotely resembling hope.

The Roland’s detachment of twelve Mark IV Osprey hyperspace fighters were sticking close to the lumbering MCS-5, helping to keep the enemy off his back while Beth vectored him to Joli, the Roland himself just off the MCS-5’s one-eight-zero, driving rounds from his four 203s, eight dual 127s and 240 Gatling 90s into the enemy warbirds, fighters and UAVs slipping past the frigates and gunship carriers running interference for them.

The ship’s radar alarm howled, warning her she had a brace of 127s inbound; with no other active defenses than the AG force beam, she had to attempt evasive maneuvers, which was more like trying to teach a carnosaur the finer points of ballet flying this bucket through hyperspace, but she tried anyway.

Just barely getting lucky, those 127s streaking past her in the master holodisplay, radar warning her that more and bigger projectiles were already headed her way, Beth breaking off a short, rude word, as she kept working the piloting and astrogation holodisplays.

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 19:16:00 TAI

“Boss!” Genera shouted out. “Tachyar’s showing—“

“Intelligence desk from command,” the commander of the Unbroken, watching the System-Wide Mine Field shut itself off on her right-hand command holodisplay, snapped out,”start timing it, now!”

“Already on it, Boss,” the holo of her intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Celina Albright, replied, even as Unbroken continued charging through the enemy machines trying to pursue the four escaping MiniPriz transports, now roughly thirty-five minutes from Joli at their present a.h.v., the JMC assault transports that had gated the troops and flight engineers aboard those birds and their fighters tenaciously engaging the hostile warbirds, fighters and UAVs that did slip past…if they knew how long the system stayed off when friendly craft were insystem, her Commonwealth and their allies would be that much closer to— Son of a bitch…she almost didn’t see it, beams of solid black piercing the uppermost bands of hyperspace, to the mass shadow of the Terranova from somewhere in the Pleiades and, at the same time, from the mass shadow of the Terranova to the mass shadow which was Witch’s fucking Tit.

“ELINT gear’s captured both comms, Boss,” Prue reported, as she kept vectoring fire from the 457s and the Gatling 90s in every direction at once, Stevie furiously working the astrogation and piloting holodisplays, moving them everywhere at once, fighting the massive disturbances in local hyperspace generated by the combat to keep from being slapped back into normal space.

“Don’t count on any miracles on my end, though,” Celina counterpointed.”It’s the same R3E&C scheme for both comms, so it’s definitely—“

“Return comm coming through,” Genera reported, Celina finishing what she was saying:

“—concerning another shipment of prisoners and protocols to close down the SWMF, but it’s an algorithim with which I’m totally unfamiliar… I am reasonably sure it’s a hard-logic imperative on both ends, they switched it off for those transports we intercepted, and they hadn’t overriden it once they realized we had intercepted those transports.”

“Crap,” Jami observed, before telling Genera to backtrack that return comm and pass its destination on to the ICS at New Utopia…hard-logic meant no easy way into the system, blankfiles and DDBs wouldn’t subvert programming burned into the very circuitry of the MMPs controlling both AIs and set to execute without the conscious knowledge of either machine.

It also meant there was no further point in her uncle and his team being on the Terranova… running down the exact micro-multiprocessor containing the hard-logic was going to take time they didn’t to have, to say nothing of access they probably wouldn’t be able to gain in the first place, and, even if they did manage to find the right MMP, they still had to reprogram the damn thing—more time there—and, chances were that an altered hard-logic on either end would be bad all round.

“Return signal tracked back to its source, Boss,” Genera reported,”am relaying location to New Utopia now.”

“SWMF’s just gone hot again,” Prue reported,”all kinetic-kill devices back on line.”

“Five minutes exactly,” Celina said.

“I’ll get to work unscrambling those comms,” she added.

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 19:21:05 TAI

“No, fuck, you don’t!” screamed Colonel Priscilla Lovett, commanding the 18th Standard Infantry Combat Regiment, 42d Standard Infantry Combat Brigade, 109th Standard Infantry Combat Division of the Federation of Midnight Sun’s 13th Army, as she grabbed that Yanker dicksucker round his helmet, jerked his head back, and fucking blew his brains out with her Midnight Sun Arms M2140 rail pistol, before he could turn the wheel which would’ve pumped the cargo bay full of plutonium oxide gas, killing the women they were supposed to have been herding to that frozen hellhole Witch’s Tit.

The veteran FedArmy standard infantry officer turning away from one of the manual overrides, facing the bay proper…too many of the ones they’d come here to rescue were already strung up like sides of beef …the rest, shivering, brutalized, chained by their necks to the deck, looking furitively up at the surviving Mids, wondering what they were going to do to them….

All but one of the Yankers a smear on the deck, the survivor, a major, sitting in a folding chair from the regiment’s supplies and talking with the regimental intelligence officer at the center of the bay. Then again, talking wasn’t quite the right word:

“Used to, we’d pump ‘em fulla metastas—just enough to get ‘em there—and stack ‘em like cordwood, so that when they’d wake up, bitches didn’t know what was hittin’ ’em…they definitely didn’t know we was hittin’ ‘em while they were in transit….”

The rat bastard son of a bitch chuckled, stretching his left leg out slightly, Priscilla still remembering she had her pistol in hand, her M2166 patrol slung over the opposite shoulder, with a fresh cannister loaded and ready to go….

“That’s actually standard operatin’ proceedure,” the Yanker said, still chuckling,”but, y’know how it goes, standard proceedure don’t always get followed, or there ain’t enough metastas on hand to follow it…the men upstairs get first dibs on the shit, keepin’ ‘em quiet’s not nearly as important as the men in charge getting their fix and stayin’ alive…that metastas’ one bad fix to get hooked on, I tell you what….”

He chuckled again, smiling, adding:

“’Sall good…personally, I like it better when y’all are awake, when—“

His head disappeared in a cloud of blood, bone and grease, Priscilla’s shot still too late for the women chained to the deck, all of them screaming, thrashing round to the limits of their chains, pissing, bleeding and crapping all over themselves, that miserable dicksucker falling away from the mouse which had been under his feet, Lieutenant Colonel Leanna Kilmer standing up, her mouth working, words not coming out, as she looked down at the mouse, at all those poor things still suffering at her feet, Priscilla going over to her, putting her arm round her, trying to tell her it was all right.

She couldn’t get the words out either.

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 19:38:06 TAI

More skyscrapers, many of them four and five hundred stories high, all of them garishly lit up with neon and holographic signs, the holographic sky above them a fair depiction of second sunrise on the North Coast.

Cautiously, the ten Commonwealth Forces recondos made their way through a back alley inside the dome, Carson still at point, his M3 at the ready, even knowing firing the damn thing would all but advertise their presence and possibly even the JMC intention to invade Witch’s Tit…he consulted the holoprojection in front of him, trying to figure out just where in this moncarbon and ferrocrete jungle could the MiniPriz AI be.

Of course…the tallest and most grotesquely metal and glass of the whole lot, the cluster of towers in the center of the dome, eight klicks away through crowded, traffic-choked streets, that JMC intel had identified as the Government Complex, the Governor’s Tower at the center of those, tallest of the bunch at over six klicks high.

No way in Hell could they go underneath all this…the crawlway they’d used stopped being human-sized the instant it had come underneath the dome, the rest of the service tunnels under the dome having been designed for cyberteks and nanos to just barely squeeze through…his brother’s design, a drunkard, a murderer and a coward…still, he was smart enough, when he put forth the effort….

A noise from directly behind him had him jumping forty foot in the air, his weapon aimed dead at a dumpster, someone inside it trying to lift the lid up…his suit’s scanners telling him that someone was a woman, native to T-nova, barely sixteen…. Lance Corporal Annet Granger threw the lid open, while Anne, Shania and Master Medical Technician Mary Blagg covered her, not really needing to, Annet whispering,”oh, dear God,” over the link, before telling Mary to,”get over here!”

The team’s med tech rushing over there immediately, whispering Jesus’ name.

“Sir?” she then said, Carson joining Annet and her inside the dumpster…the poor thing lay deep in garbage of all sorts, blackflies hovering round her, and that god-awful stench…all she had on were a a pair of bloody, soiled thong panties pulled down to her ankles, her vagina swollen, bruised inside and out, labia forced open with a wad of bills shoved into her…rest of her body covered in bruises, cuts, freshly-bleeding welts from a lasewhip, fucking nerve baton shoved up her ass, still activated, she was crapping and peeing all over herself, another fucking wad of bills shoved nearly all the way down her throat, muffling her screaming, as she thrashed about, making it difficult for Annet to cut the monocarbon rope binding her hand and foot.

“Vehicle approaching fast, Boss,” Merirose said, Carson replying,”probably the pimp or one of his operators, come to take her back to the stable.”

“Sir,” Annet, looking at him,”I know what our orders are, but—“

“Cut her loose, Lance Corporal,” Carson replied, telling those outside the dumpster to take out whoever was inside the vehicle, minimum of fuss, before pulling the nerve baton out of her, switching the fucking thing off, throwing it in the trash, the sound of M3s, M5s and M6s echoing entirely too loudly up and down this alley, those rippling echoes followed by a an eardrum-shattering WHA-BOOOOOOOOOM! as some of those deuce and a halves found the vehicle’s hydrogen tankage.

Annet finally managing to cut the young woman loose from her bonds once the anticonvulsant Mary had injected into her had taken effect, Carson realizing, with a start, that Annet was just barely sixteen, fresh out of training, just a….

Wurst, he reminded himself, shaking his head sadly, Kase, Vollkornbrot. Manche Kinder sind schon tot.

Out loud, he told Mary to do what she could.

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 20:01:19 TAI

She stared the Pieta Montenegro in its eyes of Orion blackstar, sighing, as she gazed out at the center of the Lake of the Eternal Flame, at Jami Lanier, on her knees, sobbing, cradling the broken body of the little girl she blamed herself for not being able to save, one of too many moments like this forever frozen in the material quarried from the fires of the Hunter’s alpha star.

A slight breeze ruffled the Tricolor and the two republican ensigns on either side, as they flew at half staff in this place dedicated to freezing the names of all those who’d died in the service of their Commonwealth for all eternity, Prime Minister Lilith Angelique Gault having carved more names onto that bloody wall in the past few months than she’d wanted to…she’d just finished adding a few hundred more, as a matter of fact, that was her duty under the Articles, either hers or Rebekah’s, and Rebekah couldn’t be spared, she was at Joli pulling together the invasion force that would give everything they had in them to make a go of liberating Witch’s Tit…Angelique would join her there, would be there on the Defiant’s astrogation deck, same as when she’d begun this war and ended the last….

Also her duty under the Articles, her responsibility as de facto political head of the JMC…a lot of people weren’t going to come back alive from this one, it had no hope in Hell of succeeding, she couldn’t ask them to do what she and they both knew was right unless she was there with them to take the same consequences as they for her actions. She nodded her head sadly, sighing again as she looked her adopted daughter’s likeness in its streaming eyes…the other Pieta Montenegro was at Black Mountain, at the precise point where the camp ended and the Commonwealth and the Middies had set up their barracks, both done by Taesha Strong, one of the Commonwealth’s most gifted artists, and the daughter of Cyril Quinn’s predecessor as SGCF, killed in a deliberate League assault on a field hospital on TB over thirty years ago.

In a war which Angelique had started out as the Unbroken’s S.A. and had finished up her commander and Chief of the Defence Staff, leading too many people to places on that fucking wall…sad to say, but her suit of Commonwealth grey still fit her…she had planned to step down this year, retire from public life, turn the government over to Amelia Seldin and spend some time doing all the things she should have been doing, thirty years had been too long of a run as Prime Minister, for her at least…but, it didn’t seem retirement was going to be an option for a while….

“We should’ve listened to you,” Anna Kiltarne, the Australian PM, said from behind her,”and to Jay Todman ten years ago, when you both tried to talk us out of accepting the League’s surrender after Tau Ceti.”

“We were all tired of war, Anna,” Angelique replied to another comrade in arms. “Our people were tired of war, and, after Tau Ceti, I didn’t blame them or the rest of you…part of me wanted to lie down and rest.”

“Oh, yeah,”Anna remarked bitterly,”we lay down and went to sleep, all right, while the mad emperor Zellner and his mob rebuilt their legions and got ready to come back at us harder and more determined to kill us all…Tau Ceti, and bleedin’ Black Mountain before it, should’ve been seen as evidence to continue fighting, not to stop.”

“It no longer matters,” Angelique said softly in reply.

“It,” she repeated, still looking into the anguished face of the present commander of the Unbroken,”no longer matters.”

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 23:02:00 TAI

“—a vast right-wing Democratic conspiracy,” ol’ Cornhole ranted on in the background, while some fat, black hoochie was on her hands and knees, with one white girl shoving a dildo up in her stinkin’ shit while pulling on that kinky hair and forcing her black pony to douche out the stinkin’ shit of another white girl,”lurking in the shadows of our university campuses, cloaking itself in righteousness, hellbent on persecuting those who are not like them, on forcing them to turn or to burn in the fires of their prejudice.”

The fat black bitch was now bent over facedown, ass up at the feet of an older white chick—about forty, forty-five, something like that, plug-ugliest damn bull dyke he’d ever seen—howling that she were “a miserable sinner, who needed to be punished,” as a bright-skinned girl with long, wavy brown hair down to her butt laid into that fat ass with a lasewhip, all the other bitches howling in tongues, the fat girl howling even louder that she were a miserable sinner with each asswhupping, Bauer commenting in the background,”worshipping a feminized Christ of sadomasochism and self-hatred, they subject one another to degrading acts of lesbian sexuality designed to make them hate what they were born to be, to the point where they crave punishment for their femininity and at the same time, they learn to take great pleasure in punishing others like them for their femininity.”

“The various orders of Catholic,” Bauer said, as the camera dissolved back to the TMS studios,”and Buddhist nuns inflicted similar rituals of female sexuality upon one another, upon their noviates and upon the young girls they were often charged with teaching.”

“Many,” little Carolyn Minh said, crossing her legs so everyone could see the panties she had on underneath her skirt,”of the University of Terranova cheerleaders were majoring in education.” “Yes,” Bauer said, leering briefly at the geisha’s gash before facing the cameras,”they were. “

Leaning against the far wall of the comm room, a Blunt N’ Mild hanging from his lips, Skeeter’s attention drifted from TMS, to the smoke curling up and hanging lazily in the air, briefly over to the telemetry from the ECCOs…that was the third shipment in the past few days the Commies and their bitches had gotten their hands on, this one right on their front doorstep…the Man Himself was not happy about that at all, ‘specially when he’d found out Unbroken had been amongst the enemy machines who’d bounced the shipment and kept its escorts and the Mobile Force ships sent from the Terranova busy long enough for the four transports to be secured, turned round and pointed in the direction of Joli and Archangel.

They’d all made it to Jolian aerospace, a last-ditch effort by League forces sent from Allenby to try and put a stop to that failing miserably, Zellner deciding against letting the few Mobile Force ships still outside the SWMF back in, not with the Unbroken and God only knew how many other JMC warbirds trolling about, waiting for an opportunity to come insystem and cause trouble, possibly even to soften up the depot and the prison for a full-scale invasion.

“Keep an eye on that telemetry,” he said to the men whose job it was to monitor the tachyar returns from the early-warning satellites orbiting the Terranova, the depot and the system heliosphere, Skeeter pointing at the holoprojection with his Blunt N’ Mild, putting it back in his mouth and taking another, longer drag from it.

They had a shipment on vector from Mount Pilot, over in the Pleiades, due to arrive sometime tomorrow…big one, probably the biggest in the colony’s history, he didn’t know for sure…sixteen MCS- 5s, eight wings of frigates and two of battlewagons escorting it all the way in, over eight hundred thousand pieces of pussy waiting to be gated into the tanks to be tuned up by dykes like the ones going at Jaclyn Steele and making her howl she were a sinner every fuckin’ time they whupped her fat ass….

Just as Jaclyn was making the pretty little blonde white girl who was her roomate holler for Jesus every time her big, black mama tore into ‘em titties and that pootie with her lasewhip, Skeeter watching that go down over on the See BS Late Night News with Hattie Kaufmann, busy showing off them white stockings and matching Angel Baby thong she was wearing underneath her plaid mini, as she talked with the Man Himself:

“—and, that fat bitch, her liberal Republican allies, their bitch Michelle Bauer and her Commie dommies all have the unmitigated gall to cry about her rights being violated. What about the rights of that poor, little girl, apple of her daddy’s eye, being whipped, raped, twisted and deformed into a lesbian animal like her mistress, that, no doubt, to be followed by a parody, a parody, of the sacred ceremony marking God’s blessing of the union between one man and one woman.

What about her rights, Hattie? More importantly, what about Marilou Braselton’s fundamental rights to believe what is right, to be a woman, just as God meant for her to be, to teach righteousness to those in her charge, as her father taught her, as the Scriptures command all of us to teach others? What about her right to call perversion perversion, filth filth, her duty to protect her girls from Jaclyn and her lesbian, predatory behavior, her obligation to make sure those entrusted to her by their fathers grow up to be proper, God-fearing young ladies—“

28 FEBRUARY, 2226 23:06:19 TAI

“—wanting subjugation by the rods of their lords, just as we,” that miserable fucking North Coast dicksucker wheedled scarely two light years out of the reach of the commander of the Unbroken,”all want and need subjugation by the rod of our L—“

“Turn that shit off,” Jami snapped, sighing, pacing the relief deck—repressurized immediately after all the shooting had stopped three hours ago—again, not hungry, not thirsty, sure as hell not wanting to rest, not with him and that place safe and sound inside a swarm of kinetic-kill devices. Not with her uncle and her team trapped on that fucking monstrosity of a Terranova, no way for her to let him know his mission was probably pointless now, not without letting the bastards know they had a Commie Forces field recon team on board.

She knew only too well what would happen then.

Though she tried not to think about now, sighing explosively, as she completed another circuit round the relief deck, picking up her coffee from the countertop behind her, leaning back against it, sipping it, running unpleasant possibilites and possible scenarios through her head, trying to figure out just what in the name of God she was going to do next.

The inter-section connector between the astrogation and relief decks dilated open, Celina stepping through, an MMOD between her left forefinger and thumb, the squadron’s chief intelligence officer coming right to the point:

“It’s a date-time code…using the Julian dating system, if you know anything about that—“

“I do,” Jami replied, nodding her head slightly, Celina running right over her:

“—except, of course, it wasn’t in the proper notation, just a string of numbers surrounded by extranous crap to throw anyone who’d managed to decompress, decrypt, decipher and decode their way to the actual comm off the scent…even after realizing all the digital garbage was, in fact, garbage, I still had a hell of a time trying to fit the numbers to something that had any sort of meaning—“

“I knew you’d come through in the end, baby,” Jami told her.

“What’s the date-time code?” she then asked.

“Translated into International Atomic Time,” Celina replied,” tomorrow, at 14:13:48, which would be—“

“The time,” Jami replied, already doing the math,” those transports and their escorts inbound from Mount Pilot are supposed to break out at assisted telegate range from Witch’s Tit…after which, they have five minutes to transfer their prisoners or….”

“Precisely,” Celina said, neither one of them needing nor wanting to finish Jami’s observation.

The commander of the Unbroken instead putting her free hand briefly on her friend’s right shoulder, whispering:

“Go get some sleep.”

“Tomorrow’s,” she added,”gonna be a long day.”

1 MARCH, 2226 02:21:00 TAI

“I did all I could for her, Boss,” Mary whispered, kneeling next to the thrashing, fitfully-sleeping young woman they’d pulled out of the dumpster, brushing her matted hair from her sweating face…she was wearing spare changes of underwear donated by the other members of the team, over which she’d wrapped the armorjack duster they’d taken off one of the bastards sent to bring her back to her pimp’s stable, the TSID op’s shoes just barely fitting her.

Carson nodded at his med tech and her patient, staring back up the alley in which they’d taken a temporary refuge…so far, they’d been lucky, if having little option but to burn down sons of bitches was in fact luck…in addition to the operator initially sent to bring her back, the pimp had sent four more of his fellow TSID after him when he hadn’t reported in, the house-arrest bracelet Kimba and he had spent a nervous couple of hours removing vectoring the thugs right to them, and they’d been taken out, no chance at all to comm and let everyone on this monstrosity know there were a team of Commie Forces recondos in their neighborhood.

Luck was a fickle thing, though, especially in wartime…real soon now, the pimp was going to report one of his stable had gone missing, along with five of his guys, and ask the bright lads running the ship to scan the inside of the dome for her; bastard probably had the rest of his crew out trolling right now, with Bradbury’s hounds already programmed with her DNA, phermone traces and every damn thing else that made her her…that was standard operating proceedure….

And, he couldn’t call for a special delivery…obvious reasons aside, comming the Unbroken now would make it that much easier for the enemy to find his people, and he knew too much about what would happen next to put that idea as far from his mind as it would go.

He flinched, cursing himself for being so damn jumpy as he turned back to the girl thrashing round on the cold ferrocrete of the alley, whimpering “Jenni,” and “I’m sorry, baby” other things he couldn’t quite hear.

Her left arm was sticking out, fish-belly white in the light of his multispectrum torch…somebody had used a laser cutter to carve the words FUCK BITCH!!! and KILL THE BITCHES!!! into her.

Along with the words POOTIE GURL!!! EAT STANKIN’ RAUNCHY PUSSY!!! GO TO MOOT HOUSE!!! KEEP DADDY’S PECKER TO FUCK MY HO’ WITH!!! DISPOSE OF THE BLOODY CLOTHES and GET THE FOXTROT OUTTA DELTA, BABIES!!!

“Jesus,” Mary, looking down at her arm, softly interjected, before Heather Savidge flung herself over where they couldn’t see her arm, the poor damn thing curling up into a ball, whimpering her lover’s name, sobbing in her sleep.

Carson whispering the Lord’s other names in vain, as he turned away, staring at the entrance to the alley, his weapon at the ready.

—endit—

Wolf And Sheepdog “Everything out there exists for one purpose: To distract us from what is.” Babylonian Productions, “Messages From Earth,” from the series Babylon 5

1 MARCH, 2226 07:23:00 TAI

“After big business, their Manchurian Candidate and their feminazi handlers ,” the holoimage of Secretary of State D. David Coors III said,”all con the Terranovan people into invading the Homesteads to rape and murder its inhabitants, after they commit all kinds of atrocities against a people who only wanted a voice in the government to which they had demonstrated unswavering loyalty, after Zellner’s friends at Microsoft and Excelsior have slashed, burned, raped and stripmined the continents of Eldorado and New Patagonia to the point—“ “Hold on just a second!” the opposing holoimage of Attorney General Sam Brannen III, halfway out of his cozy chair, snapped, the violence of his reaction causing Telenet 26’s Carl Flores to jump back with a start.”It was you liberal Republicans—“

Coors talking right over the Attorney General of the Union:

“—after our brave men and women have sustained losses they can ill afford, after the rabid feminazis they have bred within the Homesteads subject us to hours upon hours of footage showing them stripping our soldiers naked, dragging them through the mud, gang raping them until they are just as rabidly female as their oppressors, ready to inflict more atrocity upon helpless political prisoners—“

“It was you liberal Republicans,” Brannen shouted,”who instigated this whole affair, you and your backers in the feminist movement and in the megacorporations utterly infested with them, don’t you dare try backing out of this now!”

“You’re the ones who backed out, Mister Attorney General,” Coors replied,”who gave the Homesteads over to them, who sold loyal citizens of this Union into slavery and worse than slavery, at the hands of rabid, offworlder, feminazi bull-dykes who like to see nothing more than all of us reduced to their Yahoo-like savagery and brutishness!”

“What would have us do?” Brannen asked.

“Oh,” he added,”I know, you’d have us waste our time fighting someone else’s civil war, just like you tricked us into doing at Twice-Born five years ago, while your mistress, Cynthia McKinley, murders and rapes our citizens inside Terranovan home soil—“

“We are not denying the situation in our own backyard, Sam,” Coors replied. “All we ask is for Guy Zellner to prove he is a man by owning up to his responsibilities, to give the Homesteaders the funds they need to rebuild, to arm and train a security force to fight off terror and murder and help reestablish democratic—“

“Typ-i-cal liberal Republican tax and spend thinking at work,” Brannen broke off in reply, Commanding General Bradley Richard Selkirk telling the workstation terminal on his desk to shut the fuck up, as he looked out the picture window of his office on the 580th floor of the Governor’s Tower, down into the metropolis which had come to life underneath the dysprosium-plated monomolecular carbon dome encasing the Terranova’s government complex, sipping on his glass of Kentucky and kike, as he gazed upon his masterpiece.

He did pretty damn good work…it was a safe bet his little blonde bitch couldn’t even conceive of something like this, a true capital ship with the firepower to make and enforce the will of the He who was indisputably over all others…she couldn’t have even come up with the infrastructure to support such a massive undertaking…a whole new class of transport had to be built to bring the hyperspace torpedos from the special weapons development labs deep inside Little Grey Donkey to their bays on board the Terranova, a whole entire new class of ship, complete with a full regiment of fightercraft with which to defend itself from attack, and a powerful telegate system which inserted each and every one of the sixty hyperspace torpedos into their launchers, ready to be used when the time came.

The first of these transports, which he’d dubbed Leviathan, was en route to the Terranova now, due to arrive later this evening…too late, of course, to discourage her from trying to destroy this magnificent creation of the man who’d given her birth, that was her way, to wait until her prey was at its most defenseless before attacking, ungrateful, goddamn, chickenheaded, alcoholic fucking dyke bitch….

The tumbler shook in his clenching right hand, Selkirk letting his breath out in a single explosive exhalation, smiling…didn’t matter, He had a good couple hundred of the Mobile Force outside hunting her down, and even if they couldn’t stop her, the Terranova himself had fifteen divisions of frigates and battleships on board him, and over five thousand more War Eagles and Predators besides, to say nothing of the fighters, UAVs, frigates and battleships docked at the depot itself and the forces constantly in orbit round Witch’s Titty that could be deployed here just in case even more help was needed to stop her.

“Thinking about her, aren’t you?” Sam Brannen’s unwelcome South Coast crackerhead voice asked from behind him.

“Do you make a regular habit of inviting yourself into other people’s private offices, Sam?!” Selkirk asked in reply.

“That,” he added, taking another sip of his drink,”was a polite way of telling you to get the fuck out of my sight.”

“Now,” he added.

“Don’t you at least want to know why I came to see you, Bradley?” Brannen asked.

“If it’s to continue the conversation we had some time ago at Little Grey Donkey,” Selkirk, not dignifying him by turning round, replied,” then you’ve wasted a trip; my answer remains the same.”

“And,” he added,”you’re an even dumber son of a bitch than I gave you credit for, to even think of discussing this openly aboard His Capitol.”

Brannen’s only response was to chuckle.

“He used you for sex,” he had the audacity to say out loud,”lied about loving you, threw you out in the cold when he grew bored with your stinking ass, when you allowed her to unmaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!”

The Attorney-General of the Union was on his knees before him, same as when they’d been in Academy together, the Supreme Commander of His forces finally turning round, looking down upon the wretched thing showing all the symptoms of femininity, right down to its desire to wallow in the victim state—same as his bitch of a daughter—twitching and whimpering and crapping all over his expensive black Brooks Brothers suit even though Selkirk had only given the briefest of tastes of the discipline he’d often had to use on his bad little girl.

“That,” he reminded him,”is His right.”

1 MARCH, 2226 08:08:11 TAI

“Almost there,” the young Commie Forces Logistics Arm pilot’s voice said over Rhonda Whitman’s link, as she went over Rittermark field equations, commband, NPI parameters, everything, three times like a frickin’ Topaz, hands poised over the command which would kick the T-Star loose of the Mark V Greyhawk utility spaceplane and into interstellar space at a point the former associate professor of mathematics had herself predetermined.

She sighed explosively, trying not to be nervous, which, of course, was like trying not to notice the proverbial pink elephant sitting its fat ass down in front of the HV.…new intel had changed everything, the invasion was not going to be in two days, but in a little over six hours from now, the shipment from Mount Pilot should’ve been interdicted by now and the replacement shipment—carrying a decidedly different cargo—dispatched from Terranova en route to Witch’s Tit.

That was the first stage of a hastily-conceived plan on JMC’s part…this was the second, and it all depended on assumptions on the part of the Intelligence Coordinating Staff concerning what the crew of the Unbroken had found out about the communications protocols used to deactivate the System-Wide Minefield which had, until now, ruled out any invasion of the DM+50 1125 system and the penal colony of Witch’s Tit. She could only hope and pray those assumptions were correct; otherwise—

“Now!” the Greyhawk’s pilot shouted, Rhonda stroking her holodisplay, shutting down the spaceplane’s AG force beam, the spaceplane itself, shorn of the load it had been towing, accelerating into the higher bands of hyperspace, her pilot making the turn back towards New Utopia…this and the other T- Stars being towed into position 1.68 lightyears from DM+50 1125 would be operated remotely from the Combat Center at New Utopia, transmitting what Rhonda could only hope were legitimate requests to shut down the SWMF for incoming shipments, starting ninety seconds after the initial force of fifty million troops had gated their way into the prison’s cellblocks and continuing every 526.4 milliseconds after that, until either the entire system was secured or all the T-Stars were blown out of the sky, something which would quickly require a new plan of action.

Assuming they weren’t wrong about the necessity of intrasystem traffic, and the two AIs weren’t hardcoded to reject shutdown requests coming that close together...assuming the hard-logic imperatives didn’t automatically reject requests originating from interstellar space instead of from any known League colony…assuming….

Another sigh, Rhonda taking a deep breath, trying to relax her mind and keep it from chasing after all the ways this could go awry, like even the best plans were wont to do, especially in wartime....

She felt the spaceplane decelerate, Rhonda realizing, with a start, they were already back in normal space, her pilot letting her know they were on final approach vector to New Utopia.

Little less than six hours now to worry about all the ways this could fuck up.

1 MARCH, 2226 08:15:00 TAI

Five hours forty-five minutes more would the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken have to pace the edge of the DM+50 1125 system and its technological garden of thorns.

Five hours forty-four minutes, fifty-three seconds longer would her commander, Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier, sit here at her conn, worrying about every possible bad ending this would have for her, her crew, her uncle and his team.

She had more than good reason this time…Witch’s Tit made Tartarus look like Six Flags Over Terranova, she knew that only too well, three years of her life and almost her soul as well taken by the bastards in and out of drag who had done everything they could to….

The commander of the Unbroken sighed, dryswallowing…if it came down to it, she’d blow the ship straight to Kingdom come rather than let them harm a hair on the head of any of her people, especially her wife, sitting just ahead of her at the astrogation station, working astrogation and piloting holodisplays without even looking at her hands, she was that damn good….

She was the best, period, Jami owing Stevie everything, no way in Hell could she ever even begin to repay her kindness, her love, her just being there, hanging in there long after Jami had given up on herself…if this ended badly—

I know what to do, luv, Stevie whispered in her mind, grim resolution in every word.

All of us know what to do…you are not to blame.

Jami sighed…her wife, Unbroken’s second in command, had whispered those words to her over and over in the twenty years since Bearclaw Station…she believed in her more than Jami believed in herself most days, more than anyone should believe in her, after all the times she’d come up short…. Another sigh to clear her mind…this wasn’t the time or place…she stared ahead at the master holodisplay, then at both of her command holodisplays, studying the tachyar returns, looking to see if any of the League Mobile Force ships still trolling about had acquired Unbroken or any of the rest of her squadron…mostly frigates, a few battleships, a lot of fighters and UAVs orphaned from their parent craft, vastly outnumbering the squadron of twelve Dauntless-class frigates, the squadron of Midnight Sun Polaris-class frigates and the four gunship carriers under her de facto command, all of them trolling in a loose formation round the system, waiting for the time when the SWMF would next be deactivated to hit the Yanker Aerospace Force depot orbiting the system’s nameless outermost planet and snatch her uncle Carson’s field recon team the hell off Guy Zellner’s personal Death Star.

Simple plan…go in, cause as much destruction as possible to cover up the true intent of the mission, make it look like they were trying to take out the Terranova and Zellner both, as those were standing orders, close to a thousand klicks of the new Yanker capital, gate the recondos back aboard ship and get the Foxtrot out of Delta, all within the five-minute window of opportunity between two thousand kinetic-kill devices per cubic meter shutting down and heating back up.

