“Faith, in their hands, shall snap in two. And, the unicorn evils run them through. Split all ends up, they shan't crack. And, death shall have no dominion.”
—Dylan Thomas, “And, Death Shall Have No Dominion”
...she was on her knees, cradling Chloe Jane's broken little body in her cold, bleeding arms, as she screamed and sobbed....“... I am not ashamed of anything I’ve—“ the arrogant Mickey bastard started to say, just before the RGP constable cycled the airlock shut.
Lissa sat in the gallery, watching the murderer Terrence Rhoads die in the cold, eternal night of space.
And, it wasn’t....
24 December, 2722 09:11:01
…enough.
Nothing is ever enough.
Captain Alissa Rhiannon Quin, Mons Calpan Imperial Starship Nemesis' pilot in command, screams, curses, calls her opponent a wanker, taunts him to hit her “fucking harder, you prick!” as she bores in swinging, hammering Terry Rhoads' sculpted aerogel face bloody and bruised, and the bot she's milling with pounds her face bloody and bruised, both of them moving forward, neither taking a step back, just like she'd had drilled into her thick shagging skull back at Lympstone.
“—Exercise Caubeen 22's gonna involve foreign troops and Irish Corpo mercenaries being invited by the liberal, Jew, radfemperv, Christian National Socialist Port San Miguel elites,” rants another wanker, PsyOps' Alejandro Smith, on the twelve-foot holoprojector in the ceiling of Nemesis' cubbyhole of a gym,”to come in, enforce the central government's martial law decree, round up those who are ideologically incorrect—people like you and me—and they're gonna herd 'em into abandoned GRMarts for transportation to the sergreation camps!
Why do you think GRMart hasn't done anything with all the stores they've shut down?! It's because they're part of the Illuminati Rothschild Corporate Jew Bilderberger conspiracy; they donated those empty stores to the central government, so it could warehouse all the food and guns their radfem goon squads are gonna seize from hard-working, right-thinking particios throughout Our United Worlds. They've already started—“
Ali's world flashes white, a vicious uppercut rattling her brainpan a bit, and she screams “that all you got, you fuckin' wanker?! C'mon, puto, gimme a real fuckin' fight!” as she pounds the living shit out of the bot wearing Terry Rhoads' Aryan, blond face, and edges just another millimeter forward.
“— the false-flag operation known as 4/18 was the signal to start it all up forty years ago,” the Corpo fuck blathers on,” the beginning of the end for Us biologically-destined patricios and Lords of their li—“
“Fight me, pendejo!” Ali shrieks, driving relentlessly forward, as the bot does the same. “C'mon, and fight me!”
“—murderin' femracist whore Rhiannon of theApes, had the nerve,” that Corpo fuck keeps flatulating over the jodito net,”to say her religion, and her God commands her to 'try, convict, and execute' all of Us, to say that the only law she was obligated to enforce was theBible, the King James Bible, mind you, which seven centuries of empirical data and scientific—“
“C'mon, you!” Ali screams at the bot, even as it damn near stoves in her right eye.”Fight! Shaggin' fight! FIGHT!”
“—to be just a bunch of sadomasochistic femperv written by elitist Britnazi Jew princesses, like Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, and Adrienne Rich, back durin' the Second World War that they started,” drones the CorpoNet talking head,”to turn Us away from the scientifically-established, empirically-proven Received Canon, as revealed by Him to the Foundin' Fathers Stewart Rhodes, Bernie Sanders, Rafel Cruz, and Archangel Micheal Lang—“
“C'mon,” Ali growls, even as the bot breaks her nose, and she bashes its head in with a flurry of one-two punches. “C'mon, you miserable fuckin' piece of shite, hit me, really fuckin' hit me!”
“—the radfem, liberal Jew Christian National Socialist media has made Lezzie Lizzie IV, Queen of the Apes, Rhiannon of the Apes, and their little Ali Cat their darlings,” the piece of CorpoNet journalist keeps ranting. “All the talk shows love 'em, and Abraham Queer and all the other liberal, Christian National Socialist political and psuedo-intellectual elites just can't seem to get enough face time with—“
Abruptly, the holoprojector dies, the gym's lighting turns blood-red, and the hooter shrills alarm, as the voice of Ali's astrogator and 2ic, Lieutenant Georgia Kirros, shouts over comms:
“Combat stations! Action imminent! Skipper to the 03 deck, I say again, Skipper to Zero-Three!”