Not so simple once all the variables had been factored in…they were going to be heavily engaged the instant the SWMF went down and they came charging in, Zellner wasn’t stupid, just evil, egomaniacal and brutal, same as her Daddy, the Chairman of the Union Security Council and Supreme Commander of League Forces…they knew she was still out here, that it was possible she would try something like this, the reason why they’d kept the Mobile Force machines out here in the first place…the Terranova himself was a fortress, bristling with Gatling 90s, 127s,. 203s, 406s, Predators, War Eagles, gobstoppers and at least sixty hyperspace torpedos in launchers along his perimeter…one of those had the potential to ruin a great many plans on her part and the JMC’s like they almost did at the beginning of the fight to liberate Tartarus….

She consulted the JMC intel datastream on her right-hand command holodisplay, trying to find any clue as to whether or not the Terranova had been rearmed with a fresh arsenal of those…the special weapons labs deep inside Little Grey Donkey, Kaus Meridionalis’ largest Jovian, had produced those— each packing enough power to destroy an entire solar system—and, even with nanotechnology, it took a great deal of time to make them…then, came the problem of bringing them here, since even a CS-5 lacked adequate cargo space for even one of the sixty-thousand ton weapons.

She nodded her head when the datastream had nothing to say on that subject, the commander of the Unbroken only too sure of her father and his master’s abilities to surmount those difficulties.

1 MARCH, 2226 09:00:11 TAI

“What was that, little bitch?!” Sam Brannen demanded of his nasty little piece of poot, just before he disciplined her, making her go down on her knees, bleeding, pissing, shitting all over herself, screaming in orgasm, rolling around on the floor with her legs up in the air, just fucking wanting Daddy and his man both to fuck her.

Bitch don’t got a stitch of damn clothes on, Guy Thomas Zellner, Governor of the Union, thought, as He watched what the surveillance gear in His Attorney General’s apartment was showing him, just walking around bareass naked, fucking shaking it in her Daddy’s face and in the face of his man, trying to seduce him into betraying his lover, same as that little blonde bitch of Bradley’s used to try to do to Me.

“Dis-gusting,” D. David Coors III said, staring down at that poot, spitting on it, as it flopped back round with its ass showing, her Daddy giving it one, two, three good kicks up in that shit.

“They’re all like that, David,” Brannen remarked,”nasty, disgusting, perverted, always trying to seduce us away from one another, as if their deformed, ugly, twisted Gollum bodies could ever be any match for the beauty and simplicity of the masculine form.” He kicked her again, because he was her Daddy and he fucking had the right to, the sixteen-year old pussy whimpering “I’m sorry, Daddy,” over and over, Brannen waiting ‘til she’d said it five times before telling her yes, she was a sorry damn piece of fucking pussy.

“Crawl on your damn belly over to David,” he then ordered her,”and go down on him, now!”

The He who was over all others watched his bad little girl comply with her Daddy’s wishes, like little girls were supposed to fucking do—as opposed to slurping each other’s pussies and flying Commie warbirds into battle against Him—crawling along like the serpent all her kind were descended from, Coors grabbing her by her hair, honoring her nasty fucking cooter with his magnificent black shaft, Zellner remarking,” least he knows how to make pussy do right.”

“Unlike you, Micheal,” He added, His Prime Minister, sitting on the sofa next to Him, just as intently watching this act of female depravity as He was, merely replying,”it will be a shame when we have to dispose of him.”

“Yes,” He said, Coors jerking on that cooter head, making it go up and down on his prick, thrusting himself into her at the same time,”it will be, Micheal.”

“It will be,” He repeated, taking a swallow from his waterglass of Evan Wilson.

“Fortunately,” He said to one of His better students,” for him and for us, that time has not come.”

Coors slapped the little bitch hard across her face when she tried pretending she was choking from his seed inside her, wiping the head of his swollen manhood across her labia to clean it off, before deciding it was “not good enough!”

“It never is, David,” Brannen remarked, Coors pulling the nasty little girlie onto his lap, bending her over his knee, whaling away on that fat ass,”no matter what they pretend, even to one another, the limited amusements of their shame are nothing compared to the pleasure being with a man gives even one of them.”

“Stop your goddamn squalling,” Coors ordered Brannen’s little girl,”and tell your Daddy and me that you like sucking that cock better than eating that nasty old pussy!”

“Say it!” he ordered her, spanking that ass again, the He who was over all others smiling, nodding his head.

It would be a shame to have to deal with Brannen and his attempts to undermine His authority…in spite of his shortcomings as a man, Bradley had taught him very well indeed.

He had time, however, to enjoy watching His Attorney General work, for he would remain loyal to his Governor, until he was ready to move against Him, and he wasn’t just yet, he was still weaving his web, taking his time to make sure it went right first time, because he knew only too well He would not permit him a second chance.

“It will be a shame,” He said quietly, taking another swallow of Evan Wilson.

1 MARCH, 2226 09:19:07 TAI

“It’s even more grotesque up close,” Lance Corporal Karen Dewhurst whispered, as the Commonwealth Forces field recon team and their charge all huddled together in the shadow of the Governor’s Tower, a one-fingered salute of dysprosium, monocarbon, clearcarbon and holography guarded by a garden maze of ferrocrete and monocarbon crash barriers and blocking fields, installation-level AG shielding projected in a bubble two klicks out from the building in all directions, Gatling 25 and 90 turrets slewing all about on their AI-controlled gun emplacements and at least one battalion of Special Forces Command and another of Yanker Army Ranger Light Infantry, all trolling the area with heavily-armed Scorpio combat sleds and snarling Bradbury’s hounds.

“How in the name of God,” asked Corporal Merirose Coughlin ,”do we get in there?”

“Hell if I know,” Lieutenant Colonel Carson Selkirk, trying to get his breath in spite of the rock in his chest, replied honestly, intently scanning the perimeter for any way in that didn’t involve the front door.

His field of vision shimmying, purple moons and other marshmallow pieces from a box of frosted Good Luck Charms exploding all over the place, Carson sweating buckets, cold all of a sudden.

His second, 1st Lieutenant Meghan Polk asking over and over if he was okay as he found himself coughing his fucking brains out and not bringing up a damn thing except more Good Luck Charms sparkling like fireworks in his bioplastic retinas.

“Boss?” she asked again, Master Medical Technican Mary Blagg running her medscanner over him, in spite of him waving her off, Carson desperately trying to suck down air, his chest hurting like a son of a bitch with each inhalation, his body as limp as undercooked bacon(she liked her steaks crisped but her bacon half raw, never could figure that out) his head fuzzy, mind unable to focus on a damn thing…what the fuck, it had only been ten days since Ryla Sedgewick had reinjected him with Jami’s modified t-RNA, it had worked longer than this the first time….

He was vague aware of the pressure of a pneumo against his right arm, the fuzz slowly clearing from his head, Mary remarking,”it’s only a temporary fix, Boss, enough hemobooster and synthetic cocaine derivative to stave off the effects of the toxemia—“

“Toxemia?!” Carson asked, finding some of his strength returning, realizing had the disease been allowed to run its normal course, he would’ve been in the toxemia stage by now.

“Of course,” he said, sealing his suit back up.

“Of course,” he repeated more firmly, shrugging off the arms of his med tech and his second, as he looked back out at the perimeter of the Governor’s Tower, concentrating on finding a way to slip his team past all those guards, guns, shielding and barriers.

1 MARCH, 2226 09:37:14 TAI

“They’ve finished their sweep of Sector Bravo, sir,” the senior master sergeant manning the internal sensor station reported,”reporting negative contact, moving into Sector Charlie.”

“Sir,” that gay, brace-toothed faggot motherfucker of a light colonel, Micheal Keith dared speak up,” recommend we impose a curfew inside the dome and lock down all access to and from it.”

“I’ve already locked down the dome, Colonel,” Colonel Stephan Duane Brown, head of the Governor’s TSID detachment, snapped back,”that was the first thing I did after receiving reports of a runaway female inside it; as for your idea of a curfew, there are few nonessential personnel inside the dome to make such a thing practical.”

“Ah,” Keith said, turning to face Colonel Vernon “Skeeter” Warren, commander of the 5th Combat Communications Group,”Vernon, just the man I wanted to see.”

“That’s Colonel Warren to you, bitch,” Skeeter snapped, Keith jumping back as if Skeeter had shot his skinny ass—an idea not entirely without merit—and looking at him as if he were the one who’d forgotten his place. “If,” Skeeter added,”that is too many words for you at one time, Lieutenant Colonel, then a simple ‘sir’ will suffice.”

Skeeter then turned away from the commander of the Terranova to the holodisplay dedicated to the ECCO early-warning satellites…still down, two of his men attacking the guts of the station’s terminal with a variety of tools and diagnostic scanners, trying to run down the glitch which had, for the last several days, left the ops deck without any way to receive telemetry from or control the ECCOs, forcing them to rely on the backup ECCO command and control station in the comm room two levels below them in the Governor’s Tower.

“Hear you got a runaway, blood brother,” Skeeter then said to his brother-in-law.

“Yeah,” Stephan said in reply, still looking at the telemetry from the dome’s internal sensor network. “Happened last night, in a part of India Sector whose internal sensors weren’t working worth a damn; one of the ho’s assigned to Cedric’s stable got loose, killed five of his guys somehow, managed to remove her house-arrest bracelet without blowing her damn foot off…got hounds and mens out looking for her, still hadn’t found her yet.”

“That’s not good,” Skeeter remarked, his brother-in-law—Skeeter’s kid sister was Julio’s bitch— snorting, telling him ” no shit, Dick Grissom.”

“And,” he then asked,”I thought that why you and yo’ mens were brought here in the first place, Skeeter, to try and fix shit…ain’t nothin’ workin’ on this motherfucker, internal sensors, communications —“

“The ECCO command and control system,” Keith spoke up, Stephan snapping out a ”man, fuck you!” in reply.

“Lotta shit to fix,” Skeeter replied,”lotta shit that still fucked up from the last time y’all locked horns with the Unbroken—“

“That was over two months ago!” Keith objected.

“—and, we are understrength,” Skeeter reminded both of them,”missing about half our people, either they been killed and hadn’t been replaced, or they been redeployed and hadn’t been—“

“There you go again,” Keith groused,”always with the excuses, just like it was when we—“

“We are not in the store anymore, Lieutenant Colonel!” Skeeter, wheeling round on his heel, grabbing that skinny bastard by the front of his suit and lifting him off the deck. “There is no store anymore, thanks to weak punks like you who let all the ass run amok and slurp each other up in the goddamn ladies’ room on front, who let that black bitch take over and start fuckin’ shit up for the rest of us, to the point where Bruce didn’t have no choice but to wire the whole thang up and send it straight to Kingdom come!”

“Jesus!” he added, throwing Keith back down onto the deck, Keith’s right hand immediately heading in the direction of his power-holstered M2149, Skeeter laying his hand on the butt of his weapon, telling the skinny bitch to”go for it, Matt Dillon.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, when Keith took his hand away from his weapon, picking himself off the deck instead, not even looking his superior officer in the eye.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Skeeter then told his brother in law,”about the internal sensors.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Stephan said in reply. 1 MARCH, 2226 10:15:42 TAI

Commonwealth Forces Chief Aerospace Marshal Lenore Kaplan’s eyes were fixed on Commonwealth Forces Ship Dauntless’ master holodisplay, as she plunged deeper into hyperspace on vector for Witch’s Tit, a force of twelve thousand Commonwealth Forces Dauntless-class frigates, sixteen captured Yanker MCS-5D bulk military transports, nearly ten kay of Mark IV Osprey hyperspace fighters and over eleven thousand Chevalier-class assault transports hiding inside the Rittermark fields of the larger craft, all of them deploying electronic countermeasures to mask their presence from the early-warning satellites deployed throughout the DM+50 1125 system.

About three minutes behind them were four armies of Orion Trade Association troops escorted by six divisions of Zapho Starstriker-class frigates…they would come in after Fifth and Seventh Field Commands were gated in, after—hopefully—her Second, Katelyn Tom’s Third, Jaden Sprague’s Fourth and Alex MacFarlane-Davidson’s Seventh Divisions, along with the sixteen regiments of Planetary Defense Arm fighters, reduced the prison’s ground, orbital and hyperspace defenses, shelled enemy ground forces on planet and engaged the hostile machines stationed round Witch’s Tit itself….

The commander of the Dauntless sighed, fogging up the faceplate of her greys…the bulk of the JMC forces, led by Defiant herself, were massed round Joli and Archangel, ready to go NGE and join the fray the instant they received intel that the first two phases of this hastily-cobbled together plan had gone off more or less without a hitch.

Unbroken, her squadron, a squadron of Midnight Sun FedAerospaceForce Polaris-class machines and four Terranovan Union Armed Forces gunship carriers were already patrolling the system periphery, dodging League Mobile Force warbirds, waiting until the SWMF went down again to try bulling their way into the Yanker Republican Aerospace Force depot orbiting the brown dwarf at the edge of the system in an attempt to pull Carson Selkirk’s field recon team off the Terranova to safety, their presence on board the mobile deep-range base no longer being necessary now that Jami Lanier and her crew had found out everything JMC needed to know concerning how the SWMF worked.

How they thought it worked, based on D4 work by both Unbroken’s intelligence officer, Celina Albright, and the Intelligence Coordinating Staff at New Utopia on the comms sent between the MiniPriz AI on board Zellner’s new capital, the SWMF control AI deep inside Witch’s Tit and the shipment Lenore’s forces had replaced midway in transit from Mount Pilot…and on sheer conjecture on the part of the ICS and the JMC commanders…all they did know for sure was they had to invade now, before Unbroken and the other ships under her command convinced Zellner and his mob of the logic in vectoring every available League warbird and soldier to reinforce the already massive garrison insystem, further reducing the chances of a successful full-scale invasion.

Chances which were already low when Operation Zeon had been in the planning stages; why, over the objections of many in the Defence Staff—including Lenore—the Joint Military Command had decided not to include any invasion of Witch’s Tit as part of their plans in the first place.

Or even as part of Operation Char, when the JMC had reconvened in the aftermath of Zellner’s abortive attempt to take the Homesteads and the Middie hydrolisis rigs in the Sea of Martinez back in November…the chances of success were still low, even with the new intelligence, but the time had come to at least try, Angelique had been right about that, they’d been flaunting that obscenity of a penal colony in her people’s faces for 170 years too long, same as the Phooies had done with that fucking Hell Star of theirs(the invasion of Tartarus had been part of both Operations Zeon and Char)and it had to be put out of comission if they ever were to win this war.

Another sigh, Lenore continuing to stare into her frigate’s master holodisplay, as the forces under her command made their way towards the DM+50 1125 system at a rate of six and a half parsecs per hour.

1 MARCH, 2226 11:01:14 TAI “The Horizons’ Tenth and 23d Divisions,” Commonwealth Forces Chief of Staff Rebekah Tilghmann said to her wife, Lilith Angelique Gault, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Cor Leonis, “along with the Mids’ 11th and 14th Divisions, the Avalons’ 14th and 27th Aerospace Forces and our own Fifth and Sixth Divisions are standing by at the outer edge of the system, ready to enter hyperspace on vector for Unbroken and her forces at Zed minus eleven minutes, seven seconds, as per orders.”

“Main force,” she added, “are standing by along the Danzig and New Cheroburg corridors, ready to enter hyperspace on vector for Witch’s Tit at Zed plus five minutes…hopefully, by then….”

She trailed off, sighing, sitting down in the recliner opposite the sofa on Commonwealth Forces Ship Defiant’s relief deck, shaking hands trying to pick up and hold the cup of coffee Angelique had poured for her…neither of them had any idea whether the first two stages of the invasion plan had succeded, strict operational silence was in effect and would remain so until after the invasion of Witch’s Tit was well and truly underway.

Or Angelique had incontroverible proof that the preliminary assault had ended in bloody failure, same with their attempt to shut down the SWMF which had prevented invasion of the DM+50 1125 system for 170 years.

Even if it succeeded….

Another sigh, Rebekah reaching out and gently touching her right knee.

We all knew what was being expected of us, Naiad, she whispered in her wife’s mind.

Doesn’t make this any better, Angelique thought back, any less wrong…all those lives about to be lost on both sides….

“It is necessary,” Rebekah said out loud. “I wish it weren’t, luv, but….”

Her turn to sigh, as she sipped at her coffee.

“They have to be set free,” she whispered,”that godforsaken place shut down, once and for all.”

“This time,” she added, nodding her head sadly, giving her wife’s knee a gentle squeeze at the same time,”we have to win…no matter the cost.”

“I know,” Angelique said, her voice small. “I just wish….”

She trailed off, Rebekah squeezing her knee again, whispering in her mind the truth she already knew.

It is far and away too late for things to end any differently, Naiad.

Far and away too late.

1 MARCH, 2226 12:20:37 TAI

“—they won’t stoop to,” the would-be Governor of the Union slavered and foamed at the mouth. “My God, Lilith Babylon ordered her collared pet of a lesbian sex killer to snuff out 400 of her own citizens just to have an excuse to inflict terrorism and brutality upon our people, an atrocity in which Mistress Babylon was aided by her liberal Republican co-conspiriators in the government and the Union Security Council weakening our armed forces, infesting them with females, issuing weak-caliber popguns to ‘em and saddling them with so many nancy-boy rules of engagement—I mean, look at the pointless peacekeeping efforts on Twice-Born, where our guys weren’t even allowed to patrol with full cannisters in their weapons—“ Sam Brannen III, Attorney General of the Union, tuned out much of the rest of that epileptic yogurt eater’s hysterics, shifting the position of his feet on his bad little girl’s fat, filthy ass, slapping one twot cheek hard with the sole of his left shoe when he thought he heard her whimpering, in spite of her filthy fucking cooter head being mashed down into the Grade One Axeminster of his 595th –story apartment in the Governor’s Tower, fluffy ash from his 250-year old Cohiba falling down into the crack of her twot, Daddy having to put shoeleather to that ass again to get it to shut the fuck up and bury its ugly goddamn face in the carpet where neither he nor his beautiful African warrior prince would have to see it.

David took a puff on his vintage Cuban cigar, slowly blowing the smoke out of his mouth, staring up at it drifting through the air, smiling contendedly, savoring the best genuine tobacco three centuries’ worth of Brannen family money could buy, a fellow aristocrat more than capable of appreciating the finer things in life, as well as the beauty and flawlessness of the masculine form.

So unlike that crude, pathetic, sickly excuse for a failed abortion spurned even by his own grandfather—the last of a truly great line of men.

So unlike his former lover and one-time mentor, as well….pity….he’d once had such high hopes for Bradley, actually even looking up to him, even if he wasn’t his own kind, using his family’s connections and wealth to make thing easier and more profitable for him, because he had so stupidly, youthfully believed Bradley was everything a man should be, a giant to whom subjugating and caging witches and harpies came as effortlessly as breathing…only to see him as he truly was, corrupted first by his yogurt-eater so-called lover—who was as incapable of such a thing as the thing underneath his feet— then utterly unmanned by his vicious animal of a daughter, unable to break her to his will, unable to keep her from falling prey to her own innate perversities, unable to keep her from defying him in so many ways —too many ways—allowing her to become so incorrigble that three years in Witch’s Tit was insufficent in securing her submission.

The fact she was the ancient enemy reincarinated—just as Roger Tarrant had said she was—had made Bradley’s failure as a father and a man all that much worse, a failure compounded and magnified by his yogurt-eating, North Coast, nancy-boy, parvenu of a Governor’s airy, arrogant dismissal of his former master’s warning….

On the HV, one yogurt eater’s ugly, feminine face was replaced by another, this one pretending to be Prime Minister of the Union, when the rightful holder of that office had been killed in the war’s opening hours, what remained of the House of Commons seduced into installing this in Marc’s place:

“—aiding the Democrats and the foaming at the mouth preachers of hate in the religious right in persecuting honest, healthy affections between men while, at the same time, forcing us to accept their feminine perversion as normal, natural, healthy sexuality, even resorting to murdering nearly four hundred of their own in cold blood—four hundred and countless billions more after that—in an effort to make God- fearing citizens of this free and democratic Union debar the long-established, Nature-ordained definition of marriage as between a man and a woman and replace that definition with one which mandates lesbian sadomasochism as the yardstick by which we measure—“

“Crude,” David commented, while Daddy stomped on that ass again to mash its face down in the carpet, telling his man,” they all are.”

“They,” he repeated,”all are.”

1 MARCH, 2226 13:15:02 TAI

Safely in the bowels of the Governor’s Tower, Carson switched off his suit’s holodistortion field generator, the image of a physical plant worker peeling away from his own, Master Technical Sergeant Kimba Bledsoe on her knees behind him, head buried inside a panel granting access to the building’s internal sensors. “Much of the system’s trashed already, Boss,” his team’s techie observed,”mainly from long- unrepaired battle damage, probably stemming from when the Terranova engaged our forces during the recall elections a couple of months ago…all I’m doing’s adding to the damage, nothing fancy.”

“That’s fine,” Carson replied, continuing to cover her, his head still swimming a little, still fuzzy, in spite of the continous charge of hemobooster and SCD he’d programmed the autoinjector in his medkit to pump into his toxin-saturated bloodstream.

Just as long as I get through this mission, he thought to himself, Meghan leading the other half of the team to join him, all that matters.

Ignorning the concerned look in her eyes and in those of his med tech’s, Carson asked,”dispose of our friends, Leftenant?”

“They’re in a closet somewhere, Boss,” Meghan replied offhandedly,”sound asleep for the next eight to ten hours.”

“Grand,” Carson replied, nodding his head…just when he’d been racking his brains trying to figure out a way into this place, a crew from the physical plant and their van had come along just for that purpose—dumb luck being just as much a soldier’s best friend as his weapon—his team taking the van without much of a fight, using their holodistortion fields(and wrapping Heather up in distortion netting) to make themselves look like the physical plant workers, driving their van right up to the docks deep in the sublevels of the building without any notice being taken of them at all.

And, now, they were in the lowest level of the Terranova’s immense drive room, four freakin’ antimatter reactors, each at least three, four hundred meters high, his team in the shadow of a huge Rittermark generator in front of the base of the four reactors, infinity driver between the diamond they made and an equally monstrous AG drive right behind them, with the massive shield and force beam jennies right above their heads, a rat’s nest of primary and secondary field coils striking out in all directions.

“Shit,” whispered young Lance Corporal Meribel Ghinningham, looking up and all round her.

“Yeah,” Carson said in reply, Kimba telling him,”that’s done it, I think.”

Clambering to her feet, putting away her holopad and data cabling as Carson turned to face her, she added,”like I said, nothing fancy, and nothing too obvious; I glitched the internal sensor drivers just a tiny bit, they’ll have the hardware thinking things are there that aren’t, which, hopefully, will have the master AI shutting off those sensors which appear to be malfunctioning—”

“While,” Carson said,”he and those in charge ignore the output from the rest.”

“Hopefully,” Kimba replied.

“Hopefully,” Carson repeated.

“AI cores—” he added, reflexively lowering his voice at the sight of Yanker Republican Aerospace Force flight engineers milling about on the levels directly above him,”AI cores are about six hundred meters above us, or just above the drive room and the life-support d—“

He choked down the f-word, a cybertek, an M32 assault railer grasped firmly in two of its eight spider arms, taking between twenty and thirty years to pass over them on its AG drivers, every goddamn one of his team trying to make themselves as small as possible, Meribel and Lance Corporal Annet Granger shielding Heather behind them, their Browning M6 assault carbines at the ready, just in case— The mechanoid didn’t see them at all, going on its merry way to some other corner of the immense drive room, Carson breathing a somewhat painful sigh of relief.

An instant before a bleating alarm klaxon split the air, a voice sounding a lot like old Ben Zellner’s warning anyone listening that there were intruders in the building.

In some other part of the building than the lowest depths of the drive room, giving Carson cause to breathe a second sigh of relief, before taking point and giving the order to move out.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:13:00 TAI

“It’s time,” the commander of the Unbroken said out loud, dryswallowing one last time.

“Alter vector, S.A.,” she ordered, stroking the command sounding the battle ready.” Leftenant, stand by on weaps, have the Raptors form a flying wedge in front of us, tell the fighters to alter vector and come in hard and fast the instant—“

“We’ve been acquired, Boss!” Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Genera Muncie shouted. “At least one wing of Mobile Force machines altering vector to intercept!”

“We’re on vector,” Stevie shouted back,”for the DM+50 1125 Aerospace Force Depot, heading directly for the Terranova, ETI eighteen decimal one seconds at present a.h.v. !”

“Opfor ETI twenty-three seconds exactly!” Genera counterpointed, her wife, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson, reporting,”SWMF has shut down, fighters and gunships going in, frigates, carriers and UAVs—what the—“

Tachyar was picking them up, twenty-four thousand JMC frigates, their fighters and unmanned aerospace vehicles, coming down on the Terranova and everything else inside the depot at c times ten and a half million.

Nodding, Jami turned away from the command holodisplays, staring directly ahead, the mass shadow of Zellner’s new capital filling the master holodisplay, as she barked out the order for her weaps officer to fire at will with everything she had to give.

—endit—

Child Rowland To The Dark Tower Came “The sun has not yet risen on the day Tyr Anasazi, out of Victoria through Barbarossa, accepts death graciously. I will kick and claw and spit my last breath in its face, and, as long as you are with me, you will do the same. Is that clear?!” Fireworks Productions, “The Widening Gyre,” from the series Andromeda

1 MARCH, 2226 14:13:47 TAI

“All right, bitches,” Travis Johnson—aka Tasha Strong—shouted out to the rest of the Q Block dyke crew, as the spacetime rift began forming inside the fuck tank,”get ready to throw down!”

Checking one last time to make sure the dildo was strapped on good and tight over Her twot, Tasha let Herself slip into the role, firing up the lasewhip in Her left hand, cracking it in the air a couple times, licking Her lips in anticipation, Her breath coming in short ragged gasps as She waited for the nasty piece of poot to be shoved through the gate and into the hands of Her and Her crew to be broke down of all her bullshit and taught what females were all ‘bou— She damn near had a heart attack when the internal-security alarm blew off, the bitch voice of someone in the blockhouse screaming out,”internal security violation, internal security violation, JMC forces—“

She heard two, maybe three of Her crew spit out the f-word, as bullets started flying through the spacetime rift, Tasha hitting the deck just as the one-way mirrored clearcarbon behind Her exploded into a billion goddamn pieces, skank fuckin’ bitches screaming “NO SURRENDER! COMMONWEALTH FOREVER!” at the top of their damn lungs, as they poured through the spacetime rift in an endless torrent of Commonwealth grey, guns white hot and still blazing, AG harnesses driving them a hell of a lot faster than Tasha was hauling ass away from ‘em, burning down guards left and right, as they flew out of the tank and into the cellblock proper, flooding all 655 levels of the motherfucker with a quickness Tasha just could not believe.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:15:18 TAI

“What the fuck is going on?!” reasonably demanded Guy Thomas Zellner, Governor of the Union, as He struggled onto His hands and knees in the ruins of His penthouse atop the 600th floor of the Governor’s Tower, now shaking and swaying with hit after percussive hit, His man coming over to Him, offering one of his hands to help Him up, the He who was over all others not needing that in the slightest.

He only needed answers which did not seem to be—

Aw, shit!

His Tower, heart of His Capitol, shook and swayed again, the Governor of the Union screaming for Bradley to answer Him, now, goddamnit!

“—launching everything we can,” Bradley, who’d been on the line with Him for some time now, apparently, was saying,”I’ve gated aboard the Benjamin Zellner, we’re entering hyperspace n—“

“We’ve got another problem,” the holoimage of Bradley’s useless black bastard brother said from the Terranova’s operations deck.

“Another problem, Colonel ?!” the He replied sarcastically.” Do tell.”

“The System-Wide Minefield’s receiving multiple shutdown requests, 526.4 milliseconds apart,” Brown replied, even as the deck behind him exploded and burned,”and the MiniPriz AI and the SWMF control AI on Witch’s Tit are complying with them, in spite of their best efforts, they have no choice in the matter…Graumann designed the system, Sir, with no back-door codes whatsoever, in case—“

“Get us into hyperspace,” He said quickly,”and sever the T-Star uplink…if we can cut the two AIs off from one another and whoever’s transmitting multiple shutdown requests—“

“We might be able to detonate the devices due to negative control,” Brown just as quickly concluded, screaming the commands out at the top of his lungs.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:17:00 TAI

“Fuck!” Lieutenant Colonel Carson Selkirk kept interjecting, as he poured it on, his integral AG harness groaning with all the power his suit of Commonwealth grey could throw into it, Carson, the other nine members of his field recon team and their guest no longer concerned with trying to stay hidden, not with the fucking drive room, all forty stories’ worth of it, falling down all round them, the Terranova’s master AI shouting over the intercom,”emergency venting initiated, emergency venting initiated!” for only the third time in about as many minutes. Carson’s body was racked by coughs, the colors exploding onto his retinas competing with the colors radiating through his AG shielding, his autoinjector dosing him with another shot of hemobooster and synthetic cocaine derivative, but he wasn’t feeling it, wasn’t feeling a fucking thing except—

More or less solid deck underneath his hands and knees, humming with power, as opposed to shaking and screaming itself to pieces, the voice of his med tech, Master Medical Technician Mary Blagg singing out “med team to the telegate stage, on the double!” at the same time someone lifted him onto his feet, asking him if he was all right.

He instantly recognized the China doll exotic features of Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken’s security forces commander, Major Harriet Mangione, she was the one holding him up now, helping him off the ship’s telegate stage, onto the hangar deck proper, Major Ryla Sedgewick whispering,” Carson…oh, dear Lord, Carson, you’re—“

“Harriet, what the fuck’s going on?!” he asked, to divert Ryla’s concern for her friend—and the guilt she felt at her perceived failure of him….

“One minute,” he added,”we’re sneaking through the guts of that monstrosity, next thing, the whole goddamn place’s falling down round us.”

“We intercepted the comms between the SWMF control AI,” Harriet explained,”the MiniPriz AI and the shipment which was supposed to have arrived from the Pleiades a few minutes ago; Celina and the ICS at New Utopia had decompressed, decrypted, deciphered and decoded all three comms, found out what we needed to know concerning how to shut the bloody thing off, making your mission redundant.”

“Not quite,” Carson, feeling somewhat like himself again, said, shrugging off Harriet’s arm.

“Not quite,” he repeated, figuring out just what JMC had needed to fox the SWMF, just how the enemy could defeat that, realizing there wasn’t a hell of a lot of time.

“Command from Selkirk,” he said into his link, his niece’s holoimage appearing in front of him, telling him, “I’m kinda busy right now, Uncle—“

The deck shook underneath his feet, his AG harness reactivating at that same instant, Carson replying,”I figured you were, baby.”

“Here’s the thing, Boss,” he added, the fuzz completely clearing from his head, the weight pressing down on his chest not as painful as it had been,”you have to turn this ship around, make another pass at the Terranova, gate me back on board, in their comm room—“

1 MARCH, 2226 14:19:09 TAI

“Have you bumped your freakin’ head?!” was Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier’s first response to her uncle’s suggestion they turn right around and go back to the Terranova, her chief flight surgeon’s voice screaming over the link,”goddamnit, Carson, you are in no condition….”

...all those empty chairs whipped violently round in the firestorm, and she could only stand there, fists impotently balled up and hear them screaming, grey-suited Knives, captain of the Lord’s host, standing there, untouched by the fire or the screams, laughing at her, louder and….

“…alter vector, S.A.,” the commander of the Unbroken surprised herself by saying, her chief flight surgeon screaming,”goddamnit, Jami, no, no, you haven’t been listening—“

“Altering vector,” Jami’s wife and second, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads, said, her sure fingers dancing across astrogation and piloting holodisplays, taking them back through all that violence roiling up local hyperspace, her frigate’s ten 457-millimeter railguns clearing the way ahead. “—to a fucking thing I’ve been saying,” Ryla screamed at her and at her uncle. “He is in no condition to be—“

“Closing to twenty-five klicks of the Terranova,” Stevie said, the commander of the Unbroken still not certain she was making the right decision, said:

“All units from Unbroken, we are boarding the Terranova; I say again, we are boarding the Terranova. Gate your security forces directly into the Governor’s Tower; Leftenant Colonel Selkirk, you and your team are to step across the moment we’ve established focus on their comm room—“

“It’s a one-man—“ Carson started to object, Jami telling him,”you ain’t fuckin’ ordering a Whopper, Leftenant Colonel! You have less than no time to decide between doing it my way and not doing it at all; Major Mangione, your security forces will accompany the recondos, provide them with tactical support.”

“We’ve established focus on the comm room, Boss,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson reported, even as she was banging away with the 457s and the 48 turreted 90-millimeter Gatling barrel railguns providing point defense,”mathematical conditions match 100%; telegate heated up and ready to go.”

“Let’s do this, if we’re gonna do it,” Carson said, nodding his head, as he moved forward, and her ship pounded the Terranova again.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:21:15 TAI

“Internal security violation, level 323, section Alfa!” the Terranova’s master AI howled amidst the burning wreckage of the base’s operations deck, fibre-optic cabling spitting blue photons right in the face of Colonel Stephan Duane Brown, head of the Governor’s TSID contingent and one of only two motherfuckers left alive in this room.

The other one, his brother in law, Skeeter Warren, was trying his damndest to track that alarm down on one of the few stations still working, at the same time Stephan sat at the command conn, his boots on what was left of the skinny, metal-mouthed, no-dick excuse for a commander, working the holodisplays, trying to at least sever the uplink between what was left of His Capitol and the T-Star on station just above it…this ten million ton hunk of junk wasn’t going nowhere, not in normal space, sure as hell not in hyperspace, the drive room was all fucked up….

“Another damn false alarm!” Skeeter swore, heaving like he’d been hitting a roomful of pussy, as he furiously worked the holodisplays at the internal security station, continuing to curse, and with good reason…whole goddamn capital had exploded into rioting, just like at Avalon and Alisande almost seventeen years ago and all too recently on Espérance and Lord Jim, all the bitches assigned here had risen up against their mens, goddamn JMC making that situation worse by gating troops in all over the motherfucker, and, with what was left of the internal sensors giving them false readings, there was no damn way they could even think of coordinating ops against them from here.

“Can’t do jackshit from here, blood brother,” he then said,”and no one’s answering they links in the comm room.”

“Just like pushing carts,” Stephan commented, Skeeter getting all hot, snapping back,”oh, you a funny man!”

“What they been sayin’ ‘bout you for years, blood brother,” Stephan replied, swearing under his breath…someone had scrambled the controls to the T-Star uplink and scrambled ‘em good, with a polymorphic R3E scheme that uncracked itself every damn time he’d thought he’d cracked it. Seems he couldn’t do jack from here either…comm room was also probably out, Stephan didn’t bother wasting his time telling his brother in law that, never liked Skeeter nohow anyway….

Getting up from the command conn, the deck starting to fall down some more round his ears, Stephan decided he’d try severing the uplink with the T-Star physically, from the antenna located behind the Tower…wasn’t no amount of code that would do a damn bit of good against a kinetic-kill device in the right place.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:28:18 TAI

“Recordez tojours Mont Noir!” screamed General LaTressa Bledsoe over the link of her Mark VI Heavy Infantry Combat Suit.” Volunteers! Forward!”

The commander of the Summer Rain Volunteer Heavy Infantry Division—aka the Loyal Volunteers—drove 203s from her four arm-mounted railguns into lifts and stairwells though which League regular and “special” forces troops poured to try and keep the Commonwealth Forces heavy and standard infantry from taking this cellblock, chest, head and turret-mounted Gatling 25s and 90s sweeping the deck in support of the standard infantry and field recon teams planting TGT beacons onto cell doors, her chest, shoulder and turret mounted 127s quiet for the moment.

The building shaking again, the four divisions of Commonwealth Forces Dauntless-class frigates, plus six divisions of Zapho Starstrikers and sixteen regiments of Commonwealth Mark IV Osprey-class hyperspace fighters, were still in hyperspace, pounding the two Yanker shock armies, the effective division and a half of Yanker Special Forces Command troops, the field command of Phooies, ten dozen companies of their RTA commandos, the perimeter fortifications, the multiple AG shield generators, the multiply- redundant power systems and the equally multiply redundant ways to engage the pluto gas dischargers and internal Gatling 25 turrets in case all else failed to prevent, as the Yankers would’ve put it, “a breach in containment.”

The AG drivers in the soles of her Mark VI heavy infantry combat suit drove the commander of the Loyal Volunteers up and across the yawning chasm which each of the cellblock’s over six hundred levels surrounded, Tressa aiming for the lighted slits—ranging from two meters to about ten and a half meters wide— above the cells on each floor, the 127s finally being turned loose to take out snipers with heavy nerve projectors and assault railers, gunners working Reggie-manufactured fourteen-fives and crews struggling to set up 37-, 90- and 105-millimeter railguns.

Her Volunteers had been on the ground at Tartarus and at fucking Black Mountain before that, both times arriving too late to do the innocent victims of those hellholes any good…not even half of those humiliated and distorted live in 256-bit fucking true color for the entertainment of their enemies had survived the Hell Star, if one could call trying to live through every evil thing done to them by things pretending to be their own tribe survival…they still talked crap about that poor schoolteacher, every cheap rag and holovid program telling lies about her obsessing over the ratbag who’d raped her, or about all the “lesbian” affairs she’d supposedly had in and out of bloody nick—every one of them perverse and sadomasochistic, as only men could fucking write them—or about the ton of book, movie and talk-show appearance deals she’d wangled for herself, not to mention her getting her job back, all the better for her to prey on more children(so speweth the Gospel of the Holy Movie Board)….

She was pouring it on with all her suit’s weapons even as she was thinking about that schoolteacher still in hopsital on Cor Leonis, living through the indignities suffered as the Darling Childe of some drag queen of a Helga, about what two of their own had suffered in this miserable hole at the hands of the same fucking breed of animal she’d seen on the Hell Star and Jami Lanier and her crew doubtlessly had fought tooth and nail at Black Mountain eleven years ago, all for what remained of the lives of their victims, a good many of whom were probably beyond help now, bastards hellbent and determined to make sure the rest ended up the same way before they themselves were taken out. And, just as she’d accepted this reality, the guns on her suit all went silent, smoke boiling from the murder holes, lift shafts and stairwells, fainter trails of smoke wisping from spent carbon gas cannisters melting into the deck, recondos and standard infantry continuing unmolested at their task of limpeting TGT beacons to the cell doors, Tressa and her Volunteers floating in the middle of the cellblock, weapons and pulse deflection emitters slowly cooling down, shielding starting to shift back down the spectrum into clear.

Tressa biting down on her lower lip hard enough to draw blood, as there was nothing left for her to do now except shake uncontrollably.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:32:16 TAI

“Goddamn you, Ledford,” the commander of His Pappaw’s namesake screamed over the link, the master holodisplay a flood of blinding white, the sixty-thousand ton Governor-class battleship pitching and trembling as the queasy reddish-grey of hyperspace was disrupted all round him, all forty of his 406- millimeter railguns vainly stabbing out at an all-too-familiar shift in that blandness, as the Governor of the Union stepped through the inter-section connector onto the astrogation deck, an Aerospace Force security trooper barking out the traditional,”commander on deck!” Bradley turning round in his chair, remarking,”I’m glad to see you made it out alive, Sir.”

“I actually think you are, Bradley,” replied the He who was over all others, watching that too- familiar shift in the reddish-grey take out six of the battleships around the Benjamin Zellner, the captain of His host asking about the rest of His Cabinet, about the others.

“Gated aboard ship,” He replied,”as per My orders.”

“You will simply have to dispose of Sam Brannen yourself, Bradley,” He added, His Pappaw’s namesake continuing to duel with the black ship of the lesbian sex killer who’d inconvenienced him, his crew and the He who was over all of them time and again.

The order He was about to give would gall these men as it galled Him…but, there would be time enough to make her pay for her insubordination, to break her utterly by forcing her to watch the final success of the Work.

To do that, however, He had to survive this engagement.

“Withdraw from battle,” He ordered, the commander of this ship turning, opening his mouth to protest,”Sir, you caaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!”

He quivered in his chair, screaming in bitchlike orgasm, his second in command not needing to hear that order repeated to work his holodisplays and turn the ship away from the Unbroken, Bradley ordering the weaps officer to “have the Preads and War Eagles cover our retreat.”

“Send signal to Braxton,” He ordered,”informing him of his appointment as Special Provost Marshal of the DM+50 1125 system and his attendant promotion to Commanding General. Further inform him the entire Mobile Force is considered expendable in the defense of the system and the prevention of any one of them from escaping it alive.”

“Now,” He added,” link up with the Terranova’s master AI.”

“Link established, Sir,” the weaps officer replied.

“This is Guy Thomas Zellner,” Zellner said,” Governor of the Union, Chairman of the Executive Council of the League of Interstellar Republics, Union ID number 101001010, security passphrase: He of a thousand eyes shall watch over me. Please acknowledge.” “Security protocols,” an eerie echo of His Pappaw replied,”match 100%. What may I do for you, Sir?”

Something Pappaw never even figured he’d have to call me, an errant thought of His ran, the He who was over all others quashing that thought as soon as it formed, staring straight into the master holodisplay as he ordered His former capital to destroy itself and take everything in the system with it into the Hell they all deserved for their rebellion against Him.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:34:08 TAI

“Boss,” Master Technical Sergeant Kimba Bledsoe reported, “I think we’ve—“

“Self destruct sequence engaged,” Zellner’s dead granddaddy announced with a scream of alarm klaxons,”fifteen minutes to implosion criteria!”

“Crap,” Carson, chest painfully heaving, head starting to swim as he held on to one of the comm room’s holodisplays, interjected, as the Terranova informed them they had fourteen minutes, fifty seconds before his one remaining antimatter reactor went ice hot…aside from the obvious side effects of that, the destruction of Zellner’s capital would destroy the MiniPriz AI, which, assuming the system operated on the principle of negative control, would set off the whole goddamn SWMF, all two thousand KKs per cubic meter of it, probably more than enough kinetic energy to destroy everything insystem, both in local hyperspace and normal space.

The gunfire outside only made his head throb even worse, the fight to take the comm room had taken what little he had left out of him, and his struggle for breath was wholly unavailing…he could feel the numbness and the cold seeping through him like a hard rain.

He couldn’t give in to it just yet.

“Master Bledsoe—“ he started to ask, Kimba replying,”no go, Boss, we can’t access any of the critical systems from here, they’re logically and physically routed to the drive room and the ops deck.”

“Probably wouldn’t do us any good anyway,” Carson observed,”better than even chance the automatic venting systems are either shot, or the ops deck controls are….”

Another futile struggle for oxygen, and he added, feeling as semi-detached as a row of flats,”stay here, Master Bledsoe, keep scrambling any attempts to sever the uplink logically; Meghan, Harriet, I’m going to need you guys to lay down as much suppression fire as you can, I’m headed for what’s left of the drive room, in hopes the manual venting system’s intact.”

Zellner’s dead pappaw briefly scattered his thoughts, Carson just barely grabbing at the shreds of them, reorganzing them into the probably the last orders he’d had to give:

“Give me about five minutes to get there, then fight your way to the nearest transportation off this bucket of bolts and get the fuck away from here; I doubt Unbroken and the other ships will be able to gate you to safety, not with all those hostile warbirds out there.”

Without another word, Carson grabbed hold of the grip of his Browning M3 assault railer, his intergral AG harness moving him out of the shambles of a comm room into a corridor where his team of recondos and Unbroken’s Bravo Squad were set up and returning the enemy’s fire, the rest of the ship’s and the squadron’s security troops scattered throughout this level of the Governor’s Tower, trying to hold off Yanker Aerospace Force security troopers, Army Ranger Light Infantry and Special Forces Command troopers fighting on for no better reason than to take a few enemy with them when they went to Hell.

He headed down the corridor, away from the fighting, relying on the information JMC had on the Terranova to steer him in the right direction. The sensors in his suit barely gave him enough warning to react, as he came round a corner and a blue streak of deuce and a halves ripped through his shielding at the speed of light, blackening the sumbitch all across the front, blasting chunks out of him and his suit, a dead man floating in front of him, telling him he’d be a son of a bitch.

“Hello, Skeeter,” Carson said, bringing his M3 to bear on that black bastard Skeeter Warren.

“Shoula damn known you were at the bottom of this,” Skeeter said in reply, his M2149 smoking and trembling in his hands. “Just as much fuckin’ trouble as your old lady ever were!”

“Annesha actually felt sorry for you,” Carson remarked,”when she thought you’d been blown up by your bitch, along with forty thousand others who didn’t fucking deserve to die.”

“Her goddamn fault,” Skeeter said, as Carson half-expected he would,”that had to be done…all ‘em goddamn fuckin’ bi—“

They both opened fire at the same time, Skeeter seeing Carson’s finger about to crush the trigger of his weapon, getting there first, his second ten-round burst slamming Carson into the wall in spite of his AG harness, Carson’s first burst blackening his shielding, the second, fired reflexively upon his being hit, smearing Skeeter all over the deck.

“That,” he said to what remained of him, Carson’s chest hurting even worse now,” was from Terrie…and from Jenny….”

“And,” he added, before moving towards the lift shaft at the end of the hall,”from…everyone else who…didn’t…fucking deserve…to die.”

1 MARCH, 2226 14:38:00 TAI

“Goddamnit,” the commander of the Unbroken repeated in frustration, her ship trying to fight her way clear of enemy warbirds cutting off both retreat and any chance at gating her security troops and Carson’s recondos off Zellner’s former capital, now set to go up in another eleven minutes and an odd number of seconds.

Taking the entire system out when it went, more than likely, since the MiniPriz AI wouldn’t be there to talk to the SWMF control AI, and the assumption was….

Nothing which meant a goddamn thing right now…just as determined as the Mobile Force warbirds were to keep the eight divisions and change of JMC machines bottled up here, they had to work just as hard to keep the enemy from threatening the ultimate success of the mission…the Commonwealth and her allies had come here to liberate the half trillion or so inmates of this hellhole, and they were doing that now, the main force having arrived at Witch’s Tit some eight or nine minutes ago, working like hell to gate the inmates of that godforsaken place and the troops who’d taken out their jailers to the assault transports, bulk transports, medships, ortillery control ships, mobile shops and warbirds waiting in local hyperspace, Rebekah sending the sixteen regiments of Planetary Defense Arm fighters who’d taken part in the initial assault against the colony to offer what assistance they could to the forces under Aerospace Marshal Shoshanna Tarpley’s overall command.

Nearly a million Commonwealth Forces and allied soldiers—including the security forces from all the frigates under Marshal Tarpley’s command—were on the Terranova now, helping his massive female slave population in their rising up against their oppressors, fighting to secure the former capital ship’s four starports and any starcraft still there in an effort to evacuate as many as possible in case her uncle couldn’t manually vent the antimatter from the one working reactor…of course, Harriet had told her, and the commander of the Unbroken couldn’t even spare the time to regret sending him across, knowing Ryla was right, he wasn’t in any condition— She felt the ship shake and shimmy, Stevie pulling her in all directions at once, at the same fighting to keep her in hyperspace as violence tore it to shreds in every direction, Prue vectoring pulse after pulse through the AG force beam emitters on all four sides of the five-thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate at the same time she let fly with the 457s and the Gatling 90s, Jami just barely able to see a couple of Unbroken’s thirty-six Mark III Raptor unmanned aerospace vehicles, moving like needles through the enemy ships, blasting at them with their 127s, sniping at those further away with their remaining gobstoppers.

She couldn’t see any of the ship’s detachment of twelve Mark IV Osprey fighters; a quick glance at the tachyar returns, however, showed all of them still in it, fighting the enemy tooth and nail, same with the other eleven of the squadron’s fighter detachments…their parent craft were also still in it, fighting hard to keep the enemy here, instead of harassing forces round Witch’s Tit.

“Crap,” she interjected, tachyar detecting enemy warbirds at extreme range, on vector from Zellner’s World and Allenby for Witch’s Tit, some of the main force frigates peeling off from orbit round the frozen slushball of a planet, moving to intercept them at their maximum a.h.v., gobstoppers already flying from drop launchers on all sides.

Gobstoppers from Unbroken herself slamming into a squadron of Californio Los Angeles-class battleships, obliterating them, punching a hole in the enemy ranks through which transports, spaceplanes and escape vehicles lifting from the former capital could run, Prue widening that hole best she could with the 457s, vectoring pulses of artificial grav from the beam emitters to sweep aside incoming fire from League warbirds either trying to plug the hole back up again or make one of their own through which they could escape to try and prevent the women imprisoned in that hellish place from ever having any hope of escaping.

“Leftenant!” she snapped, watching first a wing, then two, then an entire group of Yanker Freeman Lang-class frigates, plus fighters and UAVs, all pile on the Chelonia in an attempt to break through to Witch’s Tit, Prue replying just as quickly,”on it, Boss!” the 457s and the remaining gobstoppers flying towards the enemy frigates, same as Unbroken was now doing, Jami on the link, shouting,”all units from Unbroken, pile on ‘em birds, keep ‘em off the Chelonia; Albion, Peer Gynt and Grey Phantom, vector your gunships and War Eagles ahead of us, all frigates, recall your UAVs, have them form a flying wedge out in front, tell your fighters go in and raise hell, if they’re not otherwise engaged. Frigates, carriers and UAVs will link up with one another; we move together!”

“Additional enemy machines,” shouted Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Genera Muncie,”converging on Chelonia; Chelonia’s own Nightwings and War Eagles joining battle!”

1 MARCH, 2226 14:41:17 TAI

“All units, take that hangar queen out of my sky and converge on Witch’s Tit!” Commanding General Clarence D. Braxton half-whooped over the link, his command starcraft, Republican Union Starcraft Lockwood, out in front, pummeling that lumbering old wreck calling itself a combat starcraft with his 406s and his Gatling 90s, his Preads and War Eagles picking off the so-called gunship carrier’s complement of War Eagles and modified OWP-15s with the greatest of ease, Braxton smiling, watching that ugly-ass bitch fight for its worthless life with all the firepower she’d ghetto rigged onto that rusting spaceframe, fumbling about in a pathetic excuse for evasive manuvers, vectoring pulses of artificial grav through her beam emitters.

The Lockwood violently pitching about in all directions, his weaps officer shouting out,”we’ve got hostiles inbound along our zero-nine-zero!”

“Fighters and UAVs,” Braxton said without hesitation,”will intercept the incoming threat; all remaining units, pound that rustbucket piece of shit out the goddamn way, we are breaking out!“ “Y’all heard the man, bitches!” shouted out the commander of the Lockwood, Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Axelby, as the huge ripple in the reddish grey warped and flashed from the firepower being laid into it. “Take that hangar queen out, vector for Witch’s Titty as soon as we’re clear!”

Briefly glancing at the tachyar returns in his left-hand command holodisplay, Braxton smiled with satisfaction, his plan was working better than expected, the ships he’d requested from Allenby and Zellner’s World were doing a damn good job of pulling the enemy away from Witch’s Tit, three divisions of Commie warbirds so far tumbling to his game, the commander of the League Mobile Force hoping most of the rest would soon follow, so that when his surviving frigates and battleships did break free, they would have an easy time of trapping their assault transports and other auxiliary craft in the colony’s aerospace corridor, denying any of them any chance at escape, just as his Governor had commanded.

Yes, it was working like a champ, his plan…two more divisions of frigates, both of ‘em Zaphos, had pulled away from Witch’s Tit with fighters and UAVs clustered round ‘em like ducklings round their ma—

He was violently pitched forward and just as furiously slammed back into his chair, the ship shaking, his senior astro, Major Aaron Maybury, swearing under his breath as he fought his frigate to keep it in hyperspace, alarms by the dozen screaming inside Braxton’s helmet, Captain Chris Egan screaming,”they’ve sent their fighters and gunships into our formation, knocking us down left and right! Their frigates, carriers and UAVs are hanging back, in a tight formation, moving and fighting like one fuckin’ sh—“

Egan let out a short and most unwholesome word, Lockwood thrown in every direction at once, as was Braxton, now screaming over his link for his force’s fighters and UAVs to form up and converge on the enemy’s frigates, carriers and unmanned aerospace vehicles to try and break them up, ordering his frigates and battlewagons to stay in formation, punch their way through that elderly Sprague 150-series commercial transport, more shifts in the reddish grey ahead of his flaghship indicating the enemy were moving more machines into position to try and block the only open way to Witch’s Tit, Axleby right beside him, shouting and cursing for his senior astrogator to keep moving them forward.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:43:12 TAI

“Continue along present vector,” Barbara Berenbaum, command astrogator of the Union Republican Union Armed Forces Starcraft Chelonia’s weaps officer, said, eyes fixed on her turtle’s master holodisplay,”all available power to Rittermark jenny and AG drive; maintain fire.”

“Diverting all excess reactor power,” Punky Miller, the Chelonia’s fourteen-year old weaps officer, said over her link,”to AG drive and Rittermark jenny; drive room reports shield and force beam jennies now linked up into the beam emitter arrays; resulting pulses now at 1500% of normal maximum strength.”

The old turtle shook slightly, Kara Hultgren, her senior astrogator, fighting to keep the 121,716- ton Sprague 150-series cargo hauler/gunship carrier in hyperspace in spite of all the violence vectored towards her, Punky firing all the ship’s Gatling 90s, 127s, 203s and 406s into the enemy trying to blast their way past her, shouting out that three hundred Avalon Dauntlesses, plus fighters and UAVs, had now taken up position alongside the old turtle with more on the way, the frigates, carriers and UAVs under the direct command of the Avenging Angel of Avalon herself sticking and moving together, while their fighters and gunships went in and wreaked havoc amongst the ranks of the enemy.

As the Chelonia’s own ASC-130 Nightwings were doing now, Barbara keeping the War Eagles close to the ship, adding their firepower to her, Punky letting loose with the last of the gobstoppers in the turtle’s drop launchers, the enemy frigates and battlewagons loosing gobstoppers of their own in reply, Punky just barely knocking them and sweeping them aside in time, the commander of the Chelonia just now noticing she was drenched in her own sweat, the rank stench of it too much for her suit’s internal scrubbers to handle. And, it didn’t matter, it couldn’t…her not fucking up again, that was the only thing that mattered, these bastards had piled on her ship only because she was a turtle, old, big, slow, unable to keep up with the rest of the allied warbirds out here, making her the weakest link, the one thing standing between the whole of the goddamn Mobile Force and Witch’s Tit.

And, Meg, a part of her dared hope, maybe….

She couldn’t give in to hope, couldn’t expect a goddamn thing to go right where that was concerned…it had been twenty years since that night, their first real night alone, their first time ever, or it was supposed to have been, would’ve been if Barbara hadn’t—

She shook her head vigorously to clear it…couldn’t let herself think about that either, she had to not be the weak point in the JMC lines, not be the one who fucked everything up like she—

Sure as hell, she could not afford the luxury of feeling sorry for herself.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:46:48 TAI

“That’s the last of our gobstoppers,” Donna Landers, Republican Union Armed Forces Starcraft Misguided Angel’s weaps officer, shouted over Jonni Ward’s link, the master holodisplay a flood of blinding white as the ASC-130 Nightwing’s last trio of hyperspace tactical missiles struck home.

“Down to guns now,” she added, Jonni’s hands flying across the astrogation and piloting holodisplays without her even looking at them, juking and twisting the gunship through the violence roiling in the upper bands of local hyperspace, Misguided Angel’s pilot working the three 203s and the sextet of Gatling 90s under her control, not taking time to aim, just firing and hoping to God she hit something, Donna working the Angel’s remaining three turrets of 127s and Gatling 90s, loosing pulses of coherent artificial grav from the four sets of beam emitters to sweep aside fire being vectored towards them, the little bird shaking so bad Jonni had to bite down hard on her lower lip to keep herself focussed, feeding in the equations which would keep their Rittermark field geometry stable and them in hyperspace.

Misguided Angel flew through bright, pure white light and a blue shower of sparks, pitching in every direction at once, Jonni fighting the ship as she fought the enemy, driving 203s and 90s into a tightly- packed group of enemy frigates and battleships, blasting them apart and flying through what they left behind, alarms by the dozen screaming in her head, Jonni finding herself thinking about Sunni, not wanting to leave her like this, now that they’d finally had a chance of things working out between them, now that Sunni was finally piecing herself back together after everything that had—

“…gotta get up!“ he shouted, hysterical, shaking her even more roughly, ”Please, Sissy, get up, get up, Daddy’s gonna hurt you if he comes home and finds you still in bed, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta—“

1 MARCH, 2226 14:47:40 TAI

“…fucking get your goddamn ass up!” Carson painfully screamed at his body, as he crawled along the deck of the drive room’s lowest depths, Zellner’s fucking grandaddy screaming he only had a little over a minute to go before everything went to Hell.

His body refused to obey his orders, everything hurt, fucking AG harness had cut out halfway down, his biosigns too weak for the kinestethic sensors in his suit to register, heart was pumping blackish blood at less than fifty beats per minute now, the panel between the four reactors holding the emergency manual venting controls on the other fucking side of the Galaxy where he was concerned, he wasn’t…. “…give it up!” an entirely too goddamn familiar voice shouted from the direction of the all the hostile fire...his full attention on the enemy now, Carson saw that miserable bastard Stephan Brown leading a platoon of Special Forces Command butchers towards them, all guns blazing….

....miserable black son of a bitch was laughing even as he went down with a goddamn hole in his chest the size of a grown man’s fist....

“…bitch, don’t you dare fucking croak on me!” Carson screamed, dragging the goddamn ragabone through the teeth of the worst fucking sandstorm on this godforsaken hole, heading God alone knew where, which didn’t help matters since that son of a bitch was just make-believe to begin with….

“...now,” Tasha asked,“ if you don’t believe in God, where you thank you came from?”

“Don’t even need to go there, Tasha,” Kishana said, as Carson got up to take the biscuits out of the oven, the rest of the breakfast from out of the skillet, scooping the eggs and the home fries into the largest serving bowls he could find, activating their heating circuits at the same time he brought them down from the cupboard.

“He’s gonna say,” Kishana went on,“ that he came from his mama and his daddy, and that his mama and his daddy came from their mamas and their daddies.”

“That’s right,” Carson said, scooping the sausage links into the same self-heating plate as the bacon and arranging the biscuits in a third large bowl, covering them up with a towel.

“And,” Carson, digging in the icebox for the margarine, as he jumped ahead in this discussion, “ I’d still like to know where God came from.”

“You’re not supposed to question that,” Kishana said, her words belying her own disenchantment with the whole business.

“Yeah,” Carson said, taking three butter knives, three forks and two serving spoons from the silverware drawer below the coffee maker,“ I forgot, that oldie but goodie, ‘Proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing…. ‘ ”

…Annesha said they were getting on well, a stray thought of his ran, as his vision greyed and blurred everything into one another, finally stopped being afraid and learned to—

“Self destruct sequence engaged,” the dead voice of Benjamin fucking Zellner screamed, as Carson, on his feet now, staggered blindly towards the reactors,”one minute to—”

”Man, fuck you!” Carson screamed, gritting his teeth, the scanners in his suit—he’d enough presence of mind to switch them to voice output only—telling him where he needed to go….

“…this ring,” he whispered,looking into her eyes, still not believing this was happening, even as he slid the stainless-steel band with a single blue sapphire set into it onto her ring finger,”as a symbol of my love.”

“By the power vested in me,” Jami then said, after a silence,”as command astrogator of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken, I hereby declare these two joined in marriage. Let nothing stand between them!”

“Ship’s! Company!” Stevie and Dunstan both shouted,”Lances!” the two of them, Jay Todman and everyone else on board the astro deck who were in uniform drawing and firing up…. …his laser lance, cutting where his scanners told him the access plate was, his hands shaking, faltering, Carson almost dropping the sumbitch more than once, his eyes completely useless to him now, a sneak preview of the darkness coming for….

...all those empty chairs burning and screaming all round,Vash the Stampede just standing there, fists at her sides ,unable to do anything but watch, listen as grey-suited Knives stood in the midst of the storm, neither the fire nor the screams even coming close to touching him, the bastard laughing at her, just as he had at him….

“…twenty-seven seconds to implosion criteria!” Benjamin Zellner reminded him, Carson, blindly gripping the release lever with both hands, grunting,”I thought I told you to fuck yourself!” as he pulled back on that bastard as hard as he could….

…Vash raising her gun, screaming and cursing Knives as she fired one continous, focussed burst of pure, white fire ....

“…emergency venting initiated!” Benjamin Zellner’s unholy spectre shouted, amid whooping alarms and a shudder which jarred everything loose on his skeleton….

…Stevie stroked her long, blonde hair, cradling Jami’s head on her lap, softly singing the Eden song to her, as she watched birds circling in a blaze of white in a sky so blue….

“…baby,” Carson chuckled,” it wasn’t what you thought it was, you hear me?!

It wasn’t what you….”

—endit—

A Fighting Chance To Live “ ’What the hell have I done, Bones?’ ‘What you do best, Jim: Turn death into a fighting chance to live.’ ” Paramount Pictures Studios, Star Trek III: The Search For Spock

1 MARCH, 2226 14:50:00 TAI

“Commonwealth Forces command transferred to commander Dauntless,” Commonwealth Forces Ship Dauntless repeated, her commander, Chief Aerospace Marshal Lenore Kaplan, unable to do a fucking thing but watch the Defiant fall back down into normal space in a rain of tiny sparks, along with the ships who’d killed her.

Nothing Lenore could do for her friends now save accepting command of her Commonwealth Forces and help finish what they’d started here at Witch’s Tit, knowing Rebekah and Angelique would have expected nothing less of her at this time, that, later, if there was one, she would grieve for them.

“All units from Dauntless,” the Chief of Staff of the Commonwealth Forces said over the link,”nothing changes…we close with the enemy, and take as many of the worthless sons of bitches out as we can, so that those we came here to liberate have their chance.” “Continue approach to targets,” she instructed her own crew, “maintain fire!”

…on his knees, his eyes solid black, alarms and a dead man’s voice ringing in his ears.

He was laughing…her uncle was laughing, telling her—she knew it was for her, though she didn’t know how—“baby, it wasn’t what you thought it was, you hear me?! It wasn’t….”

…Defiant exploding in white fire across hyperspace, taking the ships who’d killed her into darkness with her….

1 MARCH, 2226 14:50:58 TAI

…baby, Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier whispered, I’m so—

—sorry, her wife, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads, not looking away from Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken’s master holodisplay, her hands still working the astrogation and piloting holodisplays on either side of her. He was a good man.

Your aunties—your cousins too—they were all good people, Jami whispered back, the commander of the Unbroken wishing she could do more for the woman she loved, but—

Let’s finish this, luv, said Stevie’s grief-choked voice in her mind, steely determination in spite of all that pain.

“Let’s finish this,” the commander of the Unbroken said out loud, her ship and those under her command moving as one with their unmanned aerospace vehicles, concentrating their firepower on the knot of enemy warbirds ahead of them.

1 MARCH, 2226 14:51:19 TAI

“Goddamnit!” Commanding General Clarence D. Braxton snapped, his flagship, Republican Union Starcraft Lockwood, pitching and shaking himself all over local hyperspace, looking at his command holodisplays, still refusing to believe what they were telling him concerning the status of the Terranova.

His status still being amongst the living, the enemy managing to vent the antimatter from his one remaining reactor manually, making it impossible for him to execute his Governor’s last order for him to destroy himself and take everything in the DM+50 1125 system with him.

The straps of his chair threw him forward, snapping him back with a violence which knocked the wind from his lungs and nearly broke his damn neck, more alarms howling in his head, shifts in the reddish grey representing frigates and battleships under his command turning into pinpoints of brilliant white light, the Lockwood’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Axelby, screaming for his weaps officer to “recall all our Preads and War Eagles; we’re gonna make our own fuckin’ hole through those birds!”

“All our Preads and War Eagles have been shot down, Colonel!” Captain Chris Egan replied, Major Aaron Maybury, the ship’s senior astro, furiously fighting the fifteen-thousand ton Freeman Lang- class frigte to stay in hyperspace, Braxton studying the tachyar returns…he’d started out with a force of sixty-nine thousand combat starcraft and was now down to less than seven divisions’ worth and rapidly decreasing, the hangar queen he’d massed his ships against fighting off all comers, Commie, Mid and Avalon warbirds plus their UAVs gathered all round her, moving and fighting as one ship—same as Unbroken and the forces under her command—while fighters and gunships tore through his ranks like tiger birds attacking a nest of Satan’s helpers.

“Fuckin’ find me another weak link, Captain,” Axelby, showing Braxton just why he’d selected his frigate for the Mobile Force’s flagship,”and bring everything we got left to bear on it; we are breaking through to Witch’s Titty!” “We will,” he added,”deny them victory here! Do you get me?!”

“Sir,” all of Axelby’s subordinates shouted as one, Braxton, caught up in their moment, almost joining them,”yes sir!”