24 December, 2722 09:15:00
“Ship is yours, Skipper,” says Lieutenant Georgia Kirros, pretending she doesn't see the bloody pulp that is Alissa's face.
Gods damn her, Georgia curses inwardly, as Ali replies,”ship is mine, Astrogator. What's going on?” as she takes her place at the piloting station on the 15,000-ton Hero-class railgun cruiser's third deck, and Georgia resets her multi-function holodisplay to echo the astrocomp telemetery exclusively.
Midshipman Karyn Neves, the ship's sensor and comm tech, reports:
“Multiple Void exits, plus sixty by eighteen-five, quarter-billion klicks downrange, and four-five zero thousand klicks from Esperanza; drive flares and other electromagnetic spectrum information indicates a Mickey assault carrier strike group.”
Ali expertly cancels Nemesis' decel burn for Terranova, and programs the drive computer for a sixty-second burn at 4,000 grav, while Georgia plots the entry vector for the largest of the Terranovan Archipelago's asteroids.
...the United Worlds Interstellar Naval Special Warfare operator laughed out loud, as he watched Saint Zion's Basilica hover in mid-air for a moment, before it came crashing down in a roaring, mushrooming cloud which smothered almost all of LaFortune City in darkness.
With the deep, deep joy which came from furthering the biological destiny of his race, Junior Lieutenant Terrence Erick Rhoads lifted his eyes to the darkening sky of his design, and, once again....
24 December, 2722 09:15:51
...curses vehemently, as Scalper cruisers, patrol combatants, and heavy starfighters stipple the sky with the Chernekov radiations of their Void exits.
Ninety seconds from insertion into Esperanza orbit, and yet to fire a shot at the starship construction center girdling the dwarf planet, the manager of Assault Carrier Strike Group Defiant is already down a light cruiser and three of his six destroyers.
Dozens of Skybolt combat drones scorch into Defiant's pair of twelve 1,250-ton F-47W Vulcan fighter squadrons, while a trio of 21-inch tungsten penetrators from a Yanita cruiser's Ironstorm massdriver rip through the cylindrical central hull of the battlecruiser Quetzacoatl in molten jets of his interior spaces.
“Comms,” Rhoads orders the watchstander at the comms station,”have the frigates and patrol combatants form up on the Defiant! Rhodesia and the three remaining destroyers to form up on Quetzacoatl!”
“Let's see if we can split their fire,” he adds.
“All ships copy, and are complying your orders, Commodore,” is the comms watchstander's reply, as Defiant's astrogation manager, gunnery, and torpedo decks work together to put the pipper on a Scalper cruiser.
24 December, 2722 09:17:45
“Zero-three, Artillery,” Cornet Abraham Kalsi's image reports over her headcomp,”railgun batteries taking PCs and inbound ordinance, four-fives taking frigates, Ironstorm taking the carrier.”
“Copy,” Ali replies, jerking the stick in her left hand to fire the maneuvering jets, while programming Nemesis' antimatter fusion pulse drive for a quarter-second, 8000G burn, the Imperial Starmarine railgun cruiser jerking hard down and to starboard, as her eight quad 12.7mm railgun batteries rip apart Harpoons, capship torpedos, and 5,000-ton Stiletto-class patrol combatants, while the waist-mounted pair of 4.5” primary railguns drive volley after volley of tungsten penetrators into the eight 6,250-ton City-class frigates shielding the sixty-two and one-half kiloton Ordo Galactica-class assault carrier through which Kalsi drives three 21-inch penetrators from the spinal-mounted Ironstorm massdriver at 3,000 kps.
“Dronesman,” Nemesis' pilot in command says to Warrant Officer Heather Vasquez,”add your fires to the primary railguns.”
“Vectoring my birds in now, Skipper,” is Heather's reply, as the ship's six Skybolt combat drones turn and burn into the enemy frigs, punishing them with salvos from their four-fives, while Ali jinks and burns out of the path of the carrier's twin spinal lasers just a hair before the laser-warning receiver shrills in her ears.
“¡Pinche coño!” Karyn suddenly interjects, Ali watching Hotspur die on the master holoprojector in front of, taking the Mickey battlecruiser and two of the destroyers with her.