1 MARCH, 2226 15:02:21 TAI

“Son of a bitch,” spat Senior Astrogator Khryste Pollard, her Mark IV Osprey hyperspace fighter warning her of a pair of Mountaindickhead FH-14 Harm IIs on her ass end, the 90-millimeter Gatling- barrel railgun back there already breathing fire at both of them, as the commander of Unbroken’s fighters furiously worked the astrogation and piloting holodisplays, flipping her bird up, over and away from the four DNSB Bismarck-class battlewagons she had been gunning for, slipping in behind the Mountaindove fighters and the Wespes arrowing towards her from the battlewagons at c times ten and a half meg.

Some of those gay ass pirates smeared all over the totality of superspace as the Mountaindoves had already opened up on where she’d been, both of the wetback SOBs slow to react, a 127 from one of her forward railguns hitting one of them spot on, driving his wreckage into a couple of the sausage smokers.

The other veering sharply down and away to her left, trying to turn and bring his six 127s and two forward-mounted Gatling 90s to bear on her, Khryste dodging what he threw at her, taking out half a dozen Nazis, as she loosed her two remaining hyperspace tactical missiles at two of the Bismarcks, both of them getting through AG pulses and point defenses to blast their targets straight to Kingdom come.

She couldn’t do anything more than note that fact, however, not unless she wanted to be blasted to Kingdom come, and she didn’t, she was getting married, for Christ’s sake, to the one woman she wanted to go through life with, she wasn’t going to do a damn thing else to mess that up.

And, she didn’t, Sky Dancer’s six 127s and three Gatling 90s tearing a swath through the black leather brigade and even giving that Mountaindickhead pause for thought, pulses of coherent artificial grav leaping from the fighter’s four sets of beam emitters to sweep aside their fire, Khryste plunging deeper into the enemy’s formation, the Harm altering his vector to try and take her from behind, Unbroken’s fighter commander juking and jinking to throw off his aim and send his shots slamming into Nazi bonesmokers to the left, right and center of her. 1 MARCH, 2226 15:03:01 TAI

“Shit!” Captain Pax Judas “Hammer” Rabwin swore, the 127s and 90s meant for Juanita’s stinking taco instead going wide of her to take out Wespes all round the goddamn bitch.

“Oh, no, but hell no!” the commander of Silver Falls’ fighter detachment assured her, pounding Eve Of Destruction’s piloting and astrogation holodisplays to keep him right on her fat, fucking—

“Goddamn you, squatter, fucking stay still!” Rabwin screamed, the bitch spitting a line of electric blue from her ass, at the same time she eluded the fucking kill, sending his shots into more goddamn gay Nazi butt pirate sons of bitches too stupid to stay the fuck out of the Hammer’s way and let him kill that miserable goddamn Yanker trailer park fucking trash.

“C’mon, you bitch!” Rabwin snapped, letting loose with another volley from the Gatling 90s and the 127s at the squatter who thought she fucking could hang with the big dogs. “Fuckin’ take it up the ass like good girls are supposed to!”

But, she wasn’t interested in being a good girl for daddy, now, was she? Hell, if she were, they wouldn’t right now be having this conversation, she would already fucking know he was the better pilot of the two, just as that tight-assed little Diana Shawnk had to finally fuckin’ learn by making the Hammer and all his boys go at her like a clutch of bandsaw thumpers on a doe-eyed don— Aw, sunnuvabitch!

One of his 127s, maybe one of hers, didn’t fucking matter either way, projectile slammed right into the nose of one of the Nazi battlewagons still in it, blasting him back into normal space in a billion pieces, the other Nazi warbird heeling about on his AGAMs, spewing blue fire from half his 192 turreted Gatling 90s, his UAVs turning round from engaging whatever they’d been engaging to come screaming right down his goddamn throat, little bitch juking and ducking her way through all that fire, all those Jaëgers, leaving them for him to deal w—

Goddamnit, he hadn’t meant to do that!

Fucking defense contractors, letting bitches who couldn’t even comprende the fucking words math and science build the holographic interfaces for advanced military hardware such as his Harm…goddamnit, all the Hammer could do was watch helplessly as the gobstopper he’d let loose instead of the 127s he’d meant to fire slammed into the side of the other Nazi battlewagon, sending it back into normal space in a shower of blue fireworks.

That bitch, of course, coming through that completely unscathed.

1 MARCH, 2226 15:11:00 TAI

Fuck!

Colonel Stephan Duane Brown, head of the Governor’s TSID contingent, swore, getting off a burst from his California-Winchester M2149 rail pistol, ducking back behind the fountain as a buzzsawing line of electric blue tore up the spot where he had been.

Goddamn Commies and Mids all up in this motherfucker, hunting his black ass down, keeping him far and away from the uplink antennae just beyond the statue of David standing there admiring his dick in the fountain now pouring its water into the park surrounding it.

A snap!twang!SLAP! from behind him had the veteran Terranovan Security and Intelligence Directorate operative jumping higher than his integral AG harness could ever go…Stephan cursing himself as he looked in that direction, just what used to be known as the Governor’s Tower finally collapsing, after Commie gobstoppers and 457s had fucked it up beyond repair.

Shit!

A line of Commie grey was moving towards him from the ruins of the Tower, just as the Gatling 25 gunner who’d almost punched his clock just now came round the lip of the shattered fountain, her bitches coming from behind him, ready for one more chance at killing his black ass.

Chance he damn sure wasn’t gonna give ‘em, Stephan leaping high into the air, AG harness groaning as it moved him away from ‘em dykes for all it was worth, Stephan shedding the backpack and its load of kinetic-kill devices, deciding severing the uplink to the T-Star overhead was definitely out of the question, looking instead for a way off this ten-million ton hangar queen.

Goddamnit!

Trucks tore through his blackened and blued shielding from every direction, spinning him round as they geysered their way through his arms, legs and chest, Stephan barely regaining control, firing a few wild shots at them bitches coming for him from every direction, as he ascended slowly into the air, heading towards one of the hatches visible in the black inner surface of the dome now that the holographics had cut out…he knew where his Governor would be, He’d used his brother’s design as the basis for one much grander and bolder than Bradley ever could have conceived on his own, His Union would be waiting somewhere in hyperspace for Him and the others to continue the Work of removing these animals from their sky, work that Stephan planned on playing a part—even if it were a small one overall—in bringing to a successful conclusion.

They still chased after him with one and a quarters, deuce and a halves and 25s, but Stephan was just a step enough ahead of them to make it to the escape station hatch, through the airlock and into the shitcan waiting for him on the other end, the veteran TSID operative working the holodisplay before he even sat down in the seat in front of it, the escape vehicle blasting itself clear of the Terranova and into hyperspace.

1 MARCH, 2226 15:15:26 TAI

“Son of a bitch!” Major Harriet Mangione interjected, fucking up the escape station hatch with a burst from her Browning M4 Gatling-barrel railer, the stream of hyperdense one-kilogramme, 25- millimeter projectiles sailing through the ruined hatch’s emergency forcelock, taking out the hatch on the other side and arcing out into deep space.

Goddamnit, it wasn’t fair!

The uncle that deserved to fucking die was safely away in hyperspace, while the two who’d been worth a shit were both irretreivably dead…the commander of Unbroken’s security forces floated above the surface of Guy Zellner’s wrecked plastic kingdom, tears running freely down her face, wondering just what the fuck she was going to tell Jami, she didn’t need this, not again, not so soon after Dunstan had died trying to kill that Yanker knobguzzler who’d helped murder his sister….

She probably already knew…it wasn’t a secret aboard ship that their commander had at least flashes of precognition, not since she’d first had them during Micki’s wake a lifetime before this bloody war had started.

She was shaking, her wife and second, Sergeant Major Kyra Spencer, holding her gently from behind, neither of them saying anything…there was at least that little comfort, Stevie would be there for—

No!

Goddamnit, no!

The JMC intel datastream was being projected in front of her, comm traffic from the allied warbirds still fighting it out in local hyperspace whispering in her ear, both telling her the same thing, the Defiant had gone down, teeth in her enemies’ throats, but dead all the fucking same, taking the Prime Minister, the Chief of the Defence Staff, two of their daughters…and Harriet’s mother…with her.

“This sucks,” she interjected through gritted teeth, the sounds of gunfire from down below and her wife both reminding her:

“We still have work to do.”

1 MARCH, 2226 15:17:10 TAI

“No, you don’t!” Lenore screamed at the squadron of Yanker frigates trying to get around them, shouting for her senior astrogator, Christina Munro to alter vector to intercept, barking orders for her weaps officer, her oldest daughter, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Brinda Kaplan, to recall Dauntless’ 36 Mark III Raptor unmanned aerospace vehicles and have them come round to close the box and kill all those sons of bitches, all twelve of the enemy machines trying to bring their Preadtors close to them, their War Eagles otherwise heavily engaged by JMC fighters.

All ten of Dauntless’ 457s hosed the enemy with two hundred, 63-ton hyperdense masses of monomolecular carbon hurled towards them at fifteen million times the speed of light, six of twelve enemy machines hammered out of existence, the other six managing to deploy pulsed AG force beams and point defenses to delay the inevitable.

The inevitable coming in the form of Dauntless’ Raptors tearing through them before all their Preads had returned, Dauntless herself in the midst of the enemy formation, Tina spinning them round using the five-thousand ton frigate’s artificial-gravity attitude motors, Brennie pounding them at point- blank range with the 457s.

“Boss!” shouted Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Timothy Hatcher, Lenore’s command holodisplays already telling her what he was, that more enemy warbirds were en route from Allenby and Zellner’s World to try and prevent the inmates of Witch’s Tit from having their chance at living.

The commander of the Dauntless would, of course, have none of that.

Any more than her friends would have.

Over her link, the Chief of the Defense Staff of the Commonwealth Forces gave the orders that would make it so.

1 MARCH, 2226 15:20:06 TAI

Heather Savidge stared wild eyed at the ceiling of Unbroken’s med deck, Major Ryla Sedgewick, the ship’s chief flight surgeon, checking the holodisplays above and around her patient, holding her hand, patting it gently, trying to reassure her everything was all right.

When she didn‘t feel all right…she could only blame herself for not being good enough to keep her friend from dying…she’d gotten mad at Jami for doing what she would’ve done given the same circumstances, knowing her friend, her commander’s uncle, wouldn’t have wanted to linger a miserable handful of days in an automedic like his mother had ten years before him, he would’ve wanted to go out on his feet, with a weapon in his hand and his teeth as deep in the enemy’s throat as he could sink them.

She looked back down at Heather, trembling, sweating, febrile, lying in the same bed her lover had at the end of the fighting on Tartarus a month ago…nanos, osteoregeneratives, neacin and bioagent-C were all coursing through her bloodstream, undoing all the damage she’d suffered at the hands of miserable sons of bitches, the internal bleeding from repeated rapes, beatings and nerve tortures, the infected deep welts from multiple lasewhippings, the deliberate injection of various biologicals and strontium-90 to keep her too weak to even think of fighting…doubtlessly, they’d sicced drag queens on her like they had on poor Jennifer, even possibly dressing one up like Jennifer, to totally destroy everything she had left of her….

Those were the wounds even twenty-third century medtech could not touch, the ones she would have to find the strength to heal on her own.

Just as, every damn day, Jami had to find the strength to heal from her wounds…twenty-three years ago, it had been her in a bed just like this one in the hospital at Commonwealth Forces HQ, recovering from nerve torture, body wasted away to almost nothing, all over festering sores and welts, shaking with fever…soon as she healed up enough to walk, she’d enlisted, never looked back, never once took Frannie Langford up on her offer of counseling, wouldn’t even open up to her the whole time she’d been in hospital, she had no fucking use for headshrinks….like this poor thing, she bore the branding and scarring of what those bastards had done to her…unlike Heather, Jami had never had any of the outward signs of what had been done to her removed…regen ray was working on the disgusting things some lowlife Movie Board asshole had carved into her right arm, replacing livid scar tissue cell by cell, layer by layer, with healthy pink skin…about three more hours, and it would all be gone.

At least on the surface, she observed, sighing, as she held onto Heather’s hand, doing what little she could do. 1 MARCH, 2226 15:23:19 TAI

Railguns from the three turrets under her control spat fire in every direction in local hyperspace, Latacha Gipson, Republican Union Armed Forces Starcraft Sweet Jane’s weapons officer, furiously working her holodisplays, vectoring five of the last ten gobstoppers in the ordinance bay into the sides of five Freeman Lang-class frigates, taking all them motherfuckers out, their Preads and War Eagles still in it, still swarming all over the old turtle like rodans round warm bodies on a hot day, the trio of 203s and the six Gatling 90s under Shirley Dixon’s control hosing down everything in sight, a couple of lucky shots getting past the AG pulses and the point defenses to put a Liberian Tubman-class battleship and a pair of Dope King John Frémont-class machines out of commission for good, the resulting explosions and showers of bluish fragments scouring the volume of hyperspace round the Chelonia clean of fighters and unmanned aerospace vehicles.

Only temporarily, Tasha slammed back and forth in her chair, as hyperspace roiled and churned like her stomach after two plates of hot ribs chased down with a big bowl of New Acadia chili or something like it…that had been back in June, Kishana had taken her out to Vaquero’s over on Cherry Street for her birthday, when they were still taking turns getting close and pushing one another away….the pushing away part coming the next day, after a night of the two of them sitting on Coleman Hill, watching the stars, talking….either something she did, or something Kishana done, didn’t matter, same damn thing would’ve happened either way, they’d both been….

So fucking stupid, afraid of what should have been the simplest thing in all the worlds, except for all the bullshit they’d both been through to get to that point.

It no longer mattered, they were past that point, not gonna revisit the past, not if she had a fucking thing to say about that, and she had to get back to Kishana to have anything to say about it at all…her fingers were already dancing across the holodisplays, pulsing the beam emitters on all four sides of the ASC-130 Nightwing gunship, loosing tachyon-impregnated pulses of coherent artificial gravity to sweep aside everything from 90s to 406s headed this way, the dorsal, ventral and tail turrets on auto-tracking now, Gatling 90s and 127s bringing themselves to bear and firing on enemy warbirds, fighters and UAVs, tachyar lighting up more targets for the remaining gobstoppers, Tasha letting one loose straight up the ass end of a Phooie Wu-Lung close enough to the old turtle to spit at her, 203s hammering a trio of Sakuran Muashi-class frigates, two of them going down, the other vectoring all twelve of his Katana UAVs right at Sweet Jane, before a burst from one of the dorsal turret’s three dual 127s sailed through the still-open UAV bay’s AG shielding to blast the ship apart, the co-axial quad-mount Gatling 90s tearing through the Katanas.

As the tachyar alarm howled, and the gunship did a shake, rattle and roll at ten and a half million times the speed of light, one of the Chelonia’s quad-mounted 406s tearing into that N.C.O. Olmstead-class battlewagon at closer than point-blank range, the dorsal turret’s right-hand ball mount spinning like crazy as it tore into another N.C.O. battlewagon, this one near enough to reach out and t—

“Shit!” Shirley interjected over the link…she usually didn’t curse, not even in combat, but if there ever was a time for her to start, this would be it…the little ship spun wing over wing, then end over end, pitched through hyperspace like a long bomb from the quarterback to the receiver—with each of them standing in opposing end zones—Sweet Jane’s pilot managing to keep them from snapping back into normal space somehow, about she was doing, the Nightwing—

Back under control and accelerating towards the battle they’d been ejected from, four gobstoppers left, tachyar finding targets for all of them, Tasha letting fly, not even bothering to track them, her full attention occupied with firing pulses from the beam emitter and vectoring 90s and 127s towards whoever deserved them most.

In other words, she was busy trying to stay alive so she’d get back to her lover and make up for having been so fucking stupid all this time. 1 MARCH, 2226 15:27:00 TAI

“We’ve got them boxed in on all sides,” Punky Miller, Republican Union Armed Forces Starcraft Chelonia’s entirely too young weaps officer reported, Barbara Berenbaum, Chelonia’s command astrogator, reminding Punky and herself,”they’re not giving up that easy, chica.”

“Continue approach to targets,” she repeated for only the umpteenth time this battle, eyes on the enemy continuing to slug it out with the JMC machines englobing them and the fighters and gunships tearing through their ranks, ”maintain fire!”

“Ma’am,” both Punky and Kara Hultgren, the old turtle’s S.A., said over the link, everything from 90s to 406s hissing out of the Chelonia’s railguns, an relentless stream of electric blue which ripped apart enemy starcraft, fighters and unmanned aerospace vehicles in front of her, the 121,716-ton Sprague 150- series cargo hauler/gunship carrier plowing through them at just barely a million times the speed of light, pulse after pulse of coherent artificial grav sweeping aside incoming fire, UAVs, fighters, even a frigate or two who couldn’t get out of the way in time, both the force beam and shield generators hooked up and throwing all their output through the beam emitters on all four sides of this lumbering old turtle of hers.

“Punky,” Barbara said over the link, several of Chelonia’s ASC-130s overflying her,“tell the fighters to cut loose of us and go at it.”

“Sending signal now,” Punky replied, Barbara watching the Chelonia’s dwindling complement of War Eagle fighters veering sharply away from their escorting positions round the ship and charge into the enemy formation, all guns blazing, Barbara asking her weaps officer,” how many OWPs do we have left?”

“Ten,” Punky replied, a Californio John Frémont-class frigate bouncing off the leading edge of an AG pulse, spinning end for end as he broke up and fell back down into normal space.

“They’ll have to do,” Barbara said, sighing…they’d been using up their modified OWP-15 orbital weaps platforms rather too freely as of late….

“Form ‘em up in front of us,” she decided. “Lensman’s Wheel.”

“Ma’am,” Punky replied, maneuvering the remaining OWPs into position in front of the Chelonia.

1 MARCH, 2226 15:43:15 TAI

All First Lieutenant Meghan Polk could think of doing was sighing.

The eighteen-year old Commonwealth Forces officer looked down upon the body of her commander, laid out with his hands on his chest, his Browning M3 assault railer by his side, his skin bluish-grey, eyes black, sightless globes, wondering what in the name of God she was supposed to tell his wife, to say nothing of his niece, her sister’s commanding officer….

It was her responsibility, she was in command now, Major Mangione, off fighting somewhere inside the Terranova’s dome, had been kind enough to offer, but….

“Maybe she already knows, B—” Master Technical Sergeant Kimba Bledsoe started to say, before the word “Boss” caught in her throat.

“I mean Leftenant,” the team’s tech specialist finished, adding,”there’s been talk going round of her being precognitive.”

“I’ve heard the talk, Master Bledsoe,” Meghan, still looking down at Carson’s lifeless body, whispered, her left hand gripping the handle of her Browning M6 assault carbine, until it hurt. Still, she held on to her weapon, even though the fighting had died down round the Government Complex, the sounds of gunfire and explosions receding ever farther away with each passing moment.

Everything was just too damn quiet…her knees buckled, her AG harness kicking in barely in time to keep her from falling…he was a decent bloke…all the people in the worlds who’d fucking deserved to die, that animal Guy Zellner A-number one on that list, and….

She looked away from the body of her commanding officer, up towards holographic clouds in a blue sky…the Terranova’s critical systems—what few were still intact after Unbroken and the forces under her command had fucked this place up—were all offline, all the antimatter reactors purged of their reactants, only the nucleosynthesis reactor powering the base’s lifesystem was operational, along with some uninterruptible power sources….

She snorted at the nerve of the bastard, building this monstrosity and calling it his homeworld… whether that was symbolic of anything beyond that, she didn’t know.

She didn’t care, it didn’t matter in the long run…her people had a job to do, and they were going to lose a hell of a lot more along the way before they were finished, but, it had to be done, the enemy had to be driven from their sky and sent back down to the Hell from whence they came.

And, like all jobs, this one sucked big time.

That not making one damn bit of difference either.

1 MARCH, 2226 15:50:00 TAI

The Yanker M51 Powell main-battle tank slewed round on its AG drivers, crumpling the burning wreck of its mate as it passed over it, pausing a bit as it brought the snouts of the twin 203s and co-axial Gatling 90 quads in its turret to bear on the bloody, ripped to shit fucking kid(yeah, what the fuck’s that, Harriet?! she asked herself in the brief instant before action)wearing a tight belly shirt, an even tighter pair of blue jean bootie shorts and a thong shoved all the way up the crack of her ass shaking in her pair of unwieldy platform sandals, holding onto the 90-millimeter railgun bigger than her best she could as she tried to bring it bear.

Action took over, time and space shifting into light speed, the commander of Unbroken’s security forces and her Delta Squad already charging the Yanker MBT even as the young woman they’d planned on saving did that on her own, driving a hundred twelve-ton masses of hyperdense monomolecular carbon right down the gaping maw of one of the 203s, Delta Squad’s other Gatling 25 gunner, Corporal Rita Hensley, grabbing her underneath her armpits, as the overpressure from the explosion sent her flying, Harriet barreling through the burning wreckage at over 130 kph, her M4’s twelve contrarotating barrels throwing off white heat as they hosed the forward shielding of another M51, turning it as black as Guy Zellner’s fucking excuse for a heart, the Gatling 25 buzzsawing its way past that, through the tank, scattering it all over the ferrocrete of the highest level of highways crisscrossing the eight-klick diameter of the dome.

Fuck…another pair of M51s, shepherding four M113 Mulroneys dropping Yanker Army standard infantry from their bellies, sons of bitches coming at her screaming, guns blazing—

A woman’s shrieked “fire in the hole!” reached her ears about a half second after the blinding flash through which Harriet flew, her M4 buzzing angrily, as she fired blindly into all that chaos, doing some screaming of her own, as she just kept driving forward.

Until she was firing into empty space, her shielding black, blue and violet all across the front, burning wreckage all round, Harriet catching her breath as she turned round, no Yanker tanks or APCs anywhere, only her people. And, the young woman whose neck they were supposed to have been saving, the 90 white-hot and melting like butter in her hands, as she just stood there, eyes wide open, mouth working, but not a sound coming out.

Tears running from red, bruised eyes down equally bruised cheeks.

1 MARCH, 2226 16:00:01 TAI

“Tell the others to follow us!” Braxton shouted over the link, Lockwood finding his opening, the fifteen-thousand ton Freeman Lang-class frigate bulling his way through it at full power, his 406s clearing the way of enemy warbirds on all sides.

“As many as are able!” he added, the ships clustered round Witch’s Titty visible now in his command holodisplays, tachyar lighting them all up for the kill shot , Axelby screaming,”Weaps—“

“All remaining hyperspace tactical missiles away!” Egan screamed back, the tachyar returns in front of Braxton showing the commander of the League Mobile Force that much. “Closing to gun range!”

“’Em bitches,” exulted the Lockwood’s electronic warfare officer, 1st Lieutenant Jon-Patric Floyd,”gonna di—“

1 MARCH, 2226 16:01:11 TAI

“Bitch!” Rabwin screamed, stabbing the master fire control as hard as he wanted to stab that goddamn greasy, skank-nasty, fucking taco pounding that Yanker warbird out of existence with all her forward guns, an AG pulse from her forward emitters catching and smashing his gobstoppers before they even had a chance to reach their targets.

“Bitch!” he screamed a second time, as she fucking danced out of the goddamn way, again, Eve’s tachyar letting him know that Silver Falls and three other warbirds had broken through and now had a clear shot at all ‘em bitches who’d thought they’d escaped what the fuck was coming—

“Uh, uh, squatter,” Rabwin spat out, stabbing down on the master fire control again, Juanita flipping her bird up and over, dumb cunt probably congratulating herself on what she thought was a clever maneuver, just like that goddamn little bitch Diana fucking Shawnk always, always fucking thought she was such a fucking good pilot, when the truth was those fucking political generals had—

“No, no, no you don’t, bitch!” Rabwin told her, matching her move for move, his forward guns blazing away full bore the entire time.

“You ain’t nothin’, not one goddamn thing, but a fuckin’ piece of goddamn pussy!” he screamed at her, as he came down on her like the fucking wrath of God, crosshairs lighting up green and telling his ass to let fly, no way in her was she—

“Shit!” he screamed, the starboard AGAM all of a sudden deciding it wanted to fire full tilt, banking his FH-14 sharply under and away from that miserable, fucking—

“Goddamn defense contractors!” Rabwin shouted at the holodisplays in front of him, furiously working them, trying to get his bird under control so he could finish this, once and for all.

1 MARCH, 2226 16:03:01 TAI

“Commonwealth Forces Dauntless-class frigate along our one-eight-zero!” Mountaindove Republican Starcraft Silver Falls’ weaps officer, Captain Geoff Roberts shouted at the same time the radar alarm blew off and the Commie Osprey who’d outmaneuvered Pappy Rabwin’s jackass of a son bulleted towards Lieutenant Coloniel Thomas B. Pendry and his frigate at c times fifteen meg, all her forward armament hosing down local hyperspace in front of her, a 127 catching the Liberian Monrovia along Silver Falls’ zero-nine-two square on the jaw, blasting him back into normal space in a rain of blue-hot sparks.

The ship’s senior astro, Major Pedro Rodriquez, furiously working his holodisplays, the fifteen- thousand ton Vancouver-class frigate shaking and pitching violently in all directions anyway, more alarms howling in Pendry’s head, the queasiness in the master holodisplay going off like a fucking strobe light before his eyes, only the tachyar returns showing Silver Falls’ commander anything remotely resembling a sane view of the unfolding combat.

“We’ll hold her off,” the commander of the Phooie warbird with him said, as his wavering holoimage stood in front of the veteran Mountaindove spacer,” while you try and do all the damage you can.”

Pendry nodded, snapping out,”weaps, bring our Gatling 90s to bear on that Osprey! Recall any of our Harms—“

“Sir,” Roberts replied, Silver Falls, still bucking and pitching like a wild horse, hosing down the volume of hyperspace round him with its point-defense weapons,”only Captain Rabwin’s—“

Pendry cut his weaps officer off with an interjection of the f-word, Rodriquez asking,”what about our King Cobras, Captain?”

“Sir, I’m sending the recall signal,” Roberts, shouting to be heard above the alarms howling inside all their helmets,”but, I’m not getting any answer from from any of our—“

Now, it was Roberts’ turn to say the f-word, that last jolt almost knocking Pendry out cold, the commander of the Silver Falls shouting out,” all available power to the Rittermark generator, increase tachyon viscosity as high as it’ll go, we’ve got to ride this out and win our way clear to those ships at Witch’s Tit!”

“We’ve got to ride this out,” he repeated.

1 MARCH, 2226 16:03:28 TAI

“No, fuck, you don’t!” the commander of the Unbroken spat at the enemy warbirds blocking their way, 457s from all ten railguns stabbing out at them, sons of bitches twisting every which way as hyperspace bubbled and churned all round them, bastards moving as Unbroken moved, Stevie furiously working her holodisplays, evading the fire the the Gaucho Galtieri-class frigate and the Phooie Wu-Lung vectoring towards Unbroken, trying to get past them and to that Mountaindickhead frigate moving to take out all those ships still in orbit round Witch’s Tit, trying to keep her ship in hyperspace.

“Son of a bitch,” Unbroken’s weaps officer, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson, interjected, her wife, Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Genera Muncie, telling them that both enemy machines’ fighters and UAVs had cleared the battle behind him and were coming up on Unbroken’s one-eight-zero, her Raptors and Ospreys already hauling ass on an intercept vector, the Gatling 90s and AG pulses making for an even rougher ride as they engaged the incoming threat all round her.

“Got the bugger!” Prue snapped off, a 457 catching the Argentine frigate just as he’d was turning to bring his 406s to bear on Unbroken, the five-thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate powering through his wreckage and the disturbance he’d created in local hyperspace, Wrong Dong Phooie dropping in right behind her, Stevie juking and jinking in every direction, 406s all but scraping hell out of the paint job as they shot past, Prue hammering the Mountaindove with the 457s in an ever-tightening spiral round him, Jami seeing Khryste’s fighter in the master holodisplay, scraping hell out of his paint job, making him dance as she let fly with all six of her 127s and the two Gatling 90s mounted just ahead of them, the tail gun dealing with a Mountaindove Harm trying his best to take her out. “Form the Raptors into a flying wedge, Leftenant,” the commander of the Unbroken, just briefly glancing at the Wu-Lung’s tachyar image in the right-hand command holodisplay,”link ‘em together and have ‘em deal with Wrong Dong Phooie climbing our ass; tell the fighters to run interfe—“

“Cancel all that!” she screamed an instant later, enough to be heard above all the shaking and screaming alarms, hyperspace buffeting the Unbroken in waves as the Mountaindove tumbled ass over tea kettle, his Rittermark field geometry shredded under all that fire vectored towards him, the enemy frigate snapped back down into normal space in an eyeblink.

“Stevie, cut your v!” she shouted out,” Leftenant, on my word of command—“

She was thrown forward to the limit of her straps, slapped back so hard into her chair she damn near blacked out, the commander of the Unbroken half-coherently ordering Prue to “fire, goddamnit, fire!” even as 457s hissed out of the railguns to slam into the ass end of the overshooting Phooie warbird, Unbroken pitching in every direction at once by the force of the resulting explosion.

Local hyperspace calming itself down, Genera reporting all enemy machines either knocked down into normal space or blown out of the sky altogether, and it all just hit her, Carson, Rebekah, the woman whose being gone was like Jami losing her mama all over—

Even as she shook, Jami was cursing herself, choking down the tears, swallowing so hard as to hurt her throat…it wasn’t going to be like last time, so caught up in her own grief she’d forgotten the one person who’d always been there for her, in spite of herself…they were Stevie’s family, she’d grown up with Jeanie and Sunni, they’d played together all the damn time when they were kids, she and Angelique had been close…she’d lost so goddamn many people close to her in the past few months, first Micki, then Dunstan, now….

Before she could even think to do it, she was out of her chair, arms wrapped round her wife’s neck and chest, head leaning on hers.

Both of them crying. —endit— Selah “There is a Hebrew word in the Old Testament which calls for silence between passages…selah…it means pause and consider….” Babylonian Productions, “The Deconstruction Of Falling Stars,” from the series Babylon 5

1 MARCH, 2226 16:15:28 TAI

He was pleased.

Not with the fall of Witch’s Tit, though He knew it had been lost from the moment the first shots had struck His former captial…it had been foolishness to rely upon the System-Wide Mine Field as their sole means of defense…nor was He pleased with the deliverance of those He had meant to suffer and die.

He was somewhat pleased to hear Angelique Gault and her bitch had both fallen in the battle, but she was still alive, she had been instrumental in His defeat this day.

The Governor of the Union clenched His fists at the knowledge of this, as he looked out over the balcony of His mansion, high atop the only hill in His Union, the way He had wanted it all along.

This was the source of His pleasure, His creation, built with those meant to be used by the race of Man to aid them in the Work of erasing them from the whole of His Creation. He sighed, smiling at the statue of His David, with his magnificent member and the reflection of His beautiful face and well-toned body, His proud, conquering foot on the back of the She who was the ancient enemy but would soon be subjugated and used for His amusement until He grew bored with her and permitted her the death her subhuman kind had meant for His.

He would permit the others a few moments to settle into their new quarters aboard this one hundred million-ton capital ship riding majestically through hyperspace, before He presented His plan to accomplish her subjugation and the Work in one fell swoop…they would object, of course, foolishly thinking they had any right to object to the He who was over all others, the descendant of the He who had been the salvation of the others at the beginning, not knowing he had drivers for their neural servos hardcoded into the AI who administered His Union, incorruptible, unlike the ones which had failed Him when He’d needed them most.

So, they would accept His plan and do everything in their power to make it so.

He would win.

He could suffer no other alternative.

1 MARCH, 2226 16:24:14 TAI

Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken was in normal space now, a thousand klicks above what had been the Terranova, her commander standing at the foot of the telegate stage, her wife, second in command, heart and soul all these years giving her right hand a gentle squeeze, as Uncle Carson’s team came through the spacetime rift, the casket bearing their commander’s body on their shoulders, the hermetically-sealed, grim monomolecular carbon box already draped in the Union Colors and the Commonwealth Tricolor, each overlapping the other.

A fourth Black Star in its case on top of both of them.

Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier sighed…for some strange reason, she didn’t have any regret about sending her uncle across, even knowing he was in the toxemia stage of the disease which had killed her Nana, no doubt in her mind that it, numbered alone amongst all the mistakes and should’ve dones in twenty years of command, had been the only right decision she’d ever made…Ryla would probably hate her for it, no more though, than she would blame herself for letting her former commander and dear friend down when he needed her most.

Which was crap…Carson had told her, when she’d discussed this with Jami and him three months ago, that there were no gurantees, that all she could do was her best….

Jami sighed, Carson’s team laying the casket gently onto the deck, all but one of them snapping to attention and standing guard round it, a willowy young thing—Indigo Myles’ older sister—the one and a half stripes of a first lieutenant circling the cuffs of her greys, walking up to the commander of the Unbroken, tears running down her cheeks, as she tried to swallow them down, mouth working, desperately trying to find words to say.

“Ma’am,” Meghan Polk finally whispered,”I’m really, really sorry ‘bout—“

Putting her hand gently on the younger woman’s shoulder, Jami whispered,” I know, baby.”

Blindly nodding her head, as Stevie squeezed her hand again.

1 MARCH, 2226 16:33:15 TAI “…the deaths of the Prime Minister and the Chief of Staff have hit hard,” Commonwealth Broadcasting’s Irma DeLong said, her holo standing between most of the members of the Senate and the people of the Federation of Midnight Sun in the atrium of the Senate dome in McPhail.

Jay Todman staring past the centermost of the nineteen chairs in the middle of the atrium, dryswallowing, tears running hot and wet down his cheeks, two more close to him gone, just like that, not a fucking thing he could’ve done to stop it, the ‘cast from CBC now switching to Angelique and Rebekah’s house in Sheridan, the front yard piled high with flowers, wreaths, cards and handwritten messages of sympathy, Irma saying in the background:

“But not so hard, I think, as to weaken our resolve towards what must be done, even if Angelique is the second prime minister in thirty years to have been killed by enemy action, the fourteenth PM to have fallen in the line of duty in the two hundred years there has been a Commonwealth…right now, Commonwealth Forces Intelligence Arm are hearing rumors that the League are considering peace negoiations; according to Intelligence Arm Director General Donna Rhoads, Commanding General Bradley Richard Selkirk, Chairman of the Yankers’ Union Security Council and Supreme Commander of League Forces, has just now issued a ceasefire order to all League forces at the instigation of League Executive Council Chairman Guy Zellner.”

The veteran FedNews Net reporter looked all round him…many clearly did not believe Zellner was actually intent on talking peace, not after everything he’d done, a couple just off to his left mouthing the word “bullshit” to one another…just as many more clearly wanted to believe that, this time, the epitome of all things Yanker and backstabbing seriously wanted to discuss peace and not just a chance to murder his people and their allies while they slept….

He didn’t know whether he could believe it…God knows, he didn’t want to keep on war after war after war, but the enemy had shown he knew no other way…Derreg had told him, flat out, there was no other way with his kind, it was the death of one or the other, no middle ground….

The holo of the sitting President, Muriel Sumner, appeared in front of her chair, floating above the relief deck of the Mintaka in her AG harness—necessary since the J-War, when Bradbury’s hounds had destroyed her cerebellum—her face haggard, drawn, eyes bruised and puffy from no sleep at all in the recent weeks.

“Jay,” she said, nodding her head slightly.

“Madam President,” Jay replied.

“As you know already, we’ve recently decided to normalize relations with the new Terranovan government,” Muriel said.

“And,” she added, Jay neither wanting nor expecting this,”we’ve decided you were the best candidate for the first FedRep to—“

“No,” Jay replied, vigorously shaking his head,”no, no, no, I got out of that for good after Tau Ceti, I just want to be—“

“You know the most about Terranova,” Muriel, steamrolling right over him,” its people, their new Governor and the former—“

A bleeping terminal on her end interrupted her, Muriel turning to answer it…the holo of Carson’s second appearing within the holo of the Mintaka’s relief deck.

Jay feeling as if gravity itself had gone out from under his feet, his bioplastic heart thumping loudly in his ears, his throat constricting itself, Muriel turning away from Meghan Polk’s holo, Jay finding voice enough to ask,”Annesha, does she—“ “Squadron Leader Lanier is on the line with his widow now, Mister President,” Meghan whispered, Muriel adding,”I think, under the circumstances, we should table this matter until—“

“I’ll go,” Jay found himself saying, not knowing just what about another friend’s death had changed his mind.

“I’ll go,” he repeated softly.

1 MARCH, 2226 16:38:09 TAI

Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Cor Leonis.

Amelia Seldin, Prémier of the Commonwealth Federated Republic of Summer Rain, said that to herself over and over, running the fingers of her left hand over the cloisonne Commonwealth Seal pinned onto the lapel of her blazer just after being confirmed in office and sworn in by the Chief Justice, still not knowing what think, how to act, or whether she should even believe this was all happening.

She stood on the front steps of the Commonwealth Legislature Building, looking out across Dominion Plaza to the Blue Lion of Cor Leonis crouched on its pedestal made of the same blue volcanic rock as the statue itself, the Tricolor and all four republican ensigns flying at half-staff at the outer edge of the Plaza, people gathered round the Lion to talk…just talk, so they wouldn’t be alone in their shock and grief, just as they’d done when Rover Four and its nearly four hundred civilians had been murdered in cold blood.

When her own mother, three decades before, had been cut down by a Phooie MID op on Heyerdahl, just after she’d gotten through putting her signature on the Treaty of Rittermark, in spite of her own objections to even thinking of talking peace with Roger Tyrant, his slavering bitch Guy Zellner and the rest of that bloody mob….

“Prime Minister,” she repeated softly,”of the Commonwealth of Cor Leonis.”

Sighing, blowing cold smoke into the air, leaning against one of the columns of Cor Leonis granite, whispering the words again, shaking her head…Angelique, Rebekah, Carson, they’d all been every bit as much family as Alex and Prue and all the rest of the Davidsons, McFarlanes, Pollocks and Greys back home and out in space were…all of them gone same day, almost the same instant, Defiant going down fighting—just as her mum had taken out the bastard who’d killed her—Carson succumbing to the same, exact goddamn thing which had killed his mother ten years ago, going out fighting all the same, venting the last of the Terranova’s antimatter reactors before he could carry out that miserable pederast’s orders to go ice-hot and take the entire DM+50 1125 system with him….

The bitch of it was she couldn’t be with Annesha, Jami Lanier or Angelique and Rebekah’s surviving family at this time, as much as she wanted to, she was the Prime Minister now, even if she had trouble believing that, it was up to her to….

Her wife, Solicitor-General of the Commonwealth Grey Starling, came up beside her just as Amelia was trying to figure out precisely what it was that it was up to her to do…glancing over at her, she saw she was clutching a micromini optical disc between the first two fingers of her left hand.

“Preliminary report from the JMC Intelligence Coordinating Staff personnel on Witch’s Tit,” she explained. “Right now, they’re just trying to ID inmates, not really getting into the…bad stuff….”

She sighed, dryswallowing, nodding her head, Amelia reaching out, giving her wife’s right hand a gentle squeeze, the two women silent, as they held on to one another, watching their people trying to figure what the hell they were going to do next. Same as them.

1 MARCH, 2226 17:02:17 TAI

Annesha Griffin stared out at the rain coming down in sheets outside the Phoenix Center’s day room, sniffling, trying to choke down the tears spilling freely down her face.

It’s okay, you know, his words echoed in her mind, her best friend’s hands gently clasping her shoulders as she stood behind her, too caught up in her own grief to offer much more comfort than that.

But, that was all good, Jonni and Sunni should’ve gone through the rest of their lives together, Lord knows, they’d both deserved that much….

It wasn’t to be, and that just wasn’t fair…Jonni’s Nightwing had been blown out of hyperspace round the DM+50 1125 system by Gatling 90s from a Liberian Tubman-class battleship’s point-defense turret, neither Jonni nor her weaps officer had ever even seen it coming.

“Anyone,” Sunni asked, her voice hesitant,”let Josh and Joey—“

“Jami,” Annesha replied,” said the Albion’s commander had tried comming Josh using his last known NPI, couldn’t get a hold of him…Joey, on the other hand, was home…he was practically foaming at the mouth with curse words, when he so politely informed Nikki Tucker that he’d wanted nothing to do with the ‘fat bitch.’”

“After everything she did for both of ‘em….” Sunni remarked, sighing, Annesha whispering, “I’m sorry,” for only the umpteenth time since she’d come here to tell Sunni personally…her responsibility, both as her friend and as a member of the government that had put the woman she’d loved in harm’s way to begin with.

“So am I, baby,” Sunni replied, giving Annesha’s shoulders a gentle squeeze.

“He was a good man,” she added. “I wish I could’ve treated him better than I did.”

“You had your reasons,” Annesha replied,”he always knew th—“

Her link bleeped in the pocket of her earth-toned blazer, Annesha fishing it out, asking it “yes?”

“Annesha,” Cynthia McKinley, Governor of the Union, said, her holo standing in front of her,”the starport at New Whitehorse just commed; Unbroken’s just emerged from hyperspace inside the New Whitehorse corridor, on final approach vector, thought you’d might—“

“Thank you,” Annesha replied, nodding her head.

“I’m on my way,” she added.

“You mind if I go with you?” Sunni asked.

“Not at all, baby,” Annesha replied.

“Not at all,” she repeated softly.

1 MARCH, 2226 17:11:06 TAI

He had dared ask that of the He who was over all others. Now, Heathcote Saint John sat there screaming, twitching, bleeding, pissing and shitting like a goddamn bitch as punishment for the sin of accusing Him of insanity, when the way ahead had never been more clear.

Turning away from the Phooie prime minister, the Man of the Waters stared into the beady eyes of each one of the others assembled before Him in His Union’s conference room to hear His plan, asking each and every one of the worthless sons of bitches just what he’d thought of the idea of lulling them to sleep with the talk of peace.

“It’s always worked in the past,” the Chairman of His Movie Board, Damien d’Souza replied,”I see no reason why it should not work now, especially in light of the terrible losses they’ve sustained in the recent battle; us taking out Angelique Gault and her bitch was an esepcially bad blow for them, one that may—will give them second thoughts about prosecuting this war.”

The remainder of the others readily agreed…except Saint John, of course, he was still screaming in orgasm like wrinkled old pussy, even after Daddy had stopped giving it sex, but He was sure even he now saw the wisdom of His plan.

It had always worked before, their greatest weakness was weakness itself; they were incapable of standing up long in a fair fight before wanting to quit, that had always been the way their superiors had been able to slap them back down into place every time they rebelled against those ordained by evolution itself to be their lords and masters, make them sweat and bleed too much for their frail constitutions to take, and they’ll whine and want to talk peace talk the moment their men presented them with that option, the instant His race pretended to roll over and surrender so that they could lure the females deeper into the subjection they had to be held down in for everyone’s good.

It would work this time, He had no doubt of it…He would propose personally signing the terms of surrender on the deck of her ship, same as the last war, and the instant she came close enough for Him to gate aboard, He and his men would swarm all over that ship, taking and breaking every one of her girlies in front of her, He personally relishing the task of breaking her red-headed little wife girl and making her spit on her twot and call her a bitch, just before she told her she fucking hated her as much as He did and begged Him to make her suck His cock instead of eating her nasty, stinking blonde pootie.

Then, He would break her, for all time…he would keep on breaking her, every fucking day, ‘til she was his good little Gilda, hating bitches as much as He did, willing to do anything her Lord told her to do for as long as her Lord permitted her worthless life to continue.

As was meant to be.

The thought of that gave the Man of the Waters a warm glow inside, as He looked upon Saint John, done screaming his fucking head off, the He who was over him telling him to,”go clean yourself up.”

“S-sir,” Saint John stammered, bowing his head like a good girl, before walking out of the conference room, passing the Captain of His Host on his way out the door, Bradley—still very beautiful, even in his lowered state—standing at the foot of the table, just behind the Californio President, Orenthal Simpson King, a bitch dog—not one goddamn stitch of clothes to cover her ugliness—crawling in behind him, lapping up the dirt and wastes from where the Hong Kong prime minister had so recently sat.

Bradley, of course, not giving her the satisfaction of looking, though some of the others showed less restraint.

“Bradley,” said the He who was over all others.

“All our forces are stood down, as per Your orders,” Bradley replied. “I have begun building a new Mobile Force, using the factories on board the Union and men recruited from amongst the member armed forces.” “Have you chosen someone to replace Braxton?” He asked.

“I have promoted Lieutenant General Decius Powell to the rank of full General in the Mountaindove Republican Aerospace Force,” Bradley replied,”and invested him with full command of Your Mobile Force.”

“Why him?” He asked.

“Yes,” Hieronymous Cael, State President of the Mountaindove Republic, brattishly demanded,”why him?!”

“The man did cost us total victory,” Thomas VIII Jefferson, Viceroy of Nova Regina remarked,”nineteen years ago at Morning Glory.”

“He is the only general we can spare who has combat expirience,” Bradley said, not telling Him or the others the whole truth behind his selection of Powell, Lamar choosing to let that pass for now.

“Invest him with five-star rank,” He said,”and appoint him to the Homeland Security Committee —“

“The what?!” Kemal Rashad Ellison, President of the Secret, Supreme, Exalted High Committee of the Thirteen of the New Confederate Order, his firm, young jaw dropping almost to the deck in reaction to what He had just said, the others around Rashad’s beautiful black boy no less shocked than he, the Man of the Waters ignoring them all, speaking to His Union, telling him:

“From this moment forward, they will call you America.”

1 MARCH, 2226 20:20:05 TAI

Her heart caught in her throat, her body continuing to stand up without any instruction from the brain which had shut down completely at seeing Sunni Pate standing beside her uncle’s widow on the pitted, rain-swept, dimly-lit tarmac of New Whitehorse International Starport.

Sunni, in reply, biting down on her lower lip, fidgeting with her hands, staring at her, past her, the commander of the Unbroken looking down at the long midnight blue coat which went with her Commonwealth Forces dress reds, trying to find something to fuss with, Stevie giving her left hand a gentle squeeze.

Sunni finally turning to Jami’s wife, saying,”you must be Stevie. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

“Likewise,” Jami’s heart and soul said to her once-best friend and first love, at the same time whispering in Jami’s mind, it’s okay, luv, it really is okay.

Shaking her head, Sunni whispered,”this really isn’t the time for that, is it?”

Hugging Jami warmly, briefly, she whispered,” baby, I’m so sorry ‘bout your uncle, he was a good man.”

“Yeah,” Jami whispered, Stevie letting go so that she could hug Sunni back just as warmly and briefly, “I know.”

A hearse and a National Police motorcycle escort rolled up, Major Harriet Mangione shouting out a command to the rest of Unbroken’s Delta Squad which had them marching slowly towards the hearse, weighed down by Carson’s casket, Auntie ‘Neesha telling Jami and Stevie,”we can all ride in my car.” “I’ll drive,” Sunni offered, taking Annesha’s hand in hers, squeezing it gently,”if you—“

“Thank you, baby,” Annesha replied, handing Sunni the remote starter, before turning to walk behind the cortege, Jami and Stevie following Sunni to where Annesha had parked her silver-grey ’95 Nissan Sentra sedan, the two of them climbing through the opened rear passenger side into the back seat, Sunni getting in behind the wheel, starting it up, waiting until the hearse and its escort had pulled out to put the Sentra in drive and slip in behind them.

“We can talk later, baby,” Sunni said softly,”if you feel up to it.”

1 MARCH, 2226 20:40:19 TAI

It had been the only building in Midnight Bay which wasn’t being used for anything.

Cynthia McKinley, Governor of the Republican Union of Terranova, was too goddamn busy to do anything than make a passing note of the irony of using the former death house as the seat of her government.

Busy…and way too tired.

It had only made sense to transfer the capital from Flyntsboro to here, the city having surrendered to the JMC almost without a fight, thanks to Stephen Weiss, Charles Olmstead and all the rest of those who’d put their people first for a change, and, unlike her home town, it was still in one piece, more or less.

More or less…IC 75 was open all the way from here to Sandusky, though there wasn’t a hell of a lot left standing between those two points…New Whitehorse, a place she’d grown to detest in her years on the General Assembly, was a complete shambles, the starport just barely operational, most of the towers of monocarbon, neon and ferrocrete fallen down in the ruined streets just as the Bible said they would be, most of the great city still in darkness, in spite of the untiring efforts of the repair crews….

“He’s going to talk peace,” Jay Todman, now the Mids’ Federal Represenative to Terranova, remarked, as he stared down his cup of coffee,”isn’t he?”

“AFID,” Cynthia replied, taking a sip of coffee forgotten so long the heating circuit in its cup had run dry,”believes that…yeah…yeah, he’s going to try and seduce us again with the lie of peaceful co- existence.”

“I can only hope,” she whispered, after a pause,”that my people aren’t as stupid, or as willing, as they were ten years ago.”

She sighed, Jay finally answering the one question she’d been afraid to ask him in the hour or so he’d sat in what had been the warden’s office:

“The med teams on Joli are still working with the ICS people now on Witch’s Tit to try and identify everyone…they got everybody out, all five hundred billion, plus the ones condemned to the depot and to the Terranova, a lot of good people died in the process, but….”

It was the newly-minted FedRep’s turn to sigh, staring briefly down at his coffee, clearly not wanting to tell her:

“They haven’t found her, not yet; like I said, they’re trying to ID those still alive, and they’ve yet to start on all those who died at that place…they do know, for sure, that one of them was Donna McIntyre, Yanker dicksuckers got her when they tried to take the Homesteads two months back, took her with them when they were sent packing with their tails between their legs….” He didn’t say the rest of what was on his mind, about what had been done to Donna…he didn’t need to, she’d fucking lived through what was probably being done to Cathi right now, simply because….

Another sigh, the Governor of the Union staring up at the ceiling, at lights set way back in ferrocrete thicker than the walls of the castles on which the death house’s had been based when it had been built over two hundred years ago.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you any better news,” Jay said slowly, softly, his voice rasping in his throat as he spoke.

“We’re all sorry,” Cynthia whispered in reply, still looking up at the ceiling, repeating herself.

1 MARCH, 2226 21:12: 24 TAI

She held the MMOD in the thumb and forefinger of her right hand.

Lenore Kaplan, now Chief of Staff of the Commonwealth Forces, didn’t need to slot that into any of the terminals in the War Room, twenty-seven stories underneath the rest of Commonwealth Forces Headquarters, itself deep inside the extinct volcano which formed Cor Leonis’ sole landmass.

She had had too much time on the way back to think about those who weren’t coming home, not even in a box…seventy-two divisions of frigates, over two hundred thousand warbirds, had been committed to the liberation of Witch’s Tit, along with nearly two hundred million JMC soldiers, of which, seventy-two million had been gated onto the frozen surface of the former Yanker penal colony, to say nothing of the 960,000 security troopers and recondos gated onto the Terranova in the mad minute following Jami Lanier’s initial assault….

Sixty-nine thousand, one hundred twenty-one JMC frigates, nearly five million spacers, one Commonwealth Forces recondo and one Commonwealth prime minister all laying down their lives to shut that place down once and for all…thirty-two percent casaulties amongst the starcraft particpating in the battle, a little over two percent factoring in the negligeble casualties amongst the ground forces, security troops and recondos.

Still unacceptible, no matter how one did the math….

Lenore nodded her head, looking up at the master tactical holodisplay letting her know just how the war was going on all the front lines from here to Mintaka…the League were standing down, digging in, waiting for her people to take the bait before striking the final blow.

She could only have faith in her people not trusting that murdering animal Guy Zellner any more than she did…he’d done this before, talked peace, while poisoning Joli’s atmosphere and sickening its people out of spite.

He’d done it twice, the miserable Yanker son of a bitch, he’d talked his talk of having repented after nine years of slaughter had ended with bloody, fucking Tau Ceti, fifty-seven billion dead on all sides, wreckage and bodies floating through space as far as the eye….

She clenched her fists, drew her breath in ragged gasps, trying desperately to put that out of her mind, even knowing she couldn’t, when there were things almost as goddamn bad waiting inside her mind for just the right moment.

A moment like this, when her former commander’s death had her thinking about Joli, thirty years ago, all those dead bodies piled high in the streets, Angelique cursing herself until the day she died for not having gotten there fast enough to stop the sons of bitches, for ever believing any of them would, for one moment, choose to live in peace with her people, when the only fucking thing any of them had ever been capable of was murder and pain. The commander of the Dauntless put the MMOD in a pocket of her greys…they would hold the memorial service in two days, Amelia already working on the wall, adding their names to all those who’d fallen in the defense of their Commonwealth in the last two hundred years…Angelique was supposed to have stepped down this year, Rebekah had been talking a lot about retirement herself….

Lenore’s sigh echoed in the quiet room, none of the staff who manned it on a twenty-four a day basis for as long as she could remember looking away from their holodisplays…more than anything else in the worlds, she wanted an end to days like this, nobody but them liked the idea of fighting another bloody war.

Nobody but them relished the idea of her people being murdered in their sleep either, that was the thing.

That was the goddamn thing.

2 MARCH, 2226 00:38:18 TAI

They’d even fixed the sign.

Sunni Pate leaned against up the windows of the old Moot House in Owensboro, staring up at all nine red and black squares and the words “GOOD FOOD FAST” and ”OPEN 24 HOURS” towering thirty meters overhead in an attempt to light the way of those driving along IC75…she’d been trying for a while to replace the signing with holographics, like they’d had in Moot Houses in other districts for the last two hundred years, but Jimmy always kept telling her there was never enough money for that, even if Wal-Mart always had the money to throw up Mega-Centers in places where they weren’t needed and Microsoft found the spare change to build Superstrores nobody particularly wanted.

She hadn’t been back here since it had happened, not to any of her stores at least…she’d gone to Owensboro once in the last three or four months, that had been …for another funeral, Jody Harbuck’s, it was strange to come in there and not see him behind the line, cooking, waiting tables and doing sidework all at once…she didn’t even know the two girls waiting tables or the grill operator, that was strange too, but a good thing, Annesha had been right, always had been, Sunni had always scraped the same damn people off the bottom of her shoe and put them to work, lying and telling herself she was doing it for them, when, all the while, she’d been doing it to punish herself for not being good enough to have people who gave a damn about her stay with her in the first place.

She shouldn’t have come, she knew that the instant she’d seen Jami and Stevie hand in hand underneath the grey belly of their ship, each desperately trying to comfort the other in their time of mutual loss, Stevie so understanding of what her wife and Sunni once had had, might have had, if Sunni hadn’t fucked everything up….

Not the time or place, she had to be there for her friend, help her—as little as she was able to help —bury her husband, even if Sunni had never made an honest effort to get along with him.

Hands shaking, Sunni reached inside the pack of Chronic Blondes she’d bought in a c-store just outside of New Whitehorse, fished out a cigaret, winnowed the laser lighter from inside the package’s cellophane outer wrapping.

“You know,” Annesha’s voice said softly,”those darn things’ll kill you.”

“Yeah,” Sunni replied, nodding her head, turning to face the closest friend she had left, one of the few people she’d let get close since…. She sighed, looking at the still-unlit cigaret in her hand, deciding Annesha was right again, as usual, she didn’t need the damn thing, throwing it, the rest of the pack and the lighter onto the ground, mashing all of them underfoot.

“I didn’t say you had to throw your money away like that either, baby,” Annesha remarked, grinning, her voice choked with grief, Sunni catching a glance of Jami, sitting across from her wife in the four-seater at the far corner of the stretch hand, the two women holding hands as they talked and ate.

She likes her steaks about as bloody as he did, part of her mind remarked, before all of her turned away from that, looking straight into Annesha’s red-rimmed eyes, at the tears still running down her cheek.

“Too darn cold for you to be out here by yourself,” her friend remarked.

“No room for me inside,” Sunni replied.

“Ain’t no one in the place,” Annesha said,”’cept the four of us, the grill operator and the two waitresses.”

“Not what I meant,” Sunni whispered, looking away from her friend and down at her shoes.

“I know what you meant,” Annesha said, gently laying a hand on Sunni’s right shoulder.

“That’s bullshit,” she added, one of the few times she’d ever cursed, Sunni looking back up into her face, telling her,”she has her now, they have something real, I could tell that from the first moment I saw them, they were meant to be, I….”

She trailed off, choking down what she was going to say, because there wasn’t any room for that either…if she hadn’t fucked up and let Jonni into her life sooner, if she’d found the courage to walk away from that bastard of a husband and his bitch, if….

Didn’t matter…they never had a chance, and that had been on her as well, now wasn’t the time for her to feel all sorry for herself for fucking shit up, like she always knew how to do.

2 MARCH, 2226 02:52:41 TAI

“I do not like this new development,” Sam Brannen III, once Attorney General of the Union, said, sighing smoke into a cloud around him as he found himself looking at the ass end of Zellner’s David, dominating both the thing at his feet and the skyline of this new America, a forest of skyscrapers stretching out from the center and all along the four massive arms of the capital ship, shaped by its creator into the ancient symbol of masculine power and authority.

The palace of the king of the yogurt-eaters high atop what he called Capitol Hill, off center and just in front of the David cast in the image and likeness of that epileptic fraud of a man who’d dared call himself all the names of the sacred image of the Masculine.

At the top of the dome, fluttering in a false breeze in a sky just as falsely blue…not the Colors of Brannen’s Union, but the Earth and Stripes of an American World State which was supposed to have been extinct.

Which should have remained extinct, or, better yet, never conceived in the first place, their best hope had lain in the isolation of them, one from another, Wellington Mara and his clown prince Jesse Ventura, in their own greedy dream of power, had forgotten that, had put themselves before the Work their kind had all pledged themselves to, and the result had been the near-extinction of their race and worse, far worse, their continued survival after so much effort to make them bow down at the feet of those meant by Phallos Himself to rule all Creation. If that upstart, murdering fool had studied the surviving records his Union had kept preserved in the Black Vault, he would know this and would never even think to try repeating this mistake, but….

But, same as Mara and Ventura over two hundred years ago, he had convinced himself her defeat and the final elimination of her race were close at hand, and he could dispense with all the appearances and props necessary for his kind to prosecute the Work…he so foolishly believed his plan would work, that they would be lulled to sleep like all the other times they’d gotten out of hand over the course of four and a half centuries, but this was it, the final war originally created as wish fufillment 278 years ago—the deliberate mistranslation of her dying prophecy—had come to pass…through mishandling, she had been allowed to come back into the worlds to lead her people in the destruction of his, and no trick, no deceit of the nancy boy parvenu who’d tricked, deceived, seduced and murdered his way to what was not his to have would stop her.

Bradley and he had bungled their one chance at stopping her.

“I do not like this new development,” repeated the now-Grand Inquisitor of the New America, eyes still fixed upon Zellner’s disgusting parody of the Phallos,”at all.”

2 MARCH, 2226 04:20:17 TAI

Lightly, she kissed her sleeping wife’s forehead, brushing strands of blond hair away from her face, stroking her hair, as she writhed in the nightmares which would always be waiting for her in her sleep.

Sighing, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads, fingers still running lightly through Jami’s hair, turned and looked out the window at the grey, leaden sky and the rain coming down in bursts, blotting out the suns which had been up for some time…it wasn’t fair, she didn’t need to lose any more people close to her, she still hadn’t gotten over Dunstan’s being gone, probably never would, and now his twin brother had died from the virus which had killed his mother before him….

And, losing Angelique…it hurt Stevie like hell, but to Jami, it was like losing her mum all over again….

I’m not being fair to you, am I, baby? her wife whispered in her mind, asking the question Stevie knew she would.

She’s your aunt, Jami added, her and Rebekah, they were your family, I….

She trailed off, reliving Bearclaw Station in her dreams, Stevie turning back to face her, taking the hand which lay outside the comforter, the hand replacing the one she’d lost during that battle twenty years ago, giving it a gentle squeeze, holding onto it for dear life.

Kissing her gently on her forehead again, whispering that she loved her.

That it was okay for her to cry.

—endit—

Looking Darkly Upon Hector “’ Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. How can you apologize to them?!’

‘I can’t.’

‘Then, I cannot forgive you.’ ” Babylonian Productions, “Comes the Inquisitor,” from the series Babylon 5

2 MARCH, 2226 06:51:19 TAI

“…her lesbian lover during the time she spent in prison,” See BS’ Hannah Donner said on HV,”serving a twenty-five month sentence for torturing and murdering her former lover during a jealous, drug-induced rage, openly engaging in displays of female sexuality in front of guards and other inmates; several of the inmates told CBS News that Harvey would force Walton to give her her tray of food, before forcing her to crawl underneath the table and perform oral sex on her as she ate, Harvey either rewarding Walton with scraps from her plate or punishing her by pulling her shorts and panties down to her ankles, forcing her across her lap and spanking her until, in the words of one former inmate, ‘that fat ass were black and blue all over.’”

“I,” said a far different Mary Kate Walton from the one found on the Hell Star by Avalon forces, as she shifted position in the chair across from Hannah, the camera making damn sure it caught the flash of knickers underneath the tight, short leather skirt,”was never good enough for Mama—that’s what I had to call her, ‘cause I was her girl—and Mama had to punish me for it…that’s the way it goes in prison, Hannah, once that gate closes behind you, you either go down and be a good little girl to the first female that takes an interest in you, or that female just takes what the fuck she wants and makes you pay for saying no to her in the first place…Mama took an interest in me first time she saw me at choir practice—about a week after I got there—and I did what I was told from there on in…it’s all perfectlly natural, once you think about it—”

A far different Mary Kate Walton, Amelia Seldin thought bitterly, than the one sitting on the couch with her knees curled up underneath her chin, rocking back and forth, staring at the bloody HV, mumbling “that’s not me,” over and over to herself, and God only knows what the fuck she really sees in her mind’s eye….

Swallowing, the still newly-confirmed Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Cor Leonis balled her fists, trying to keep it all inside, as she stood outside the door of the dayroom in the Commonwealth Forces Medical Center’s psychiatric wing…trying to help those here deal with their nightmares was her way of dealing with her own.

Thirty years ago, her friend Carson had sat on that very couch, in the very same way Mary Kate was now, retreating inward after four years of bloody war and the murderous way Guy Zellner had chosen to end it had been too much for him to take.…he’d walked out of here, eventually finding his way again, with the love of a good woman to help him, as it always did…he’d put it all back together, more or less, had everything he deserved, and….

She sighed wetly…all so miserably unfair…Annesha and he should’ve grown old together, same as Angelique and Rebekah, God knows so much had been asked of all of them over the years, they deserved….

She nodded her head, sighing again, the voice of their Mary Kate Walton drowning her thoughts:

“—without no man to make us do right, we do each other that way, fighting and clawing to see just who comes out on top and who ends up being the bitch; even feminist scholars, Hannah, feminist scholars studying women’s prisons, found that the inmates there establish a pecking order with a queen bee on top, with all the other females as her bitches, who, in turn, make the ones just below them their bitches, and so on, with all the new girls starting out on the bottom, being everybody’s bitches…that’s the way it was when I pledged Kay-Dee back in—“

“Not me,” Mary Kate mumbled, continuing to rock back and forth on the sofa, eyes staring inward as their Mary Kate did her lines,”that’s not me.”

2 MARCH, 2226 08:04:05 TAI “—seen the magnitude of the error of my ways,” old Gotchanow, borrowing a line from a used-car salesman and a technique from every holovangelist that ever existed, said to Renee Sofer live in 256-bit true color,”and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to ensure peace, for all time, between my people, the Commonwealth and their allies and even those who have become so dissatisified with my policies they have felt the need to rebel against me.”

“Very magnanimous of you, sir,” Reneé replied, bowing her head slighly, causing Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier’s teeth to grind against one another,”most magnanmimous, considering everything they have to destroy our decent, God-fearing—“

“We can never,” that sick, murdering piece of shit replied in a way that made the commander of the Unbroken want to get her gun from the nightstand and blast the portable HV player in the kitchen into a trillion blue-hot pieces,” have any sort of progress with such bigoted, violentlly reactionary attitudes as yours, Reneé; people like you have been holding us back from being our best, from being a true brotherhood of M—“

“Turn it fuck off,” Jami snapped to the house comp,”before I break the son of a bitch.”

The portable HV shutting itself up, as Jami turned her attention back to the bacon she was frying up and the four over light she was flipping in the skillet next to the one with the bacon, Jami getting a hand free to turn the French toast in the electric skillet, watching the four over light slip back into their skillet white, perfect, not one yolk busted, now to make sure they didn’t get scorched, no one liked eating scorched eggs.

Or clumpy grits either, Jami giving those a whisk as they bubbled on the back of the stove, reducing the fire under them a little bit more.