“Nemesis,” Karyn then whispers,”has command of the squadron.”
Ali nods, as Georgia supplies her with the numbers for another jink and burn and Kalsi's artillerists with the numbers they need to kill more Arky bastards.
24 December, 2722 09:19:06
“Gunnery deck destroyed,” Defiant's engineering manager reports via Rhoads' headcomp,”hangar deck destroyed, radiators one and three shot away, primary electrical system fried, secondary electrical system 53% disrupted, penetrations on crew and torpedo decks, laser batteries one through seven offline, starboard torpedo tube inoperable, internal heat now 48 degrees and rising rapidly!”
“We've lost the Augusta, the Houston, the Chicago,” the sensor supervisor reports,”the Longbow, the Cutlass, the Pilum—“
The Quetzacoatl, Rhoads darkly muses, as the manager of Assault Carrier Strike Group Defiant studies his tactical holodisplay, the Rhodesia, and the three remaining Kadara-class destroyers.
While he is not afraid to give up his life in the service of the New Frontier and his race's biological destiny—having gladly done so once before—Rhoads realizes the sacrifices of the remainder of his strike group and himself are an empty gesture serving no purpose.
It is with that in mind, he signals the astrogation managers of Defiant and its surviving consorts to plot an entry vector back to Proudhoun.
24 December, 2722 09:21:26
“Let 'em go,” Ali orders the remainder of 17 Starmarine Cruiser Squadron, even as a 21-inch penetrator from Nemesis' Ironstorm catches a frigate in the midst of counter-burning for a Void entry vector.
“Artillery deck, hold fire, hold fire,” Kalsi's image orders, as the surviving Mickey warships enter the Void without further incident 150 seconds later.
Nemesis' pilot in command sighs, her chest trembling, hands shaking, throat dry and tight.
It's still not enough.
It never will be.
“Skipper?” Georgia softly prompts.
“Astrogation,” Ali orders,”plot an entry vector back to Terranova.”
24 December, 2722 09:24:18
“Nemesis,[/b] Terranova Highport Tracking,” the highport traffic controller's voice says over comms,”we have you nine by nine, you are free and clear for final decel vector for Warner Robins Station West Airdock, say again, Warner Robins, West Airdock; please set your comms to squawk two-seven-seven for Station Operations.”
“Highport, Nemesis, roger, wilco,” her Ali replies, attempting to stay calm and professional, even if she's still shaking,”Warner Robins West Airdock, navicomp channel set to squawk two-seven-seven, beginning decel burn.”
Georgia then watches Ali flip the 15,000-ton Hero-class railgun cruiser on her short axis, pointing the vector nozzle of her antimatter fusion pulse toward the asterisk—forty klicks in length along each of its ten O'Neill Island II cylinders—that is one of fifteen orbitals floating 112,500 klicks above the roiling greenish globe of Terranova.
Alissa's homeworld.
It was at this station, twenty years ago, where Alissa and she had first met, in the lounge of the bay in which the old torpedo frigate Margaretha had nested, while she'd undergone extensive modifications to her armour and weapons fit.
Twenty years ago.
GR-Halliburton sent Georgia there from Palehorse to oversee the refit, and(as she'd found out later)so that a “problem associate” would be in the same line of fire as the rest of the company's enemies, when they'd conspired with Ford-Hawker and the Mickeys to stab the Yanitos in the back.
Georgia sighs, as Nemesis drifts toward the ship-handling airlock now irising open to receive her.
It must have been the uniform, or those deep green eyes, the firey-red hair, the regal bearing; Gods only know, but for Georgia, it had been love at first sight, while for Alissa, it had been the opposite.
And, that had been no one's fault but Georgia's former employers; it had been their assassins who'd murdered one of Alissa's parents in front of her then three-year old daughter on Palehorse, after all.
Another sigh, as Nemesis passes through the shiplock, into the vast central hub of the station's West Cylinder, Ali nudging her ship toward one of the airdock bays, as Georgia muses further.
It had taken Alissa almost getting herself killed fighting an entire dreadnaught strike group for her to let go, and admit her feelings for Georgia, and it's still an uphill battle, even now, for her to just open up, and not beat herself down.