Wiping the tear from her right eye with the back of her hand, choking it down…it wasn’t going to be like last time, her uncle Carson being gone hurt like hell, and losing Angelique was just like losing Mama all over again, but it didn’t matter, other people she cared about, the woman she loved more than anything else in the worlds, they were the ones in pain right now, she needed to be there for them, instead of wallowing in her own—

“Baby,” Annesha Griffin, her uncle’s widow, her voice choked, said from just behind her shoulder,”I would’ve gotten round to doing that.”

Not saying anything in reply, Jami simply nodded her head, sliding the four over-light eggs onto a plate, its heating circuit kicking in to keep them from getting cold, Jami arranging strips of bacon next to the eggs in such a way so as to not to get them greasy…nobody liked greasy eggs either, something most grill ops never seemed to learn….

Goddamnit….

Weren’t you the one, Stevie whispered in her head, who told Ariel you should always remind yourself of the ones who mattered to you most, no matter how bad it hurts sometimes?

Not if it hurts you in the process, baby, Jami thought back, whisking the grits again, transferring four slices of French toast onto another plate, putting that on the tray beside the eggs and bacon.

You’re worrying about the wrong thing, luv, her wife told her, Jami warming up inside, going all goosepimply, the same slender, sure fingers which piloted a five thousand-ton Dauntless-class frigate lightly gripping her shoulders, gently brushing over the skin of her arms.

“I was gonna bring you breakfast in bed, baby,” Jami said out loud, thinking, You’re the one who matters to me most, the one who’s always been there for me, even when I wasn’t there for me…she…. “You spoil me far too much as it is, poppet,” Stevie replied, giving her a gentle squeeze from behind, insisting, You’re not being unfaithful to me by still caring about her, she was and is a part of you… how can I possibly be jealous of the woman I love?

“I’m not good enough to you,” Jami whispered, putting the rest of the bacon onto a plate between the stove and the electric skillet, stirring the grits one last time, Stevie holding her closer, blowing in her right ear, nuzzling up against the back of her neck.

“Y’all,” Auntie ‘Neesha spoke up, laughter in her voice in spite of her grief,”need to get a room, if you’re gonna do that.”

“Go sit her down, Stevie,” she added, taking the whisk from Jami’s hands. “I’ll take care of this.”

2 MARCH, 2226 09:20:01 TAI

“Sweet Jane,” the holo of one of New Whitehorse’s traffic controllers said to Shirley Dixon, working the holodisplays to decelerate the ASC-130 Nightwing spaceplane for approach,”you’ve been cleared for final approach vector for landing pad A-551, repeat, A-551.”

“Acknowledged, NWH,” Shirley said automatically, already locking her nav comm system onto the locator beacon, before the controller gave her instructions to do so, the Nightwing reentering atmosphere over the shattered ruins of the former Terranovan legislative capital, slowing down even further, Shirley keeping her ship on the beam, her weaps officer, Latacha Gipson, saying Jesus’ name for both of them, as she altered vector slightly, enough so they could see the gaping hole blasted into the Capitol, its thin sheet of dysprosium frozen in rivulets down the height of the dome, both wings cratered and gutted, the front portico four or five columns holding up nothing, the steps leading down to the street cracked and burned and pitted.

“Thus, with violence,” Tasha whispered over her link, as Sweet Jane now passed over what remained of Hapeville,” shall that great city Babylon be thrown down and shall be found no more at all.”

“Revealation,” Shirley replied automatically, some things too well indoctrinated to be erased,”chapter 18, verse 21.”

“At least,” she added, as the gunship now hovered over her assigned landing pad,”part of it.”

Tasha’s sole reply was to whisper Jesus’ name again, Shirley easily figuring out why…the landing pads round the one the spaceplane gently settled down onto…directly in front of her was Nightengale Woman, easily the most famous scoutcraft the Middies had working for their cooperative, Lil’ Dog, just off to the left of his companion, almost as famous, while behind the ASC-130 was the Nellie Bly, Jay Todman’s personal GPSP-1A, equipped with a trio of 127s instead just the one which had been standard equipment since 9YW.

To Shirley’s right…to her right, the ship which dwarfed all of them, both in size and reputation, the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken herself, the auto-repair system adding flags to the kill board on her port-side weapons blister, the Black Star and Marist Cross displayed just as proudly as the Commie Forces Seal on her grey skin, sixteen security troopers standing guard round her, weapons at the ready.

Sixteen, and two more standing at the edge of landing pad A-225, one of whom Shirley recognized instantly as her niece, Sweet Jane’s pilot releasing the straps holding her fast to her seat, climbing up through the airlock on the starboard side of the nose section, leaping down fron the outer hatch onto the tarmac, Tasha dropping out of the airlock in the belly.

“Hey, baby,” Shirley said to her niece, Unbroken’s chief flight engineer, hugging her warmly, Ariel briefly hugging her back. Before letting go and introducing her to the willowy blonde woman standing next to her, the one and a half stripes of an astrogation lieutenant second class circling the cuffs of her Commonwealth grey:

“This is my aunt, Shirley Dixon…Aunt Shirley, this is Rhiannon Moseley, tho’ everyone calls her Ree…she’s my second….”

The next part only a brief shock:

“…my lover…the better half of me, she’s been so….”

Ariel trailing off, out of words, not needing any, Ree blushing nervously, grinning like a fool, as was the woman she so very clearly loved.

Shirley couldn’t help but smile at the both of them, before reaching out and warmly hugging Ree, welcoming her to the family.

“I just wish,” Ree said, after the two women separated,”it was at a better time.”

“I know,” Shirley whispered, a silver-grey 2220 Nissan Sentra rolling up to the tarmac, ground crew and cyberteks moving round the car and swarming all over Sweet Jane, Tasha touching Shirley on her right shoulder, telling her,”there’s my ride,” before heading into Kishana Winslow’s waiting arms.

“We’ve rented a car,” Ariel said, turning her aunt’s attention back to why she was here,”to take you into Freeman Lang; that’s where he is, at Heritage Funeral Home—“

“Same place,”Shirley said, sighing, “that handled his mama’s funeral.”

“Yeah,” Ariel replied, nodding her head, the three of them walking towards the frigate, underneath her nose, heading towards the parking garage at the south end of the starport reservation.

2 MARCH, 2226 09:25:06 TAI

The three of them trying to figure out just what the hell they were going to say next.

Which one of them was going to be the first to speak again.

Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon let her mind wander a little, listening to the rain bouncing off the AG shielding generated by her greys—it was coming down too hard, too fast, to slip through—as she crossed the starport tarmac, glancing up from time to time at the starcraft lifting and landing, everything from spaceplanes to huge bulk transports and hydrogen tankers…the starport was fully operational, even if the rest of New Whitehorse was still tumbled down at their feet.

“Huh?!” she asked, startled at her aunt’s voice intruding into her musings, trying to remember just what she’d just asked.

“I said,” Aunt Shirley—less shocked by Ariel and Ree being a couple than she thought she would’ve—repeated,”you heard anything ‘bout Curtis?”

“No,” Ariel replied. “We just came in last night, we’ve both been onship the whole time, ‘til we ran into Margo—“

“Margo’s here?!” Shirley, surprised to hear that, asked.

“She’s Lil’ Dog’s senior ops engineer,” Ariel replied, turning her head to face her,”like what I do aboard Unbroken, just the title’s different.” “I know what a senior ops engineer does, baby,” Shirley replied, smiling slightly to let her niece know she wasn’t mad with her. “I just thought….”

“I didn’t know what to think,” she corrected herself a moment later. “There were all the things Curtis and Daddy both were saying ‘bout her, what was going round the plant and round town, but….”

She sighed, shaking her head, Ariel adding:

“I know the plant’s closed down for good, heard that on the news.”

Aunt Shirley nodded, as the three of them kept walking.

“Didn’t have nobody to run it, after all hell broke loose four months ago,” she said,”and, after the Mids and the Avalons finally secured Ford’s Valley, they found everything had been wrecked…I mean somebody took a crowbar or something and just went at it.”

“Didn’t Texprint Northwest,” Ree spoke up,”file for bankruptcy?”

“’Bout a month ago,” Aunt Shirley answered her,”after they gave Fulton almost 33 gig for doing such a fine job…when they forced us out of the factories, the powers that be found out the jobs we supposedly made easy for ourselves were now too good for the sons of bitches.”

Now, that was a shock to Ariel, hearing her aunt curse like she just did, Shirley chuckling, explaining:

“Tasha’s rubbing off on me, more than I like to admit.”

Sighing, she added:

“I’m just glad she’s finally had the sense to realize Kishana is good for her…I thought she’d never….”

She stopped, trailing off, sighing, trying to sniffle away the tears flowing down her face.

“C’mon,” she said, walking quickly ahead of Ariel and Ree, the two of them running to keep in step with her.

2 MARCH, 2226 10:06:21 TAI

“—this peace he and those who own him speak of,” the Vice-President of His Senate said into the holocams in one of the America’s studios,”is nothing more than Naboth being led to the public stoning, nothing more than that!

They know nothing about peace, about cooperation, their hearts are poisoned with hate, war, bigotry and persecution, the only peace they and their bitch Guy Zellner wish to bring about is a peace where all of us are bloody dead by their filthy hands, that is all they know, all they are capable of—“

His Vice-President of Homeland Security, the Captain of His Host, joining the Man of the Waters, as He stood in the production room next door, watching Micheal prate.

“I assume everything is ready, Bradley,” He asked, Bradley replying,”the Leviathan loaded the last of the hyperspace torpedos into its launcher a few minutes ago; You have six thousand of those, plus another fifty thousand hyperspace tactical missiles, all awaiting Your command to be launched. I will personally command the wing of battleships sent to meet with Unbroken and her squadron; the Benjamin Zellner’s rigged to project a holo of You from his astrogation deck; it will, in every way, appear to be You, enough to lure her into the trap we have set.”

He nodded.

“You do understand,” said the Lord of all Lords to his Captain,”that you are to save her for Me, don’t you?!”

“Yes, Sir,” Bradley, the words catching in his throat like the bitter pill they were, replied, the He who was over all others adding,”you may use the others in front of them, reinforce in her how worthless and powerless she is before her true Lords...after that, after she is made to watch the destruction of her Commonwealth and all those others who have drunk the wine of her fornication…after she is thrown down, stripped naked, broken utterly to My will, made to hate what she is, what she has been slurping up all these years …you will be given her whore to use however you see fit.”

“You’ll have to settle for that,” He added.

“Yes, Sir,” Bradley replied, understanding only too well he had failed to be a father to his girl when he’d had the chance, and, in so failing, he had forfeited his rights in that regard to Him…Bradley equally understood that he could still be instrumental in her ultimate defeat, simply by using her whore as a daughter was meant to be used by her father.

“—retreat,” Micheal preached on in the next room,”at Twice-Born, retreat from the Homesteads, retreat from our courtrooms, retreat from our schools, our families, from the very values which make us who we are, retreat after retreat after ignominous retreat in the face of growing darkness and immorality disguised as redeemption and salvation, until the only option we seem to have left is thralldom in their resurrected New America!

Did the Bible not—“

2 MARCH, 2226 12:10:25 TAI

“—warn of this very thing?!” the holoimage of his man shouted above the roar of the pay grade ones in the studio audience to be heard, Lyle Hammond restoring order on cue.

Sam Brannen III, Grand Inquisitor of the New America, sitting next to his man in the green room, his bitch dog at their feet, as was meant to be, then watched himself calmly reply:

“This is liberal Republican thinking at its most basic, Lyle; their kind cannot coexist, know nothing about how to live in peace with us or even one another…there is no word for ‘brotherhood’ in their language, none for ‘sisterhood,’ either, all the P.C. masquerading as scholarly research to the contrary.

We have one last chance to realize our long-held dream of a true human community, a dream thwarted time and again by the hateful and small-minded, by those who know peace and unity for us mean the end for them, that a society in which all men live in true equality is the death of them, because, without their laws, without their control of the media and the schools, without all the lies they have told themselves and forced us to believe as well…the kind of society where is nothing is impossible for those willing to lift themselves up by their bootstraps and work for what they get will be pure poison to all the lazy people who have no one to blame for their intrinsic and utter worthlessness but thems—“

“See?!” demanded the likeness of D. David Coors III leapt up from his chair, stabbing out with his finger at his man, screaming,”can’t you all see?! They offer bigotry and persecution in the guise of peace and love, just as they did two hundred years ago. Their idea of peaceful coexistence has always been to hunt down those who do not bear the mark of femininity, herd them into their camps and either mark them as their own or destroy them out of hand, because they cannot bear what is different, what is better than they will ever—“ “That was,” David, now Vice-President of Civil Affairs, remarked, stomping the little howler into the carpet simply because he had the right to,”over the top, now that I’ve had a chance to view it for myself.”

“It still serves our purpose,” Brannen observed, aiming a swift kick at his bitch’s tits, barking out an order for her to stay face down, ass up at their feet.

“No,” their guest, now merely a Senator from the American State of Hong Kong, reminded them both. “It serves his purpose.”

Taking a long drag from the two-hundred year old Cohiba in his hand, slowly exhaling, watching the smoke float in the air, as he shifted position in the decadently plush recliner at Brannen’s right, Heathcoate Saint John repeated what he’d just said.

“It took us two hundred years,” the former Hong Kong prime minister remarked,”to recover from the almost-lethal combination of John McCain’s arrogance, Wellington Mara’s hubris and Jesse Ventura’s utter stupidity…if the reports are correct, and I’ve no doubt they are, gentlemen, we won’t have two centuries to undo all the damage he is inflicting upon the Work.”

“A little over six years,” David whispered.

“I believe the date given by our researchers,” Saint John said, putting his feet up on the fat ass of Brannen’s nasty little girl,”was 11 August, 2232,” the former Hong Kong prime minister slapping that ass hard with the sole of one of his three-hundred sterling Armani leather shoes,”precisely six years, five months, ten days from now.”

“If things,” Brannen, also putting his feet up on his fat bitch, reminded him,”were to continue along their present vector.”

“The present vector, at the time,” he added,”being far different from the one he’s been allowed to plot for all of us, beginning with the destruction of Rover Four.”

“The point is,” the Grand Inquisitor of the New America then said, before he could indulge in the luxury of assigning blame,”time is not in our favor; we either move against him now, or we’re dead, buried and forgotten, and it may not even take six and a half years to do it.”

“While they,” Saint John, slapping that ass again with his shoe, spat out,”live.”

“That is unacceptible,” he said, taking another long drag from his cigar, blowing more smoke into the air, looking at it before finally assuring the other two men:

“Whatever resources I have are at your command.”

2 MARCH, 2226 13:00:00 TAI

The Union Colors and the Commonwealth Tricolor overlapped one another atop the casket.

At the point where they met, his fourth Black Star, the words JOHN 15:13 engraved in blue serifs on the black monomolecular carbon…his holo, shown in dress reds, floating overhead, ten women in Commonwealth Forces dress reds standing guard all round, their M3s, M5s and M6s at the ready, their eyes staring three hundred meters ahead.

As were Jay Todman‘s.

Had it only been four months, he asked himself, since I helped bury his brother on Cor Leonis?! He sighed…Angelique and Rebekah’s memorial service was tomorrow morning at sunrise, just before the Commonwealth Legislature convened to consider—and, hopefully reject—Guy Zellner’s offer of peace…the cease-fire that had been in effect since yesterday afternoon was still holding, not a single sneak attack anywhere along front lines stretching over 2,000 light years from Earth in all directions.

That would change, any number of possibilities as to what form that change would take, none of them good for his people, their allies and the women who the enemy had sworn to destroy before the darkness came for all of them.

Carson had tried to tell him that was what their Work—what Jessi had been murdered trying to expose—had always been all about, but he hadn’t listened, he had to hear that from Derreg himself, before he’d gone to the gallows.

All about this….

“Jay,” Mordy Blum’s voice rasped behind him.

“Mordy,” Jay replied, sighing again.

“Again,” he remarked bitterly,”we dance this…little dance.”

“Fucking smokes fat bone,” Mordy observed in reply.

“Sorry,” he added, after a pause,”I couldn’t make it to John’s memorial service, Dauntless was…. ”

“Yeah,” Jay replied, nodding his head,”I know.”

“How’s Lennie taking this,” he asked.

“She hasn’t slept since we got back,” Mordy told him,”she was in the War Room, when I left, waiting for the hammer to fall; Dauntless is at Orbital Facility Bravo, undergoing upgrades to all her systems, including the installation of the new tachcomm generator, none of the flight crew’s left the ship… except Lennie and me, of course…I’ve been promoted, field marshal….nothing special, just SOP, since Lennie’s Chief of Staff now, and Gia Stedmann’s….”

He didn’t have to say anything more…Gia was…had been…Defiant’s intelligence officer, transferring from the Unbroken after Angelique had retired thirty years ago, Mordy and she were good friends.

Not any more, though….

Not, Jay thought, sighing one more time, any more.

2 MARCH, 2226 13:05:21 TAI

“…so,” Annesha said, catching her breath after nearly laughing it all away,”he keeps going ‘hmmm, Curtis, episode of Teen Titans, Curtis, episode of Teen Titans,’ before taking one look at Curtis’ ugly face, turning back round and saying,’ so, episode of Teen Titans, what’s your take on van Gripstra’s Revised Laws of Relativity?’”

Amid laughter, Tasha Gipson, sitting on the carpet between Kishana Winslow’s legs, her head leaned back against her, commented,”that him, all right.”

“I bet Daddy,” Ariel Dixon, sharing the recliner with her lover, chuckled,”was pissed.” “Probably,” her little sister Margo, sitting in the broken-down old rocking chair by herself, remarked,”wanted to cut him.”

“He didn’t strike me,” Stevie, sitting on the fireplace with her hand in Jami’s lap, said,”as the type with enough brains to figure out which end of a laser cutter to use.”

“You met—“ Ariel started to ask, Jami answering,”yeah, baby, just after Rahman Deas had finished scrawling his X on the Tau Ceti Accords, and Angelique had commed to let me know Nana had…. ”

She trailed off, Ariel’s aunt Shirley, one of Carson’s closest friends when they’d worked at the plant together, filling the silence with,”I figured he always had to have John the Bottle do his cutting for him.”

Jabbing a finger out at her, Annesha laughed and told her,”that was what I was just about to say.”

“Like Daddy,” Jami said, wiping a tear from her face,” he had the indecency to show up at Uncle Carson’s, geeked out of his fucking excuse for a mind, talking shit about Nana, fucking laughing in his face….”

“It took both her uncles, Stevie, Micki Phillips, Harriet, Kyra, Ryla, me, Jay Todman, old Ben,” Celina Albright, Unbroken’s intelligence officer, sitting crosslegged by the HV projector, spoke up,”and Mindy’s Ben, to pull her off the fugly bugger, but not before she beat his sorry Yanker cocksucking ass into the ground—“

“She left her daddy and Keith,” Annesha commented, chuckling herself,”to Carson—and his cat— the day before…Stephan had enough brains not to show his face round here—“

“I figure he still servin’ his time on Nasty Hank,” Tiger Morrison, sitting in the chair by the window, said,”when all that happen…you, him and Jay all put a hurtin’ on that bastid 28 year ago.”

“Lucky old Gotchanow didn’t blow what passes for his brains out,” Zeke Golden, standing behind the chair, said. “He’s pretty unforgiving of fuckups, and what happened was one hell of a fuckup.”

“If he hadn’t been poppin’ Marc Coleman in the ass—” Tasha commented, Kishana giving her lover(finally, Annesha thought to herself, praise Jesus)a squeeze, speaking loud enough to be heard above the laughter,”speaking of that, I remember the time you grabbed Carson’s butt when he was bent over the trash can that night.”

“I didn’t hear ‘bout that,” Annesha said, Shirley trying to tell her what had happened, Tasha insisting she’d just “been playin’,” Kishana telling Annesha,”it was about a couple months after Tasha started working on the packing line, Carson was bent over the recycling bin, trying to hunt down a transit, something like that, and Tasha just come up behind him and grabbed hard—“

Tasha tried hiding her face, Annesha commenting,”it was a nice ass, wasn’t it, baby?”

Laughter all round, Tasha laughing in spite of being embarassed, Annesha adding,”it’s all right, I used to grab it all the time, that’s what my wife-girlie was there for….”

She didn’t care if it was appropriate right now, they had always had their reasons to play round like that(to a point), and—

And, Tasha told her why:

“It was his way of letting you know he trusted you.” “Yeah,” Annesha whispered, sniffling, turning towards the fireplace, finding herself looking with Jami over to where Celina was sitting, then back towards the kitchen, before patting Stevie on her left knee, telling her,”baby, I’ll be right back,” before getting up.

2 MARCH, 2226 13:11:30 TAI

The rain and the clouds made the dark even darker, a flash of lightning here and there, the lights in the neighbors’ houses next door and down the road providing some illumination.

Her chief flight surgeon sat in a wicker chair facing the back windows of what used to be the screen porch, before Auntie ‘Neesha and Uncle Carson had fixed it up some years back…they’d exchanged letters and comms, even though she’d hadn’t set foot one on this shithole planet between Nana’s funeral and Rover Four being blasted out of the sky almost four months ago….

Ryla sighed heavily, still staring out at the rain coming down hard, the commander of the Unbroken looking over her chief medico’s shoulder at the MMOD she was turning over in her hands…the report from the Defense Staff back on Cor Leonis, Ryla had to get SGCF’s approval to even try what she’d found in Marilois Lester’s notes on Carson, and she had to brief the Defense Staff every couple weeks, check up on him, let MedServices Arm have people check up on both of them; the investigation by the Defense Staff was simply standard proceedure, Jami had doubted they’d find fault with Ryla’s research or her methods, she was by the book, one hundred ten percent.

“Doesn’t really fucking matter,” Ryla creaked out, voice choked with mucous and grief.

“What doesn’t, baby?” Jami asked.

A long pause, before Ryla whispered:

“Mordy Blum brought this by just after Hummingbird III,”Dauntless’ Mark V Greyhawk utility spaceplane,”touched down this morning…Chief Kaplan…Lennie asked him to do it as a favor to her….”

If they’d decided she had been at fault, it would’ve been a Commonwealth Constabulary secure transport and not Dauntless’ intelligence officer sent after Ryla…still….

“It’s their finding that I did everything like I was supposed to down the line,” Ryla whispered, chuckling. “While I might have missed the most basic goddamn thing, so did they and some of the best doctors, epidemiologists and geneticists in JMC soil—all of whom went over that research three times like a Topaz—so they couldn’t fault me for that, they understood that I couldn’t just….”

“Let him go without a fight,” Jami whispered, laying her hands gently on her friend’s shoulders.

“You’re a doctor,” she added,”and his friend, and you were doing exactly what you were supposed to have done.”

“Giving him hope I had no right to give?” Ryla asked bitterly.

“Giving him a chance to live, baby,” Jami said quietly,”if only for a little while.”

“It fucking sucks,” Ryla whispered.

“Yes, it does, baby,” Jami told her, nodding her head, blinking back her own tears, telling her friend and chief flight surgeon,”your wife needs you right now, and you need her.

C’mon.” 2 MARCH, 2226 14:02:11 TAI

It was about this time she would’ve called the store if she wasn’t already here…then, she would’ve called Hartley Bridge and 1086 from the office here, see how bad their sales had been, listen to whoever was on the other end whine, before she ran around counting down everyone’s drawer, doing the 2/2s, making sure the pulls were done right….

Sunni Pate sighed as she sat beside Calvin’s usual spot at the low counter of 464, sipping her coffee, taking a nibble of chicken sandwich, the place mostly empty save for a couple of Commie Forces standard infantry, still in their greys, four or five Mids from the cooperative, four in the middle booth—two couples—on the stretch end, one—short reddish-brown hair, wearing wire-rimmed glasses—off by herself on the high counter, the fourteen to twenty-one waitress—another new face—scuttling about behind the line, trying to find something to do, while the grill op…Kelly Bullwinkle, who used to work for Pam Snyder up in Fayettville, before all hell had broken loose.…she was a hard worker, a good cook and a good waitress, Sunni had been trying to get her to come down here, she never had enough people working for her actually worth a damn.

And, she asked herself, just whose goddamn fault was that, baby?

Another sigh, Sunni looking round for her cigarette case, realizing, again, that she’d stomped it flat last night, when she’d driven Jami and Stevie down from New Whitehorse….

Sunni sipped her coffee…about time for David to show up to tie up one of her booths with a cup of coffee and plate of jackapple pie which lasted for seven hours with the son of a bitch, who made it a habit to invite either one or both of the girls on the floor(and sometimes the guys, too, he was like all the rest of them….)to either sit across from him so he could stare down their cleavage, or sit next to him, so he could put his fucking hands all over them while talking all the time about how bad women were.

The new girl’s “is everything okay, ma’am?” snapped her back to here and now, the waitress— Kenzie, not Kim—apologizing for startling her.

“’Sall right, baby,” Sunni said, smiling, making the connection.

“You’re Kelly’s girlfriend, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am, but—“

“Sunni,” Lori Pollard said, Sunni turning round to face her,”used to be the district manager here, been with Moot House twenty years.”

“Finally,” she added, grinning, Sunni finding it hard to get over just how good she looked with her hair tied back and in that neatly-pressed earth-toned business suit she was wearing,”got off on good behavior.”

She then laughed that annoying little laugh of hers, Sunni commenting,”well, look at you, all dressed up, neat as a pin…why couldn’t you do that when you were working for me?”

“I didn’t own the store then,” was Lori’s reply, Sunni going “do what?!” in reply.

“Miz Lori,” Kenzie explained, making things as clear as mud,”and Miz Amy B. both own this store, Hartley Bridge and 1086.”

“When did this happen?” Sunni asked, Kelly walking up to the three of them, saying,”wasn’t too soon after the Commie Forces rolled up in here, was it?” “Just after the recall elections, baby,” Lori replied, telling Sunni,”Me and Amy had been saving up the money for a while to open up a place of our own for a while—“

“Everybody,” Sunni complained, but only half-seriously,”always thinks they can do a better job than me.”

”—and Microsoft,” Lori continued explaining, after another annoying laugh,” had pretty much abandoned this store after what happened with Papa Abraham, so we put our money into fixing 464 up… Amy Smith—“

“No relation!” both Sunni and Lori said at the same time, Lori returning to the subject at hand,”anyway, Dunkie,” their nickname for the Amy with the same last name as Sunni’s,” Penny, Miz Sarah, Mister Charles and Miz Wilma, Annesha and her old man—“

“Carson?!” Sunni asked. “I mean I knew Annesha had money to burn, even with the gender penalty and Wal-Mart’s usual bullcrap taking a chunk out of her paycheck, but—“

“He had his pension,” Lori said,”plus his mama’s retirement and about three, four and a half meg in stock in the Mids’ cooperative, plus the money he was making off the C-notes he held—the Commies make for one hell of a return on investment—man was making some mad cheddar.”

She sighed, swallowing, continuing with her explanation:

“Anyway, when the new government declared everything Microsoft had in their zone of control to be a prize of war a couple weeks back, the other two stores came up for sale—Seiyu and Commonwealth ASDA don’t do restaurants it seems—and we bought them, cleaned ‘em out, put in the best people we could find that still wanted to work in a Moot House, made a few improvements—“

“I saw the holographics last night,” Sunni remarked, her nose picking up the distinct smell of something being deep-fried in oil.

Except Moot House didn’t do deep-frying.

“How did you guys get a deep-fryer—“ she started to ask.

2 MARCH, 2226 14:06:01 TAI

“We didn’t,” Mama explained to Sunni Pate, just as Senior Astrogator Khryste Pollard and her fiancé, Captain Jillian Pollock, came through the door, the fifteen-year old girl in the cook’s apron and visor singing out,”hello!” the instant she heard the inside front door squeak open, Khryste looking at the pot of french fries sizzling in peanut oil on top of the two-eye burner.

“Hello,” the other fifteen-year old girl, her uniform, tie, apron and headscarf all done up MHM, as she turned to face the two of them, Mama turning, saying,”hey, baby,” meeting her oldest daughter as she came down the stretch end, hugging her warmly.

“You look good,” she said, as Khyrste just as warmly hugged her mama back, holding her by her arms as she said,”so do you, Mama.”

“Where’s Amy?” she asked.

“Hartley Bridge,” Lori replied,”we’d both just come from the funeral home….”

Khryste said, just as Mama trailed off,”yeah, we were…just...on our way over there…stopped by….” She sighed, sniffling down the tears which came, her wife to be taking her grey-gloved left hand in her right and giving her a reassuring squeeze.

“Stopped by,” Khyrste started over,”to visit Krista’s marker before running up there,” Mama whispering,”yeah, me and Amy stopped by to see her for a few minutes on our way back.”

Nodding, Khryste said,”we wanted to stop by her uncle’s place, see how the Boss and the S.A. were both holding up, decided not to, not right now at least, whole bunch of folks were just rolling up in there.”

“Half the bloody planet it seemed like,” Jilly spoke up, Mama turning to the others, telling them,”hey, y’all, this is my oldest, Khryste and her fiancé, Jillian. Y’all know Sunni, this is Kelly,” she pointed out the girl in the cook’s apron,” and her girfriend Kenzie.”

“Your mama,” Kelly said, Khryste and Jilly each shaking her hand,” told us a lot about you, Khryste.”

“Yeah,” Kenzie said, shaking hands with Jilly and Khryste,”finally glad to meet you and your fiancé.”

“You guys want something to eat?” she then asked, Khryste and Jilly sitting down at the two- seater opposite the backline from the low counter.

“Coffee,” Jilly said.

“Same here,” Khryste told Kenzie, entering that onto her holopad, Kelly going back over to her grill, flipping burgers and pork chops, pulling the wire basket inside the pot out of the hot oil, cutting the fire off underneath it.

“We ate before we left New Whitehorse,” Jilly then said,”place called DeLano’s. across from where the Capitol used to be.”

“I’m surprised,” Sunni spoke up,”it’s still standing.”

“’Bout the only thing in New Whitehorse that is,” Khryste said, Kelly remarking,”they just now got 75 opened up all the way, they’re still clearing and patching up the streets, only the areas round the starport’s and the University’s anywhere near put back together, crews are working round the clock on the rest of the city, but their best guess puts reconstruction at anywhere from a year to eighteen months.”

“That’s when,” Kenzie said, pouring two cups of coffee from the pot on the stretch end,”the combat engineers and the civ contractors aren’t being ambushed and sniped at by street gangs and other lowlife pieces of shit still loyal to Guy Zellner and his mob; AFVC’s doing what they can, and the new government’s got National Police units helping out, but it’s still a mess, probably will be for a while.”

2 MARCH, 2226 14:09:50 TAI

“Yeah,” she heard the grill operator say, before telling her girlfriend that Lianne Nielsen’s double quarter cheese, double cheese, double capped, grilled buttered bun, hold the garden on two like one was ready, Kenzie telling Kelly “thank you!” before rushing over to the sandwich board, picking up the platter with the two cheeseburgers, laying it down in front of Li at the same time she printed up her ticket and laid it face down on the napkin dispenser in front of her, taking Li’s nearly empty glass of cherry-vanilla Corona Real, no ice, and recharging it, Li telling her thanks as she took the glass back from her, looking at the ticket, automatically checking the menu holoprojected in front of her, nodding her head, reaching in the right thigh pocket of her suit for her wallet, Kenzie telling her,”I’ll take it at the register as soon as you get through eating, ma’am,” like she was supposed to, Li telling her that was fine. Picking up one of her sandwiches, holding it in her hands and looking at it a few minutes, sighing…least everything that should’ve been said between them had been, they’d talked for hours after she’d beat his ass at MegaMechaWars four months ago, not nearly enough time to make up for 34 years’ of silence between two people who had been best friends, until….

She took a huge bite from the double quarter in her hands, cheese, mushroom and meat juices dripping onto the gauntlets of her suit…not Moot House’s usual brand of quarter patties, but she figured Rogers wasn’t about to send their AG lorries into the JMC zone of control….

Not that it mattered, these tasted a whole better, a great deal jucier, that was for damn skippy… she’d just left the funeral home, everybody and mother’s brother coming and going out of the viewing room; she’d run into Mordy on the way out, talked with him for a while, left Diandra, Charlie Previn, Tiger Morrison, Jay Todman and Zeke Golden there, she’d probably see them all when she headed over to Carson’s house later on.

If she decided to go there…too goddamn many people, she’d never gotten comfortable being around them, not even when she’d been the drummer for the Horses or left wing for the Silver Knights before that, probably why she’d moved around so much to begin with, why she’d rather spend her time as far away from even Mintaka Base as Lil’ Dog could take her….