Another gentle nudge from the maneuvering jets, and Ali settles the ship into place, airlocks mating with the bay's dorsal and ventral umbilicals.
“Nemesis, Station Operations,” comes the holo of one of the station's operations personnel.”We show you as docked and locked. Please confirm.”
“Copy, Station,” Ali says.”I am docked and locked.”
She takes a deep, cleansing breath, then announces over shipnet:
“Attention all crew. We are standing down for seventy-two hours' leave; Drives, ship is yours.”
“Ship is mine, Skipper,” says Cornet Ariel Whiddon's holo via shipnet.”On my way topside.”
Ali then releases herself from her workstation chair, and stretches, as she rises to her feet.
“I love you,” Georgia whispers over their private channel, as Alissa turns and leaves the 03 deck without a word.
24 December, 2722 11:14:06
Two hundred years ago, this had been the penultimate bastion of the Timocracy's power.
Forty years ago, it was the chambers for Terranova's General Assembly.
The day care center had been about where Ali's standing now.
Near an icicle-encrusted cenotaph with the names of 16,800 people.
Including one of her parents.
And, the four-year old sister she'd promised Mum she'd look out for.
And, failed.
She sighs cold smoke into the air, gathering her verdigris uniform greatcoat around her, as the sleet pours down from the gunmetal-grey sky over LaFortune City.
Beyond the Cenotaph, where the thankfully long-dead Terranovan Timocratic Archdeaconate's Curia Honoris had once played God, where the Lieutenant Governor and the First Minister had their offices four decades ago, a fountain is frozen in time, the wings of the stone angel at the top heavy with icicles, covered in sleet....
“...Lissa,” Mum said, gently grasping her oldest daughter by her shoulders,”I just want you to know mums make mistakes sometimes.”
There were tears in her eyes, Mum dryswallowing, before she told Lissa:
“Mums make mistakes, and it's nothing to do with their kids; sometimes, the mistakes we make end up hurting them, and they don't even know it, and they should have, but....”
Her headset comp bleeped, and Mum sighed, wet and heavy with tears, as she kissed the top of Lissa's head, softly promising,”we'll talk later, over ice cream, maybe....”
...then Mum had gone to her General Assembly session, and that had been the last Ali had seen of her.
Five years before that...
...the three-year old girl screamed Mama's name, as the las burned right through her, Lissa still holding her hand, falling, as she fell face-first into the snow in front of the embassy gate, in the midst of Norman City's masses and arcology spires....
...she notices strings of white lights in the bare, frozen, sagging branches of the surrounding trees, listens to the surrounding city sing a multitude of joyous holiday songs.
Ali hates Winterfest for that reason, while Georgia....
She sighs again, trails off.
How can she know?
Georgia still has both parents, still has siblings, had a good life laid at her feet by GR-Halliburton, she still believes in all the nonsense the holidays supposedly stand for, there's no way Ali can open up to her, not about this.
Not about how much it still hurts, four decades on.
24 December, 2722 13:07:24
“She does love you,” Kalsi insists, as they walk along the frozen streets of LaFortune City, capital of the Imperial Republic of Terranova.
“I know that,” Georgia replies, as they step into an old book store on South Mingo Road.
Maybe she'll find something for Alissa here.
She hates Winterfest, but Georgia usually tries to get her something special anyway, something that's uniquely her.
Such a bother shopping for someone who can't even stand the holidays, she muses for only the millionth time in the past couple hours, while Kalsi picks up to conversation from where he left off:
“She just has trouble getting close to people, especially to those she's known for ages.”
“I know that too,” is Georgia's reply, as she makes her way to the science-fiction aisle.
“It's just so damn frustrating, sometimes,” she adds, as she runs her fingers along the spines of all these old books, inhales that lovely old-book smell.
“This is where it happened, you know?”she says, even though Nemesis' arty officer and third in command already knows.
“Yeah,” Kalsi replies.”Lost her mum, her kid sister, and the bastard that did it sodding escaped justice in the end.”
“Escaped vengance,” Georgia rebuts.
“The line between justice and vengance is ultimately drawn by society, is it not?” Kalsi remarks, as Georgia pulls a book from a shelf, reads the back cover blurb, skims through it, considers it a second, ad ultimately puts it back.
“Either way,” the veteran artillerist adds, when Georgia doesn't engage him,”how can there be any fear of death, any fear of consequences at all, when life eternal is just another clone away?”
Georgia picks out another book, examines it the same she had the first, rejecting it as well.
An annoying little song from way before the Exodus, over 670 years ago, chirps through the speakers of the shop:
“Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad. Feliz Navidad, prospero año y felicidad....”
“I thought we were done with all that shite,” Kalsi then spits out.”Clones, cerebral implants, immortal souls, the whole load of bollocks.”
Nemesis' artillery officer sighs.
“How many times must we go through this, Georgia?” he asks.
“Until we either make the bad men stop,” Georgia quietly remarks,”or we die trying, Kalsi.”
24 December, 2722 13:31:19
“—I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas. From the bottom of my hearrrttt,” blares through the speakers at full volume, as Ali sighs and stares at the waterglass of tequila, shaking her head, thinking about just how sodding easy it was for her to feel so sorry for herself, that she would actually go back there, throw away three decades' of sobriety…worse than that, put Georgia through the hell she'd put Auntie Ree through all those years ago, just because little Alissa isn’t the hero everyone, including Georgia, thinks she is.
“Ma’am,” says her waitress, as she stops by Ali's booth in the very dimly-lit back of the room,”I don’t mean to be nosy, but, your face...um...is there somethin' I should know?”
“You should see the other guy,” Ali jokes half-heartedly.
“An',” the waitress, not thrown off track at all,”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?” Ali asks her.
“Thirty-three minutes after thirteen, ma’am,” the waitress—she’d heard some of the others in the bar call her Penny—tell her.
“Coño,” Ali interjects.
Almost three hours since she’d set foot in this little hole-in-the-wall biker dive off the Muscogee-LaFortune City Expressway near Porter-Wagoner.
Georgia's probably worried sick about her, is definitely spending her time trying to find something special for her, and all Ali can fucking think of doing is shutting her out, pushing her away.
That's what the untouched glass of José's all about.
“You know,” she says to Penny,”I started drinking, cos I was trying to numb the pain, when all I was doing was making myself feel more shit.”
“That’s pretty fucking stupid, huh?” she asks Penny.
“I can't say,” Penny takes her time in telling her. “Did the same damn thing myself, after the Mickeys killed my oldest near Luminere twenty years back.”
“Damn thing of it is,” Ali says, motioning the other woman to one of the chairs,” it gets to be about more than just stopping the pain, and filling up the empty inside…I found this,” she gestures toward the tumbler,” could help me run away from everything, when it gets to be too much for poor little Lissa to handle.”
“So,” she adds,” I thought at the time…either way, it doesn’t work, no matter how hard I try, it still fucking hurts, there's still the empty inside, and....”
Ali trails off.
“And,” Penny said, after a silence,”the people you love, were afraid to love, cause you might lose them too, they're still there for the ride, even if it is straight through Hell.”
“Yeah,” Ali whispers, as she fondles the wedding ring hanging from the steel chain round her neck.
She pulls that chain out from inside her grey-green No. 2 dress uniform, studies it awhile.
And she decides, then and there:
“Fuck this shit. How much I owe you?”
“Es nada, Captain,” Penny tells her. “You've paid enough already.”
“Feliz Navidad, hun,” she adds.
“To you, as well,” Ali tells her, before she gets up and walks away.
24 December, 2722 14:06:01
“Hey, you,” whispers Alissa, briefly, warmly hugging Georgia from behind.
“I think I'll fuck off back to the ship now,” says Kalsi, as Georgia turns to face the woman she loves.
In spite of herself.
“I...I haven't found anything yet,” she tells Ali.”I've been looking, but—“
“It's not important,” her Alissa says.
“It is important,” Georgia insists, tears welling up in her eyes. “I love you, godsdamnit, I...love you, even when you shut me out, and make me shagging want to strangle you.”
Alissa smiles for a moment, reaching out with a gloved hand to wipe away a tear running down Georgia's red-frozen cheek.
“I know you do, baby,” she whispers.”You've always been there, and I don't always appreciate you for always being there. Me being me, I can't even promise to do better than that.”
“All I can promise,” she says, after a hard swallow, and tears of her own,”is that I'll try. Okay?”
“Okay,” Georgia whispers, as Alissa and she hold one another tight.
“By the way,” Ali tells her,”I love you too.”