Though, she thought to herself, carefully chewing and swallowing her food, like I told him once, out there’s not nearly far enough away sometimes….

All the times….

She nodded her head absently, chasing the bite of burger down with a swallow of Yanker bug juice—she didn’t believe in sissy sticks—thinking she could’ve just as easily climbed back aboard Lil’ Dog and blasted back towards Mintaka and points west—the dragons she didn’t know infinitely more preferrable to the people she knew only too well—when Zeke had commed from Stipe Station last night, just when she’d been about to lift ship from the Dysonian named after Carson’s niece and put the human worlds behind her one more time….

Another sigh, before taking another bite of the sandwich in her hand…seemed either business and general unhappiness were in cahoots to keep dragging her back to this shithole she’d thought she’d put behind her, the month of November especially…it hadn’t even been a day or so after she’d gotten back to Mintaka Base—after nearly being blasted out of the sky by the Coast Guard and the Third Shock Army over the Sea of Martinez—when John Keller had commed, let her know Dunstan was dead and gone at Zellner’s fucking hands…she’d gotten back to Mintaka from that, only to find an e-mail from Tiger waiting, letting her know what John had to do to save over a hundred thousand people he hadn’t even known, what it had cost…she’d run into Carson on Tom O’ Bedlam then, they didn’t get the chance to say anything other than “hey” back at one another, before they’d both said goodbye to their mutual friend and she’d lifted ship again….

Lanier Station had been another mail run from home office, this trip to home office from Mintaka Base having been to drop off a Le Neuf film crew doing a docko on ResExDev and its people…last time, it had been to ferry April O’Hara, the deputy chief of research and exploration, to the cooperative’s assembly, she just had to do things face to face, online wasn’t fucking good enough for her, oh, no....

She shook her head as she thought this…she’d really nothing against April, just wasn’t Li’s way of doing business, face to face….

The HV over the jukebox directly behind her intruded on her thoughts, Li reading lips well enough to see Kenzie mouthing “you son of a bitch,” at Viacomm Headline News talking utter and complete crap, Kelly tensing up on the grill, spatula shaking in her whitening left hand.

2 MARCH, 2226 14:15:06 TAI “—in the murder trial of fifteen-year old Heather Savidge and her seventeen year old lesbian lover Jennifer Duncan,” Fox Savage’s handsomely-untrustworthy face said as it floated over the workstation terminal in their home office, Grey Starling, Solicitor-General of the Commonwealth—now its Deputy Minister as well—balling her hands into impotent, shaking fists, this close to snatching up her M2 from the bedroom and blasting the fucking thing over and over until it could tell the worlds no more fucking lies.

“Fuckin’ lick ‘em, goddamn lickylick!” their Heather Savidge screamed at the poor Sally forced into the role of Heather’s mum, lasewhipped and beaten and bullied into licking the bare feet of their fucking Jennifer Duncan, their Heather screaming for her to tell their Jennifer,”who’s the fuckin’ bitch, huh?!”

“Answer me, ya nasty piece of poot!” their Heather screamed, tearing into poor Sally’s bare bottom with the lasewhip in his hand, the holo splitting, closing in on both the actress’ bottom and the right arm of the fucking drag queen playing Heather, on the words “I’M THE MAMA AND THE FUCKIN’ DADDY ROUND HERE!” carved into that arm, as it whipped Sally into telling their Jennifer,”I am.”

“Fuckin’ say it to Her,” screamed their Heather, tearing into his victim’s naked flesh even more viciously,”bitch!”

“I-i am, Mistress,” said poor Sally, her voice trembling, their Jennifer grabbing her by her hair, forcing her face into his bioplastic crotch, the holo, still running, fading ointo the background, Savage now sitting with Sam fucking Brannen, the goddamn piece of Yanker fucking garbage who’d equated cold- blooded murder with fucking trading cards, Savage introducing the miserable dicksucker as the Grand Inquisitor of the New America and an expert on female psychology.

“Just as Jami Lanier expressed her hatred for her mother,” the rotten cocksucker had the unmitigated fucking gall to say to her,”by subjecting her to acts of female sexuality before m—“

“Off!” snapped the Solicitor General of the Commonwealth, on her feet, stalking the downstairs rooms of their house, hands shaking as she stormed out onto the patio overlooking the planetary ocean, a deepdiver singing to another off in the distance, her skin changing color as she keened a sad, soulful wail, her companion answering in kind, Grey grasping the railings until her hands ached, and she kept holding on.

Even for her, it was easy to forget just what her people were fighting against…what they had to fight against, no matter how hurt or tired they were, no matter how many of their friends fell along the way…what the two of them had between them was not some distortion of the facts but what women who loved one another actually did…the real Jennifer Duncan and Heather Savidge never had that chance, probably never would, they were both so wounded deep inside that they were afraid of one another.

She held on as she shook…her dear wife was asleep now, passed out on the sofa in the living room after driving herself beyond her limits again…they both had their ghosts to contend with, and they’d both lost good, close friends yesterday….

And, her wife’s voice whispered in her mind, Grey feeling her arms wrapped gently round her, holding on to her for dear life, the love of a good woman helps in facing both, always does…I shouldn’t have forgotten that, shouldn’t have gone swanning off and—

Each of us, Grey sadly thought back, gently patting her wife’s hands, Amelia kissing her hair before leaning her head against hers, has her way of reminding herself just what it is we have to fight against.

And, she added,bringing those hands closer against her, holding on to them, why.

—endit— You’d Help Me More By Not Giving In “You tell your governments the only man to survive Zha’ha’Dum sends this message: We can end this, not just for now, not for the next thousand years, but forever! We can fight them, and we can win, but only if we do it together!

Are you with me?!”

Babylonian Productions, “Whatever Happened to Mister Garabaldi,” from the series Babylon 5

3 MARCH, 2226 08:08:11 TAI

“—the new CEO of Microsoft’s Wal-Mart Stores Division,” Francis Mulloy, late of Terranova Media Syndicate said from somewhere in hyperspace,”had this to say:”

“These outrageous, slanderous,” a man Squadron Leader Jameison Sue Lanier recognized from ten years ago said, as his clean-shaven(to make him appear less dishonest than he actually was)holoimage floating in front of the commander of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken as she sat on the sofa in the living room of what would always be Angelique and Rebekah’s house in Sheridan,” fabrications on the part of disgruntled, disloyal, lazy scheming females who wanted to turn this company to their evil ends cannot go unanswered. How dare they accuse us—accuse me—of not only choosing to destroy one of our stores for personal gain, but to end the lives of over forty thousand innocent people and dedicated, hard- working Wal-Mart associates! I have been with this company nearly three decades, starting out as a lowly cart pusher, working my way to where I am today—“

“Developing,” Jami said nastily,”a taste for fucking tubesteak in the process,” Bruce Cabot shouting right over her:

“—I certainly don’t need to resort to tricks and treachery to make an honest profit, unlike certain uppity black bitches who like to point fingers and accuse good men of wrongdoing, siccing lesbian sex killers on those who won’t play ball with her and her gang, who, time and again, misuse the influence of this company to get Wal-Mart customers onto welfare and food stamps so that they could slake the greed brainwashed into them by lying, liberal Vargas ad campaigns, no matter how many of their own subhuman kind they have to step on like the cockroaches—“

“I’ve heard enough,” Jami, standing up, fussing with her Commonwealth Forces dress reds, said, the HV switching itself off, as she looked at herself in the mirror…fucking thing never hung right on her, and they were supposed to have been tailored to fit…she unpinned and repinned the Black Star on her left breast, underneath Unbroken’s old red geranium unit patch—the one that should’ve stayed official— adjusting her grey uniform beret, looking for a second at the cloisonné blue and gold rank badge, four stripes below the winged sword of the Aerospace Arm, eleven black stars arrayed in a circle round it.

Adjusting the beret again, even though it would never look right, no matter how—

What the fuck?!

Either she was cracking up or…that was her guitar playing, her voice, which had to be coming from behind her, but wasn’t….

“…in the highways, in the hedges, in the highways, in the hedges,” she sang, while doing the dishes(she did her own dishes, that was just freakin’ wild),”in the highways, in the hedges….” “…I’ll be somewhere,” Jami found herself singing softly, not even thinking of questioning what the fuck was going on,”workin’ for my Lord.…”

3 MARCH, 2226 09:15:00 TAI

CBC, FedNewsNet, AustraliaHyperNews, all the JMC feeds, were running live coverage of the memorial service set to begin fifteen minutes from now.

Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon, in temporary command of the Unbroken, sat on the sofa on the relief deck, going over reports on the ship’s status, particularlly on the installation of the tachcomm jenny, and the improved integration of the secondary Rittermark field coils into the ship’s spaceframe, so all those coils leading from the Rittermark generator to the AG drive, AGAMs and railguns wouldn’t be such a freakin’ rat’s nest.

She also glanced at the latest specs from the Dauntless Development Team….they were tightening the containment field parameters on both antimatter reactors by 80%, enough to boost the energy liberation rate to somewhere round 96%, tripling each reactor’s energy output, and they were linking the shield generator into the force beam generator to boost the strength of the AG pulses fired through the emitters during hyperspace combat.

She nodded her head…they knew what they were doing, and Indigo would be all right on solo watch; Ariel just had to remember to come up here and relieve her in eight, so she could spend some time with her sister, she couldn’t be all work all the freakin’ time, that would just….

Make her as bad off as you, Ree’s voice tickled her mind.

“Yeah, it would,” Ariel, chuckling, smiling, said, turning to face her lover and second, Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Rhiannon Moseley, as she leaned in the hatchway of the inter-section connector between the relief deck and HabOne.

“Where’s Margo?” Ariel asked, stretching herself, as she got up from the sofa.

“Where else?” Ree replied, grinning ear to ear.

“Drive room?” Ariel said, not asking.

“Drive room,” Ree replied, sighing.

3 MARCH, 2226 09:18:06 TAI

Margo Dixon floated up by the AG shield generator, watching the Snowbird techs hard at work upgrading Unbroken’s systems…she’d expected to find a little more room than Lil’ Dog’s own drive room had, but this one was just as cramped, generators, reactors, wiring, coils and feed lines shoehorned into here….

Guess, she thought to herself, being a flight engineer’s the wrong line of work for anyone who’s claustrophobic, huh?

She sighed, absently nodding her head…her sissy had found someone, that was good, damn sight better than she could say about herself…or poor Ronnie, she never even had a fucking chance, that bastard son of a kike Jeremy Blum wouldn’t fucking give her one once he’d found out she was going to lay it on the line, tell Kasey everything….

…she jumped halfway out of her skin, when she turned from the workstation terminal in the Brat’s room and saw Margo standing there. “B-baby, please, you gotta keep this a secret, don’t let no one—“

“I won’t, Sissy,” Margo said, laying her hand on her sixteen-year old sister’s shoulder,”I promise….”

…some job she’d fucking done of keeping that promise…she’d never told Ariel the truth, couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone just how she’d let her sister down, how she’d ended up helping that bastard break what little spirit Kasey had left in her….

Another sigh, Margo refusing to give in to self-pity, staring at the techs through the scrim of tears she cursed herself for even shedding…she didn’t deserve to feel sorry for herself any more than she had a right to have anyone close to her, that was what she got for betraying Ronnie to that worthless son of a bitch in the first—

The fuck?!

“Don’t do that!” she snapped at her older sister, after she’d managed to climb down off the ceiling and get her breathing under some sort of control.

“Baby, I’m sorry,” Ariel replied,”I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s all right, Sissy,” Margo said, taking one last deep breath to calm everything down, putting her hand on Ariel’s right shoulder to let her know she wasn’t really mad at her, just scared, was all.

Just scared….

“…it’s okay, you know,” he whispered hoarsely, standing next to her as she stood in front of her friend’s coffin, rain pouring down outside the awning, trying to keep it all in, always having to keep it all in, always having to act like nothing was wrong, everything was fine, God help her if she shed tear one for — She nearly jumped out of her skin when, hesitantly, he took her hand, whispered again.

“It’s okay to….”

3 MARCH, 2226 09:33:06 TAI

…cry.

So she cried, as she just stood there in the living room, watching CBC’s live coverage of the memorial service, the one white-hot sun rising up into the clear, cold, blue sky, eight Commonwealth Forces security troopers in dress reds snapping to attention in front of all those black-corded Commonwealth Tricolors on pedestals in the graveyard where they’d buried Dunstan…God, had it only been four months ago….

Annesha Griffin’s daughter Keisha held her mother’s left hand, her daughter-in-law Wendy holding her round her shoulders, Annesha leaning on both of them for support, blindly nodding her head, dryswallowing, trying to tell them both thank you, but she just couldn’t get any words out…it would’ve killed Carson to have been there, saying goodbye to another close friend, he’d lost so goddamn many, too goddamn many in the almost four months since Guy Zellner had started this miserable war…he and Angelique had been as close as—if not closer than—him and Jay Todman—there he was, near the front of the assembled mourners, the families of all those who’d died on the Defiant standing on the opposite side of the field…her and Carson had been so close, like the sister he’d lost and found again…it’d been bad enough when it had been that young sergeant, Shawn somebody, and Susan’s second-oldest, both killed the same day, their memorial services the day after, not even two hours apart…he hadn’t slept the whole damn night, just stayed up, trying to compose a letter to remember Shawn by, even knowing there wouldn’t be anyone to send it to, or so he’d thought, ‘til Jay Todman had talked with Francis Mulloy, found out there had been someone who’d cared, long time ago, that….

Annesha sighed, dryswallowed, as, one by one, people stood in front of the flags and mourners and honor guard and struggled to say a few words about the people they’d lost…not just Rebekah and Angelique, Angelique wouldn’t have wanted it that way, Annesha had known her well enough to know that….

“I’ll get it,” Keisha said, Annesha just now realizing the doorbell had ringing for some time, her daughter unlocking and opening the front door, Sunni Pate standing there in the rain, looking like she could use a hug right now.

Choosing to hold onto Annesha instead, whispering “hey, baby,” as she briefly hugged her neck and let go, looking her in the eye.

“Hey, yourself,” was all Annesha could think to say, Sunni stumbling out an explanation she didn’t need to—or have to—give:

“I-i would’ve dropped by yesterday, stayed a little while, I-i….”

“You’re all right,” Annesha, holding Sunni by her shoulders, told her.

“Keisha—“ she started to say, Keisha telling her,”I’ll go make us a fresh pot,” Sunni insisting that wasn’t necessary, she wasn’t going to stay long, didn’t want to impose, all that, Annesha and Wendy steering her over to the sofa and sitting her down, Annesha sitting down at the edge of the coffee table….

…running her fingers through his hair, gently grabbing hold of the back of his head—this was just play, she never wanted to come as close as she’d done that once to hurting him— smiling softly, as she whispered,“I’m gonna remind my girlie just what her mouth is there for,” gently pushing his face into her crotch, Carson, without hesitation, taking the head of her member onto the tip of his tongue, sliding off the sofa onto his knees, hands clasping her thighs, massaging them, as he lightly, gently, caressed her member, furitive little licks of the tongue….

Annesha sitting down on the coffee table, shivering, holding onto him to keep herself steady, stroking his hair, telling him to take it slow, laughing softly, trembling, ‘cause it wasn’t what the damn pornos said it was, it felt so good to be touched down there, even though gay girls—most women—really weren’t into oral, strictly clitoral—again, in spite of the pornos—and she would’ve stopped him if he’d tried taking it into his mouth…never, not that, not to him, not…ohh, daamn….

She came, Carson kissing her there, blowing on it, making her shake and go goosepimply all over, putting the pointing finger of her left hand against his lips, had to bring it to a close, because she could feel herself wanting to take advantage, and he’d let her, too, if that was the only way he could get her to trust him.

But that ran both ways, which was why she had to cut this short, whispering,“not good enough, wife girlie,” telling him she still had to punish him, even tho’ he was sorry for not pleasing her(even though he had, just part of the game was all), tousling his hair one last time before walking over to the chair in the corner of the room, sitting down, telling him to come crawling over to her, listening that part of her that still wanted payback whisper to her to just take him and do whatever, his kind wouldn’t—didn’t —hesitate to do the same damn thing to you or Keisha or Sunni or Jazz, you know that .

She ignored that part of herself, stroking Carson’s hair, telling him how bad he’d been tonight, asking him just what he expected her to do with him, her heart and soul telling her she could do whatever, she had the power(you certainly have the right, that part of her that still hurt from what had been done to her, to Jazz, to her own baby, to Jami and Sunni, poor Sunni….), Annesha pulling him onto his feet, into her lap, lifting his head up so he was looking her in the eye, smiling to let him know she was just playing, Annesha telling him some junk about wanting him to bring her the dildo she wouldn’t even have in the damn house to her, Carson telling her again, she could do whatever.

But, it wasn’t about that….

…and, in a way, it was about that, about being willing to be naked and vunerable and at the mercy of the one you loved, about risking everything on your simple faith in her never, ever, even thinking of taking advantage of that.

It was when Sunni had taken hold of her hand she’d realized she’d been stroking her left cheek, trying to brush away the tears, Sunni insisting she was fine, making Annesha just want to scream at her, shake her a little, tell her there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with just letting herself grieve for Jonni, it wasn’t just Annesha who’d lost someone close to her, she didn’t have to lock it all down for her sake or anyone else’s.

“Baby,” she whispered, giving Sunni’s hand a firm, gentle squeeze,”it’s okay, you hear me, it’s okay.”

“…if He calls me, I will answer, if He calls me, I will answer, if He….” she sang, trailing off, dish still in her hand, knowing someone else was in the kitchen with her.

“My mum Annelise sung that song to me, when I was a child,” she explained, still not turning round, her voice soft and sad. “She used to hold me in her arms, when I’d wake up in the middle of the night…no idea at all of the real terrors….”

3 MARCH, 2226 09:40:00 TAI

…waiting in the darkness to claim them all.

Angelique’s voice played in Jami’s head, even as she watched Amelia Seldin try and talk about her friends without breaking down, the commander of the Unbroken looking over at Stevie, tears glistening in the rising sun, as she tried holding it in, Jami squeezing her wife’s hand, letting her know she didn’t have to, that it was okay if she wasn’t strong all the time, she would be there to hold her up just as she’d held Jami up all those times without a word of complaint.

She glanced over to her left, at Harriet Mangione sagged against the right side of her wife, her eyes tightly closed, tears flowing freely down them, Jami patting her security forces commander gently on her right shoulder, nodding her head, turning back to Stevie, who leaned her head against her shoulder, letting her know she didn’t have to hold it all back, Jami nodding her head in reply, smiling bravely as she looking into her wife’s eyes.

Stevie smiling back in reply, the two of them turning back to the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, still stumbling over her own words, her right hand shaking as it balled itself into a fist, nothing at all like the woman full of fire and passion when she’d argued for intervention on the side of the Mids and the Homesteaders so soon after Rover Four had been blown out of the sky.

Hard to find the right words for people you care about, she thought, especially when you have to….

She trailed off, sighing, Stevie squeezing her hand, as the Prime Minister swam in her field of vision, the commander of the Unbroken starting to sniffle down her tears….

“…somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’ for my Lord,” she started singing again, finishing the dish she’d been washing, starting on another,”I’ll be somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’ for my Lord….” “…in the highways, in the hedges,” she found herself singing softly,”in the highways, in the hedges—“

“In the highways,” her wife sang with her,”in the hedges, I’ll be somewhere workin’ for my Lord.”

“When He calls me,” Kyra started singing, her voice ragged,”I will answer, when H e calls me, I will answer—“

“When He calls me,” Harriet, voice choked, joined in,”I will answer, I’ll be somewhere workin’ for my Lord.”

“I’ll be somewhere workin’,” Angelique and Rebekah’s oldest daughter, Squadron Leader Jasmyn Tilghmann-Gault, standing at Stevie’s right, started singing, her sisters Ellenor, Pippa, Magda, Andrea and Audrianna, all her nieces, joining in, “I’ll be somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’ for my Lord.”

Then, it was Prue and her wife’s turn to join in, as they stood to Kyra’s left:

“I’ll be somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’ for my Lord.” her aunt Amelia singing as well, in spite of her own pain and difficulty getting the words out:

“In the highways, in the hedges, in the highways, in the hedges, in the highways, in the hedges, I’ll be somewhere workin’ for my Lord.”

Angelique’s sister, Stevie’s mom, the DG of the Commonwealth Forces Intelligence Arm herself, gently clasping Jami round her shoulders, as even she sang in spite of her grief.

As they all were.

3 MARCH, 2226 09:46:09 TAI

“…I’ll be somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’ for my Lord,” everyone in DeLano’s sang out loud and in chorus with those gathered round the black-corded Tricolors representing all that was left of the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, her wife and the 68 other women who, in the end, had been the living embodiment of their ship.

Ariel’s sigh was heavy with grief, since she wasn’t really thinking about the PM or all those others on the Defiant, but about the losses closer to home, her Meemaw, her mama, her sister Ronnie… Meredith….

She wasn’t being fair to Ree or to those who’d lost people close to them on the Commonwealth Forces flagship, feeling sorry for herself, daring to still keep missing Meredith in spite of Ree being in her life…hell, Ree understood, but that was a limit to—

“It’s an old song, isn’t it?” Ree, sitting next to her in the corner booth farthest from the door, asked softly.

“It’s called ‘In the Highways,’ “ whispered Margo, sitting across from the two of them, picking at her bacon, egg and cheese sandwich and home fries, her back to the HV projector and the people in the restaurant singing,”…somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’, I’ll be somewhere workin’ for my Lord.”

“It’s a gospel song,” she added, every word being sung tensing her up worse,”from way back before the AWS…K-kay, my older sister Kay, taught it to Ronnie, she used to….” Sing it to you, Ariel thought, way Mama used to sing to us, before she….

Her turn to trail off, Ree taking her by her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze…Margo….

“I’m fine, Sissy,” her youngest sister whispered, taking Ariel’s other hand as it fidgeted on the table, Unbroken’s chief flight engineer whispering,”baby, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for y’all, I should’ve tried, once I was—“

Margo simply nodded her head, the waitress, singing softly to herself, coming by with the coffeepot, Ree putting her free hand over the cup, shaking her head no.

“I’ll take some more,” Ariel said, swallowing, trying to get her voice to sound somewhere near normal,”thank you.”

“Yeah,” Margo whispered, the waitress refilling both their cups, Ariel reaching for the sugar bowl by the windows looking out onto the charred skeletal remains of the Capitol and the adjacent Superior Court building.

“Might as well,” Ree chuckled, “pour the coffee in the bloody thing and drink that.”

“Oh, you’re funny,” Ariel, in spite of herself, joked back, Ree replying,”well, it’s true.”

Ariel just shook her head, grinning like an idiot…again, in spite of herself.

“You said yourself,” Ree chided, “grits aren’t good cold, luv,” adding,”do I have to nag the pair of you to get you both to eat something?”

“Yes, Mama,” Ariel joked, stirring the butter in her grits, adding a little more salt and pepper before taking a bite, Ree asking her,”now, who’s trying to be funny?”

“Swear to God, Margo,” she said, Margo nibbling at her sandwich way Aunt Shirley always nibbled at hers,”taking care of your sister’s a bloody full-time job.”

“But,” Ariel said, softly, laying her left hand on Ree’s right thigh,”with great benefits.”

“Mmm, hmm,” Ree, hand on Ariel’s, said, leaning her head on her left shoulder, nuzzling up to her as she was trying to eat her grits.

3 MARCH, 2226 09:50:01 TAI

Margo couldn’t help but smile, despite the way she felt…her sissy was the happiest she’d ever seen her, and, after everything, she deserved so very much to have someone in her life.

Ariel leaned her head up against Ree’s, the two of them cuddling up to one another, holding hands under the table, Ree blowing in Ariel’s ear, whispering,”the benefits are great, aren’t they?”

“Mmmm, hmmm,” Ariel whispered, eating another spoonful of grits, Margo taking another bite of her bacon, egg and cheese sandwich…it was good, she really wasn’t doing it or the home fries any justice by picking at them, but she wasn’t that hungry….

“You need to eat too, you know,” Ariel whispered to Ree, Ree picking up the bacon, egg and chutney sandwich from her plate, jackapple chutney dripping out of the grilled, buttered English muffin, taking a huge bite out of it, Ariel screwing her face as she watched the woman she loved eat the dripping, goopy, gooey mess, Ree telling her,”it’s good, you should try it.”

“Baby,” Ariel said, chuckling, “I don’t even wanna look at it.” “She used to eat all kinds of strange shit,” she said, turning to Margo now,”when we were in T- school together…like those damn peanut butter, marshmallow and pickle sandwiches she used to fix—“

“They’re good,” Ree insisted. “Just because it looks awful—”

“Baby,” Ariel countered, chuckling,”awful ain’t the word for it…just the memory of that marshmallow oozing out over these big, green-ass pickles, and that peanut butter—“ she shuddered mock- dramatically, adding,”visual I didn’t need.”

“Peanut butter?” Margo asked. “I thought there wasn’t any place you could grow peanuts any more.”

“Goddamn,” Ariel interjected,”baby, you could grow just about anything on Firestar…you never seen so much green in all your life…the view from space, when you first break out inside the aerospace corridor in New K…..”

“Tell you what,” she added, grinning ear to ear like a much-younger woman,”it’s a sight…you can’t even see where the cities are on that planet, no skyscrapers, no neon, not too much on the holographics department, though you might be able to see the glow of the sunflowers at night, not enough to block out the sky…sky just seemed so much bigger….”

She trailed off, Ree looking at her, Sissy gazing into the eyes of the woman she loved, whispering,”I didn’t always lock myself up in my room and work, you know?”

“I always worried that you did just that, luv,” Ree, free hand running itself through Ariel’s long, wavy black hair, caressing her cheek, whispered back.

Ariel, trembling for real this time, kissing her lover on her left cheek in reply, as she reached out and stroked her hair.

”…our song,” he whispered, his chest rattling, tears streaming down his face as well, as she let him take her in his arms and they began to dance in time to….

3 MARCH, 2226 11:38:20 TAI

“…misguided angel, hanging over me,” a woman dead and buried two hundred years before Annesha had even been born, sang, Annesha singing with her as she peeled and sliced potatoes for home fries,”Heart like a Gabriel, pure and white as ivory, soul like a Lucifer, black and cold like a piece of lead —“

Though, Annesha thought to herself, letting Margo Timmons sing the rest by herself, that wasn’t really true, he had an angelic soul, just, at first, all them demons in his head just got in the way of me seeing that…and all the snakes in mine, too….

…someone else screamed in her voice, calling him a bitch as she just hauled off and knocked him down on the kitchen floor, Annesha driving a foot into his chest, screaming for him to fucking stay down and take what was coming to him for being a bitch, looking round for something to shove in him, way they all always looked for something to shove in her when their own filthy, bloated, ugly fucking dicks weren’t up to the damn job…there, just right, just the damn thing, the dowel of the solid marble paper-towel holder, just long enough, big enough, heavy enough for her to shove up in that bootie and make it hurt and bleed way they always did her, way they’d fucking done Jazz. She screamed for her bitch to fucking get naked, walking over to the countertop, unscrewing the dowel, slapping it hard in the palm of her left hand as she turned back toward her piece of white ass, expecting it to not do right for her, to try and stand up and not be naked like she done told it to—

He had all his clothes off, even though he knew she wasn’t fucking playing with him, not this time…even though he’d been in the war, had two cybernetic limbs, killed God only knew how many folks, he was just laying there, no goddamn clothes on, waiting for her to do whatever to him, the part of her which had knocked him to the floor in the first place telling the rest of her to go on, do it, do it, fucking screw him ‘til he bleeding and sobbing on the damn floor….then take a laser cutter to him, cut that nasty fucking thing off him, fuck him with it, make him be the bitch and wear the fucking panties for a—

The rest of her, trembling, sick to her stomach by what she’d done, fell down onto her knees and took him in her arms….

…swearing to a God she didn’t even believe in anymore that she would give her own life to love, comfort and protect him from anyone who’d even think of doing him harm…and, especially, from himself, because he was still so sweet and innocent in spite of everything.

A warm, light touch of arms around her, as she sobbed….

…telling him over and over just how sorry she’d been for even thinking of doing that to him, cursing him for almost letting her do that, asking him why in the hell did he just lay there in the first place instead of fighting back.

Even though she knew that answer…Jazz had told him all about Li, about what he’d almost done to her when they were both coming up…why he’d always played around with Annesha like that…his misguided way of showing her how much he trusted her not to hurt him….

“…I know, baby,” Sunni whispered, holding on to her friend for dear life, Annesha’s own legs suddenly unable to hold her up,”I know…just…let it go…let it go.”

“Let it go,” she repeated, her own voice heavy with grief.

3 MARCH, 2226 13:00:00 TAI

She knew in her heart her sister wanted it this way.

Still, Donna Marie Rhoads, Director-General of the Commonwealth Forces Intelligence Arm, couldn’t help but feel wrong about just getting on with the job so soon after saying goodbye to Angelique, Rebekah and the 68 others aboard the Defiant.

She sighed, wiping her glasses, sniffling back tears, her sister’s voice, singing the song Mum had always sung to both of them in the middle of the night, when they were kids, waking up to find both their mothers exchanging silences over a pot of coffee in a near-darkened kitchen…something she did a lot herself, especially since Glo….

Another sigh…later, she could mourn for her wife and her sister…right now, she had to get on with the bloody job.

Like Angelique and Rebekah both would’ve insisted she do.

Turning her attention to the War Room’s master tactical holodisplay, she studied the returns from all the Drumbeater early-warning satellites scouring the entire known volume of hyperspace, from the tachyars of all the frigates and spaceplanes sent in every direction, all of them hunting for the same damn thing. The madman Guy Zellner and an end to his worthless existence.

It wouldn’t put an end to this war, she knew that…someone else would just rise up and take his place, put on his throne by the men who all too willingly conspired with one another in their work of genocide, while pretending the “little man” wasn’t able to do shit against the establishment he’d put into place to begin with…no, they would all have to die, it sickened her to even think such a thing, but it was either them or her people, and, by God, it was not going to be her people, not if she had a damn thing to say about it.

Zellner and Bauer were foaming at the mouth from opposite ends of the War Room, the rest of the Movie Board feeds between them, all of them…Toby X was slapping the bare bottom of a black woman forced to dance naked for him in the vid “Tip Drill,” the lowlife Yanker son of a bitch shoving wads of Phooie sterlings into her, a couple of men in the foreground quizzing the woman in question, makeup barely covering the bruises from where she’d been persuaded by their fists, their boots and their dicks to tell the lies that she’d wanted to humiliate herself live in 256-bit true color, that she’d do anything for money—even round up other naked women and organize them into groups named Stiletto to perform similar acts of degradation—that she was a “businesswoman” first and foremost.…that was when men weren’t telling more lies about two young women so traumatized they were afraid to even fucking look at one another, using queens and Sallies to lend creedence to not just lies being said about them, but the slanderous things they were now saying about any woman who’d ever even worked with them, being sure, of course, to drag Donna’s daughter in law into it…same with the miserable piece of shit who fucking stank of the blood of over forty thousand people, not only blaming Jami and her first love for all Microsoft’s Babylonian excesses, but Carson Selkirk’s widow as well, miserable bastard had no fucking decency, though she really shouldn’t have expected him to—

“Mum?” the voice of her oldest surviving daughter said tenatively, Donna—still shaking— turning round, warmly embracing Stevie, not ever wanting to let go, not after Cat had been taken from her…just her and Pam now, her youngest daughter Vincent Caine’s CPM, supervising the terraforming of YYGem’s sixth planet for New Karachi, they’d kept in touch on a daily basis….

Stevie warmly hugging her mother back, the two women letting go, holding on to one another’s shoulders as they looked each other in red-rimmed, puffy eyes.

“Where’s Jami?” Donna asked.

“She’s gone to see Harriet, see how she’s getting on,” Stevie replied softly, Donna nodding her head…Gia had transferred to the Defiant just after Angelique had stepped down and turned command of the Unbroken over to Elli, she’d been like family as well, her and Harlee, both of them hoping their daughter wouldn’t enlist, that she’d choose to do something far less dangerous, Carson’s brother Dunstan swearing up and down to both of them that he’d look after her, just before all hell had broken loose on Bearclaw Station twenty years ago.

“I have something for her,” Donna said, after a silence, removing the grey jewel box from a hip pocket on her slacks.

Stevie taking it in her hand, opening it up, whispered,”this is—was—was Aunt Angelique’s.”

“She signed off on your wife’s promotion just before she left Cor Leonis,” Donna whispered, Stevie remarking,”she wasn’t even comfortable being squadron leader…hell, she’s just now accepting herself as commander of the Unbroken, this….”

“We need her now more than ever, Stevie,” Donna replied simply, turning back to the master holodisplay.

“We so desperately need her now,” she repeated, staring into the slavering jaws of the beast Guy Zellner himself. 1 MARCH, 2226 13:06:19 TAI

“—that a minority of small-minded, narrow-thinking females, still mired in superstition,” He watched Himself say,”and ignorance, would actually be so hateful and spiteful as to hold back—“

“—the liberal Democrats,” the Vice-President of His Senate said from another holoprojection, “and the breeders who dominate them utterly whisper their lies of peace, coexistence, community—things they know nothing about—so we can be tricked by them into resurrecting Babylon, into helping them finish the work they started two hundred—“

Lamar turned away from HV, looking over at His beautiful young man, sitting next to the Father of Nations on the sofa in the parlor of His mansion, one firm, strong, masculine hand grabbing the hair of the animal sent to amuse him and holding it tight, as he forced it to pleasure him, another firm hand spanking that ass hard, punishing it for even thinking of struggling against the he which was ordained by Him and by the Nature which was His bitch to dominate its subhuman kind for all eternity.

The Man of the Waters nodding His head in approval, smiling….

…as he shoved that cooter head in the fucking toilet, shoving himself as hard as he could up in her other fucking cooter, mashing shitter against shitter as it dared struggled against what the goddamn little bitch fucking had coming to her for telling him fucking no, telling him she was gonna go to the fuckin’ TSID on his ass, on his ass, the fucking grandson of Benjamin fuckin’ Zellner himself, and just what the fuck was she except some nasty-ass piece of fuckin’ pootie-poot his dyke bitch of a fuckin’ mama fuckin’ made his daddy give her.

All the fuck she ever was, all the As and Bs she screwed her teachers into giving her didn’t change that one goddamn bit, not….

…not one goddamn bit.

He had to restrain Himself, corral the lesbian taint still having a hold over Him, in spite of His Pappaw having punished his harlot of a mother for—

What the fuck?!

It couldn’t be…no, it couldn’t be, he’d been dead and buried over fifty years now, fucking dead and buried at His hand, after he’d dared disrespect Him, dared to try and deny what was His by ri—

It was His Pappaw, laughing at him way he—

“What?!” He screamed at the workstation terminal on the coffee table as it bleeped for His attention.

“The Commies,” the Captain of His Host said, as he appeared over the terminal,”and the Mids both have unanimously rejected Your offer of peace—“

“Goddamnit!” He spat fulminously back at Bradley, continuing to run his bonesmoker,”—the Avalon Common Assembly are still in session, but it’s more than likely they, the Donovanian Provisional Advisory Council and the Horizon Council of Equals will issue statements rejecting the peace offer within the h—“

“Fine, then,” the Man of the Waters snapped, feeling the froth cool against His lips,”fuckin’ let them reject Me, let them all fuckin’ reject Me! I’ve got somethin’ for all ‘em bitches!” His Pappaw continued laughing at Him, at his motherfuckin’ Daddy, the true Israel screaming for him to shut his dead ass the fuck up!

3 MARCH, 2226 13:38:01 TAI

“She’s been through so much worse than just losing a parent, Boss,” Major Harriet Mangione whispered, leaning against the trunk of a two-hundred year old sad cypress tree in the back yard of her parents’ house, staring out into the planetary ocean, watching a Regulan gilled cephlapod come up to the surface, its skin shimmering with refracted sunlight.

“I-i can’t…I don’t,” Unbroken’s security forces commander whispered,”feel right asking her for a shoulder to cry on, when….”

She trailed off, the commander of the Unbroken doing the only thing which could be done, laying her grey-gloved right hand on Harriet’s shoulder as she told her, flat out….

“…that’s crap,” Angelique told her as she sat in the chair in Jami’s quarters, Jami sitting on her bed, all dressed up and part of her still wanting to back out of what she’d wanted all along.

“She loves you,” she added,”even when you were so far gone—“

“I know,” Jami whispered, her grey-gloved fingers fidgeting and knotting themselves up. “ I’ve always known, it’s just that….”

She trailed off, asking what she’d been afraid to:

“Why am I still so fucking scared, even though I know she loves me, would do anything in the worlds for me, would never even think to hurt me, even after all the ways I’ve hurt her.”

The woman who’d been almost like Mama to her just gave her knee a gentle pat, chuckling, as she said….

“…that’s the way it’s supposed to work, baby,” Jami said to Harriet,”she knows that, she knows this hurts you like hell, she’s gonna put you first, same way you’ve always put her first when she needed you most, and she trusts you not to take advanatage of that.”

You know that too, lover, Sergeant Major Kyra Spencer’s voice whispered in both their minds, Jami letting go of Harriet’s shoulder just as Kyra gently hugged her wife from behind, cradling the smaller woman against her, leaning her head on top of hers.

Jami nodding her head, as she turned on her heel and let them both be there for each other.

The way it was supposed to work.

—endit—

His Word Was Still “Fie, Foh And Fum” “Child Rowland to the Dark Tower came, His word was still ‘Fie, foh and fum, I smell the blood of a British man.’ ” William Shakespeare, King Lear, III.iv

3 MARCH, 2226 16:00:00 TAI “G.H. Christ,” was Rhonda Whitman’s sole whispered response at the sight of that… unnatural thing…floating in the lowest bands of hyperspace some three hundred parsecs from New Utopia, four arms bent crooked in an ancient symbol of hatred she’d once seen in a holo in her seventh-grade history class, in preparation for the history portion of that year’s SRAs.

“I’m counting fifteen hundred,” the no-less shocked voice of the Commonwealth Forces Intelligence Arm lance corporal piloting the Mark V Greyhawk utility spaceplane through hyperspace,”launchers for hyperspace torpedos on that arm alone, along with at least twelve and a half thousand gobstoppers in launchers between the ones for the torps…sumbitch’s bristling with Gatling 90s, 127s, 203s and 406s, to say nothing of all those fighters, UAVs and warbirds on board and all round him.”

“Crap,” Rhonda said out loud…in her shock and horror over what was right in front of her, she’d neglected to consider the enemy just might have machines out there to prevent what had happened to the Terranova from happening to Zellner’s latest monstrosity as well…their intel was no use to anyone if they were blasted out existence in a trillion tiny sparks.

She refused to let that happen.

She owed that much, at least, to Carson and his family, for everything they’d done for the ones she cared about most.

“We’ve got all we needed,” she said to her pilot. “Get us the Foxtrot out of Delta before those fighters, UAVs and warbirds catch wind of us.”

3 MARCH, 2226 16:03:28 TAI

“No,” said Israel to the Captain of His Host, as He stood in the center of His America’s immense operations deck, buried deep beneath His city, His eyes on the little Greyhawk spaceplane showing its stinking ass to Him.

“No,” He repeated, just to make absolutely certain Bradley understood he was not to pursue that spaceplane. “Let them run home and tell all of them of the power I have at My command, let her dare attack Me now, the way she attacked Me two days ago, we will defeat her this time, I will have her collared, chained, naked and humiliated at My feet as she bears witness to the destruction of everyone who has drunk of the wine of her—“

Goddamnit, there he was again, daring to fucking laugh at Him, at the He who was over all others, who was even over hi—

“…boy,” he screamed at him, getting up even after He had put him down in his place at the feet of the true Father of all men,”you ain’t shit, you hear me, you ain’t sh—“

His finger whitened on the trigger of the nerve pistol shaking in His hand, Pappaw screaming, but not in the way He meant for him to, shouting down His order to shut the fuck up, daring to tell Him,”you ain’t shit, boy, you never were shit, you never will amount to—“

—shit!

Bradley was just fucking looking at Him, mouth hanging open like He was actually going to lower himself to sticking His manhood down in the son of a bitch, Lamar shaking him back to here and now with a “what?!” that could’ve fucking raised Jesse Ventura himself from his sarcophagus underneath the ruins of fucking Madison Square Garden.

“Nothing, Sir,” Bradley was quick to reply, “nothing at all.” “Good,” spat the Man of the Waters, turning His attention wholly to the master holodisplay, informing the Captain of His Host that the plans of His Lord had not changed, for they were as perfect and inflexible as He was, the fact that all those bitches had proven they were everything he had said they were all along by rejecting His one, last free offer of salvation—

Son of a bitch, fucking quit laughing at Me, He thought, clenching His jaw until it hurt, balling His fists tightly at His sides, not giving him the satisfaction of saying that out loud.

Chuckling to Himself, thinking, yeah, you old goat, we’ll just fucking see who laughs and what fucking cries, when this is all over with.

3 MARCH, 2226 17:05:20 TAI

“Ma’am,” Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Ariel Dixon said, snapping to attention and saluting as now- Wing Commander Jameison Sue Lanier stepped down the ramp leading from Commonwealth Forces Auxilliary Vehicle Ugly Duckling onto the hangar deck of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken.

“Congratulations on your promotion, ma’am,” Unbroken’s chief flight engineer added. “Transferring command to conn.”

“Accepting command, Leftenant,” Jami said, her wife and second in command, Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads, following Jami down,”and thank you. Is Senior Astrogator Pollard onship, by any chance?”

“Captain Pollock,” Ariel replied, falling into step with her commander, as they walked towards the ladder leading up into the rest of the five-thousand ton Dauntless-class frigate,”and she are still with S.A. Pollard’s family in Owensboro. Shall I—“

“I’ll wait ‘til she comes back aboard, Ariel,” Jami replied, climbing the ladder, her chief flight engineer floating beside her, the intergral AG harness in her greys propelling her upward.

“You have a chance to see your family yet?” she asked.

“Just my little sister Margo,” Ariel said,”and my auntie, I haven’t—“

“Give me five minutes to change into my greys, “ Jami said, the two of them climbing up through det level onto the med deck,”and I’ll take solo watch, while you go spend some time with your people.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Ariel replied, Jami climbing up through the life-support deck, replying,” baby, that’s not a problem.”

“The arrangements,” Ariel then said, uncomfortable with saying this, “for your uncle’s funeral have been made…it’s—“

“Sunday, at first sunset,” the commander of the Unbroken replied,”Auntie ‘Neesha commed me just before we lifted ship from Cor Leonis.”

“Thank you, Ariel,” she added, nodding her head as she continued her climb upward.

3 MARCH, 2226 17:18:00 TAI

Senior Astrogator Khryste Pollard sighed, smiling, in spite of everything, her fiancé and she cuddling up close to one another in the far booth on the stretch end, daring any motherfucker in the place to say shit about that, to dare tell her that her mama didn’t deserve to be the happiest she had ever seen her, all cuddled as she was in the arms of her wife, smiling, not a line or a bag—or a bruise—anywhere on her face, the two of them over by the jukebox, swaying in time to number 299, something way before the AWS, nobody but Mama ever played it(or sang it, she had such a pretty voice), holo of a long blonde-haired man with psycho-killer eyes singing, “the moon, in silver dreams, pours down in beams, light up the night….”

Another sigh, Miz Penny refreshing Khryste’s and Jilly’s cups, following Khryste’s look, whispering,”I’m happy for the both of them.”

“So am I, Miz Penny,” Khryste whispered back, Jilly giving her a gentle squeeze, Penny asking,”when are you two going to get married?”

“Dunno,” Jilly replied. “I mean, we both want to…you do—“

“Shit, yeah, baby,” Khryste, looking up into her fiancé’s eyes, whispered,”it’s just a matter of timing, all of it bad, we can’t even breathe without being in the middle of a fight, and it’s probably going to blow up real soon now that everyone’s told Zellner to stick his peace proposal in the bodily orifice of his choice.”

“That online voting worked out pretty good,” Penny remarked, nodding her head,” I didn’t think it would…all you had to do was comm the Ministry of State AIs, key your Union ID number into the link, and stroke yes or no on the holodisplay.”

“And, this time,” Khryste observed,”no one’s around to blow out the plasma matrices.”

“Nope,” Penny said, chuckling, shaking her head…JMC forensic data analysts, in lifting nearly two centuries’ worth of plasma magnetic footprints from the casings of the Ministry of State AIs’ former plasma matrices, had discovered the true will of the Terranovan people hadn’t always been reflected in the election results shown on HV…which hadn’t been as much of a shock as she thought it would be, probably something to do with all the bullcrap over Amendment 42 over the last few months….

“—again, Guy Zellner,” Francis Mulloy, late of Terranova Media Syndicate, said on the HV in the corner behind the jukebox,” the people have spoken, and their answer is ‘no.’ No, Guy Zellner, no to only the third or fourth phony peace deal you have attempted to broker in the last thirty years, no to being murdered by pederasts in their sleep, and, most importantly, no to you, the same no your people said to you last December, the same no they’d said to you and to your Mickey Cornhole two years ago, only you chose to blow their decision out your plasma matrices, while doing everything in your power to defame, disfigure and destroy the woman your people chose to be the Governor of their Union twice in the last two years!”

A brief pause, before the former TMS anchorman added:

“But, that is your only power, isn’t it, Guy Zellner, to defame, disfigure and destroy, while sitting back in yet another plastic Heaven, telling yourself,’in apprehension, how like a—’ ”

The holoprojection snowed, before reforming in the image of some thing calling itself female slamming a woman face-down, ass up into the bare ferrocrete floor of a dressing room, snatching her thong down off her ass and fisting her, mashing her screams of pain into the fucking—

Now, it was what Vargas was calling Ellen de Grassi—the real one having been found brutally murdered on TB almost four months ago—doing a “live prison interview with convicted child rapist Teresa LeFevre,” the woman in the holoprojection inside the holoprojection shaved all butch, her orange jumpsuit opened enough to show her cleavage,” the latest in an alarming trend of schoolteachers turned—“

Now, Breana Martel was screaming at the top of her lungs inside the cockpit of her Fire Angel, SoCon and BritStates Gargoyles, Union Tomcats and Imperial German Lothars coming at her from all directions, raining down fire upon her and the StarForces strike cruiser War Woman, as it stuttered in and out of normal space around the planet Mars, all guns blazing, more Free States Angel-type homunculi flying from her launch bay, some dying in the cold night of space, some taking Tomcats, Gargoyles and Lothars down as they went, an elderly SoCon Dallas-class assault cruiser falling apart under a hail of liquid-metal plasma projectiles, two Atlanta-class guided missile cruisers powering forward to engage the War Woman and her homunculi as they just kept driving forward against terrific odds.

Nodding her head, looking up at the HV, mouse in her hand, Amy still holding her close, Mama said quietly,”we’ll watch this.”

3 MARCH, 2226 18:23:19 TAI

“Come in,” Annesha Griffin said to her as she stood outside the front door, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, nervously biting on her lower lip.

“That’s—“ Annesha’s daughter Keisha whispered, as Lianne Nielsen came in,”I mean, you’re—“

“Yeah,” Lianne replied quietly, Annesha asking if she’d like a cup of coffee or something to eat, Lianne—now fussing with her wire-rimmed glasses—stammering out a “no, thank you,” Annesha admonishing her daughter to not gawk at her, ‘cause all that really mattered right now was she missed Carson, same as both of them.

Annesha told the HV to shut up, sitting down on the sofa, Lianne hesitating before Annesha offered her a chair, Lianne finally walking over to the big chair by the bay window, sitting down, not knowing where to start.

“He told me everything,” Annesha went ahead and said, Lianne nodding her head, staring out the window at the suns rising over the trees behind what used to be James and Karla’s house across the street… she’d put it on the block, left everything where it was, moved the hell out, quit her job, went offworld… Esther had passed last week, just before Carson had left to fight his last fight….

Lianne started to get up, stammering out an apology, telling Annesha she didn’t have any business being here after all.

Annesha getting up from the sofa, stopping Carson’s childhood friend halfway to the door, nodding her head and whispering,”I know, baby,” over and over as she held her and let her cry.

3 MARCH, 2226 18:27:06 TAI

She nodded at the holoprojection of Zellner’s latest monstrosity, as she stood in the of the Joint Military Command’s headquarters ten kilometers underneath the grassy hills of Papillion d.Nuits30468New Utopia.

“We’re continuing to deploy Mark VII Defense Stars into hyperspace around the orbits of our worlds, suns and system heliospheres,” Commonwealth Forces Chief of Staff Lenore Kaplan said to the other members of the Joint Military Command, as they continued studying the telemetery brought by to them by the Intelligence Coordinating Staff, telemetery being updated live by Drumbeater early-warning satellites now brought to bear on an ancient symbol of masculine power and racial hatred reincarnated into a deadly manifestation of same.

“We,” Commanding General Marijo Dench, commanding the Avalon Defense Force, said,”also have fighter patrols and ortillery control ships deployed throughout hyperspace as a just in case.”

“We’ve no problem,” Nakamura-sama Yukari, Supreme Commander of the Japanese Imperial Self-Defense Forces, remarked,”determining what his targets will be when he launches those damn things.”

“Six thousand of the buggers,” Australian Defense Force Chief Marshal Betrand Keyes observed,”plus another fifty kay of gobstoppers, his targets seem to be pretty much everything he can lock onto.” “More than enough to take out the JMC worlds,” Brittney O’Hara, General of the Armed Forces of the Federation of Midnight Sun and JMC second in command, said,”even with our defensive preparations.”

“And,” the Mids’ FedGeneral added,”he’s got to know we’re making preparations, I mean he’s a brutal, sadistic, murdering piece of shit who likes to sleep with little boys, but, damn, people, he isn’t stupid.”

“No,” Lynne Hunsacker, High Commander of the Horizon Confederation Defense Force said, the newly-minted Joint Military Commander still trying to get comfortable in the role,”he isn’t, I think we all know that, Brit, from way…too much…expirience.”

“I also think,” she added, after a pause,” he would’ve pulled the trigger by now…he already knows we’re not buying his peace talk, that we’re not just simply going to roll over and let him slaughter us.”

“He wants to draw us out,” the newest addition to the group, Nerisa MacFayden, Commanding General of the Terranovan Republican Armed Forces, remarked, the Archie shifting her weight from one foot to the other,”wants us to watch our worlds die, and us unable to do one fucking thing to stop him. Just look at all those machines, fightercraft and UAVs he’s got clustered all around him.”

“Least two divisions of battlewagons,” Arlene Becker, Commanding General of the Colonial Confederation of Donovan’s Defense Forces, remarked, studying the holoprojection,”almost exclusively Governor-class, plus another fifteen divisions’ worth of frigates, all of them Freeman Lang-class.”

“Forty-five kay of frigates,” Arien Faulk, Supreme Commander of the Orion Trade Association’s Interstellar Guard, said,”and more coming out of that bloody thing like rats.”

“Factories on board,” Nathalie Dumont, Commanding General of the Jolian Alliance Defense Force, whispered, after a low whistle. “Merde.”

“Only more reason,” Esperanza Gonzales, Captain-General of the Hidalgan Federal Forces, said grimly,”why we have to take him out.”

“Agreed,” Lenore said, already assembling the forces she’d need to do precisely that—knowing Jami Lanier, her ship and her wing would be amongst them, leading the charge—even before Esperanza had come to that conclusion, Lynne telling them,”we’ll pull together a force of sixty thousand frigates, best we can spare, with another twenty divisions in reserve, supported by as many ground-based fighter regiments as we can field.”

“At the same time,” she added, the JMC’s eyes fixed squarely on the holoprojection in front of her,”we will commit every resource we have to strengthening defenses around our worlds…and, hope to God that’s enough.”

3 MARCH, 2226 18:38:12 TAI

“—heaviest fighting on Terranova,” Commonwealth Broadcasting’s Shelli Krebs, moving, shooting and ducking with the Commonwealth Forces standard infantry bulleting through the outskirts of ATL Trey,”at this moment is centered around the former Terranovan judicial capital of Atlanta Three, as JMC forces attempt to enter the city from three—shit, that was too close! ” the veteran CBC reporter ducking as an electric blue stream of deuce and a halves whizzed by her head at c times one, Ariel nodding her head, turning away from the news of the war all round her, looking at her sister Kay bouncing a gurgling, laughing baby Veronica up and down on her knee(Jesus, just look how big she’s got since the last time I saw her)at the same time she softly sang to her baby a song which had to have predated Jesse Ventura and his American World State. Ariel couldn’t help but smile…Kay was all cleaned up, no bruises, no puffy cheeks, no glazed look in her eyes, and, most importantly, she could be a mother to her baby girl.

And, she also couldn’t help but think, maybe this Ronnie will have all the chances the other one should’ve but never did.

She sniffled back a tear, still smiling…Angela was all right too, her and her girls, all three of them running straight to Avalon forces while Daddy and that drunkard both had hauled ass to whereever…she was living at the house, working right now, down at the library, it stayed open ‘til well past second sunset now from what Kay had told her.

Kay herself was working part-time at the Phoenix Center, paying the Commonwealth Forces headshrinks who’d taken up residence there back for all the good they’d done her and her baby.

“You,” her sister said to her,”never did answer my question.”

“What question?” Ariel, snapped back to here and now, asked.

“What it’s like,” Kay said,”being chief flight engineer of Jami Black Star’s—“

The commlink in Ariel’s suit of Commonwealth grey bleeped for her attention, the S.A.’s holoprojection floating in front of her, saying, without preamble:

“This is an Alfa priority recall order, I say again, this is an—

3 MARCH, 2226 18:41:06 TAI

“—Alfa priority recall order,” S.A. Rhoads’ holo said over Khryste’s link, Jilly already through the spacetime rift forming between the middle booth and the two-seater on stretch. “All flight crew are to return to ship and prepare for immediate action in space!”

Quick hug from Mama and from Amy, quick promise from her to them that she would be careful, she was coming back, Khryste stripping off her civs as she ducked through the spacetime rift, snatching her greys—

The fuck?!

These weren’t hers, couldn’t be, there were three full stripes round each cuff and—

Screw it, the low whine of the ship’s infinity driver reminding the commander of Unbroken’s fighter detachment that she didn’t have time right now, just change and take it up with the Boss later, and, there was going to be a later….

As she promised herself that, she was already sealed up and hauling ass for her Mark IV Osprey hyperspace fighter as fast as the intergral AG harness in these greys could move her, the hangar deck door rolling back into the ship, hyperspace all dark ghostly blues and violets, the Boss shouting out the order for the fighter detachment to suit up and hit space even as Khryste had strapped in, powered up and poured it on, as she flew from the Unbroken at c times ten and a half meg and accelerating towards….

Holy mother-fuck…it appeared in Sky Dancer’s master holodisplay, ugly and obscene as it rode the lower bands of hyperspace, enemy fighters, UAVs and warbirds gathered in the bands above it, frigate after frigate accelerating away from it to join the rest of the pack, the Boss’ voice telling her to power straight through those motherfuckers and take the Terranova’s even bigger brother out like there wasn’t a damn thing to it. At the same time she’d apparentally given orders to launch the Ugly Duckling, Sky Dancer’s tailward sensors picking him up as he accelerated sharply away from the ship, behind the cover of her fighters.

No time now to figure out what her commander was up to, the radar alarm blew off, her fighter letting her know they were now within gun range of the enemy, Khryste nodding her head, stabbing down on the master fire control button on the piloting holodisplay.

Driving herself forward.

3 MARCH, 2226 21:02:26 TAI

He was the one laughing now, all those shifts in the reddish grey fast-approaching the ships of His Mobile Force letting him know they had fallen for His plan after all.

That, very soon, she would be brought before Him stripped, chained and collared to witness His violent judgement upon those who had rejected His free gift of salvation and eternal subjugation at the feet of the Man of the Waters, in the places Israel had made for them at the beginning of time.

“Remember, Powell,” Bradley said, as he sat beside his Lord,”she and all her bitches are to be taken alive, that no one but Him is to touch her, though you may use the others in front of her however you see fit. Are we understood?”

“All units from Unbroken,” his insolent little bitch’s holo said from the station dedicated to monitoring the enemy’s comms,”assume point, send your fighters on ahead to raise all the hell they can, hold your Raptors back, link ‘em up to your ships, we move together.”

“Stupid, goddamn fucking bitch,” Bradley observed, His Lord nodding His head in agreement, smiling grimly as He stood proudly on His deck, staring into the master holodisplay, at flashes of white-hot light pricking the unsettling greyness of this place, Bradley ordering that view be overlaid with the data from the America’s tachyar, ordering additional Predators and War Eagles be launched to maintain the defensive cordon, screaming “goddamnit, Powell, there she is, fuckin’ go after that bitch!” when the AI- enhanced tachyar data showed that black ship of that black-hearted lesbian sex killer driving through the weakness He had directed Powell to show her with all her guns blazing, Powell’s flagship, the Freeman Lang-class frigate Cedar Pointe, heading straight for her at full speed, all guns blazing, his Preads and War Eagles vectoring ahead of him, Powell ordering every available warbird to fucking pile on that bitch, the Man of the Waters telling Bradley to deploy every War Eagle and Predator he could spare from the defense of His America to help overwhelm her, force her into interstellar space far from any help, cripple her and fucking take her for His own, for all the days her Lord permitted her to live.

He laughed again, as He watched her so desperately struggle in the face of all those ships, fighters and unmanned aerospace vehicles, all her Raptors, 457s and Gatling 90s furiously banging away, her beam emitters loosing pulse after pulse of coherent artificial gravity, her Rittermark field flickering pathetically like a candle in a tornado under the weight of all that violence directed against her by the hand of the He who was over all others.

Even over h—

“Single Commonwealth Forces—“ someone screamed in the sudden darkness and the roar of everything crashing down, howling in alarm, the Man of the Waters screaming at someone to tell Him what the fuck was going on, even as He flew through the air, slamming into something hard, raging darkness briefly replaced by thunderous light.

And by another darkness, echoing up and down with his laughter.

3 MARCH, 2226 21:05:01 TAI He wasn’t dead.

The commander of the Unbroken hadn’t thought it would be that easy…even with all four gobstoppers hitting his drive room dead on, son of a bitch was just too big to just be blasted to smithereens.

She didn’t have time to try and find him in normal space to finish the job, she’d done what she needed to do, now it was time to get herself and the Ugly Duckling the hell away from all those Preads and War Eagles coming at her from all directions, Jami kicking the two Raptor IIIs loose from their drop launchers, dropping the Gatling 90 turrets down from their niches, working the Mark V Greyhawk utility spaceplane’s astrogation and piloting holodisplays, twisting, turning and hammering her way back to the Unbroken, fighting tooth and nail for her life and the lives on board her, Stevie doing a hell of a job in her absence, like Jami always knew she—

Fuck!

She was fighting to stay in hyperspace, somehow powering through the violence which had been the last two frigates released by that thing before she’d sent it back down, the spaceplane’s UAVs nailing both of them at point-blank range before punching through this new Mobile Force her father had put together, clearing the road ahead of her of enemy frigates, battlewagons, fighters and other unmanned aerospace vehicles, Jami doing what damage she could, fighting her way back to her ship…she’d asked a great deal—very nearly too much—of her people, putting them out there as bait like she had, but it was the only way to distract their attention while she took the Ugly Duckling around them, around the fighters and UAVs still guarding the Terranova’s bigger, uglier brother, and, when all eyes had been on her ship—

WHAM!

The explosion she was flying through slammed her back and forth in her seat, what remained of the Governor-class battleship trying to close with the Unbroken raining back down into normal space in a shower of blue-white sparks, Jami feeding in corrections at a manic pace, trying to stabilize the Ugly Duckling’s Rittermark field geometry as she continued firing at anything and everything trying their damndest to take her out, watching the woman she loved violently twist and turn her frigate in all directions at once, so that Prue could use the Gatling 90s and the 457s to rip apart the noose those sons of bitches had tried to slip around them, all 36 of Unbroken’s Raptors siccing themselves on anything even thinking of closing with their parent warbird, staying together, massing their 127s into a rotating cone of electric-blue energy which tore apart the Mobile Force, sowing confusion and chaos in what had been a perfectly- disciplined formation.

She sent a quick signal to the spaceplane’s Raptors to go ahead and use their gobstoppers, using the link she still had with the command conn on Unbroken’s astrogation deck to relay her orders for her wing’s frigates and UAVs to let fly with their hyperspace tactical missiles, ordering Khryste to form the fighters up on her one-eight-zero and follow her lead.

“…I’m sorry,” Angelique whispered, the commander of the Unbroken placing her hand on the FedArmy officer’s shoulder, his friend Carson, standing near the inter-section connector between the relief and first habitat decks, trying to stammer out something to say, while all Jay could fucking do was just stand there like an idiot….

5 MARCH, 2226 08:16:02 TAI

…Darth Vader said exactly the wrong thing(or maybe the right thing)to Luke Skywalker, the son slashing viciously at his father with his lightsaber, Jay Todman sitting in the rocking chair across the coffee table from Annesha, Jami, Stevie and Sunni, the others sitting in chairs, sitting crosslegged on the floor or stood around in the doorway and the front of the living room, trying to pass the time before they had to leave. He never would’ve gone for this, the Special Federal Represenative to Terranova thought, watching as Luke’s vorpal blade went snicker-snack! and took Daddy’s mechanoid hand off at the wrist, their mad emperor cackling and generally getting his rocks off on this, like the dumb, blonde bastard should’ve known he would’ve all along, he never liked funerals, and he sure as hell never had any use for preachers.

He sighed, the mad emperor, face mostly hidden by the hooded robe he wore, cackled at Luke to ”fufill your destiny and take your father’s place at my side!” Luke just fucking standing there, looking at his lightsaber, his mechanical hand and his father lying there helpless at his feet, eyes bugged out to here, mouth hanging open like he couldn’t fucking believe he’d just did that.

Before finally throwing his lightsaber as far as he could from him, whispering,”never,” turning and staring that bastard down, telling him,” I’ll never turn to the dark side. You’ve failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”

“That’s gay,” Field Marshal Mordechai Blum, sitting in the recliner in the corner beside the sofa, commented, Tiger Morrison, sitting cross-legged in front of the coffee table,”that was just stupid right there.”

The mad emperor(Dunstan had told him the name once, but Jay had never really paid that much attention)seemed to prove Tiger right, cackling “so be it...Jedi,” before calling forth lightning to sizzle-fry the blonde fucking idiot….

“...Jessi,” he pleaded, even knowing her mind was already made up,”you have to reconsider...do you have any idea what they’ll do to you if—”

Laying a hand on the nineteen year old FedArmy captain’s shoulder, the woman he loved looked him dead in the eye, shook her head no.

“And,” she whispered, “you know why….”

…wondering, all of a sudden, just what precisely had made him an idiot in the first place, why Jay would call him that when all he’d done was the same exact thing almost everyone in this room—including himself—had to do at least once in their lives.

And, you know why, her voice whispered in his head, at the same time old Vader pulled it together long enough to grab hold of his emperor and chuck that dried-up old bastard down the nearest rabbit hole… the bitch of it was, that, after all these years of wondering why, he finally did know…Derreg and Carson both had tried to tell him, but it had taken him watching a copy of a copy of an ancient sci-fi movie trilogy while waiting to say a last goodbye to another close friend for him to finally understand.

This was not a war to the death, but a war against death…Mulloy had been more right than he probably realized, the enemy’s only true power lay in defamation, disfigurement and destruction, that was the only thing they ever had going for them, because Caanan had always been denied to them.

He did know why…why Jami had sent her uncle across that day, why Carson had asked her to, even with both of them knowing…why Khryste Pollard and Melinda Grey’s granddaughter, standing in the hallway outside the living room, had gone ahead and gotten married on Unbroken’s astro deck last night, even if the timing was all wrong…why his brother and the rest of those on the Antares had chosen to sacrifice themselves to save over a hundred thousand people they’d never even laid eyes on, why his people had chosen to turn that into a rallying cry replacing the one exhorting others to remember the tragedy of Bearclaw Station.

And, even that had been a triumph of sorts…. Another sigh, as he thought about his friend Carson, who’d fallen so far down,who had pulled himself back up again, and, at the end, had refused to bow down in the face of overwhelming darkness, had refused to give a nineteen-year old girl who he’d hardly known over to the eternal night those animals had prepared for all of them, had refused to let one murdering, epileptic, lowlife Yanker son of a bitch destroy a half trillion-plus innocent lives just because that was his only power….

“There’s the limo,” Jami said, getting up, Jay turning round as the long, black limousine the funeral home had sent round backed up through the opened gates and onto the driveway, Annesha getting up as well, telling the others:

“It’s time, y’all.”

—end of part three—