Let Us Sleep Now/1

“’ I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark, for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now....’”

Wilfred Owen, “Strange Meeting”

8 NOVEMBER, 2225   11:30:31 TAI

“What did you guys find?” Doctor Joanne Leavitt, director of the Commonwealth University of Cor Leonis’ Roving Observer Four asked the two astrophysics graduate assistants manning the spectorheliograph in the top dome, now engaged in a close-up study of the A2 main-sequence star Chort.

“Oh,” Joanne said, when the spectrum revealed traces of lead, refined dyspropsium, cryogenic helium and monomolecular carbon,“ okay. Sienna, let’s see what the radar telescopes come up with.”

“I’m reading a mass of refined dyspropsium and cryogenic helium sandwiched between two layers of hyperdense monomolecular carbon at zero degrees solar latitude by eighty-three degrees solar longitude, and 28,522 klicks inside the star ,” Sienna Kyle, a second-year undergraduate majoring in astrophysics, with a specialisation in cosmology, reported,“ total thickness thirty metres...there’s another layer of lead behind the superconducting composite, also thirty metres thick, not even the neutrino radar can scan clearly through it...shape’s rectangular, total mass is 722 kilogrammes, length two metres, width one metre, total volume two cubic metres.”

“Remote section from Leavitt,” Joanne said into the link clipped to her t-shirt. “Jess, I need you to send a ‘bot into Chort, solar coordinates zero by 83, 28,522 klicks inside the star itself.”

“I see the object myself, Doc,” the holoimage of Jessica Shane, a third-year engineering student specialising in robotics, replied. “Deploying Fred to go get it now.”

Joanne watched as “Fred,” technically known as a Snowbird Mark XV-Alfa Remote Fine Manipulation Instrument Package, left Rover Four’s right-side remote instrument bay, immediately plunging into the solar equator, the view from the probe’s own cameras displayed immediately in front of the top dome...they could see the object now...a box, matte-black, seamless, no motive power, no markings....

The words were out before she even knew she was saying them or why:

“Jess, pull it back.”

“What?” Jess asked.

“I said, pull the goddamn thing ba—” Joanne shouted, Sienna screaming:

“Starcraft emerging from hy—”just before everything got blown to hell.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 12:21:00 TAI

“We’ve got to make damn sure no one survives,” Lieutenant Coloniel Patrick Malone said, watching those meddling, goddamn Commie dyke bitches get exactly what they had fucking coming to them.

“Governor Zellner’s orders,” he added, smiling as he watched Republican Union Starcraft Atlanta Three’s ten 406-millimeter railguns smash the roving observatory apart.

“Sir,” the Atlanta Three’s weaps officer, Captain Kevin Welch reported,“ am detecting multiple spaceplane and escape vehicle launches from Rover Four.”

“He said no survivors, Captain” Malone said calmly, still watching the shower of blue sparks tearing into that ass.

“We’ve got another problem, ” 1st Lieutenant James Bohannon reported. “They’re sending a 303-X comm out, the Commie Forces are bound to know—”

“He wants them all to know ,” was all the command astrogator of the Atlanta Three would say to that.

“He wants them all,” he repeated, 100 more 26-ton degenerate masses flying towards the doomed oberservatory and those trying to escape their intended fate,“to know.”

“...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 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.,” the bleeding holoimage of Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Micki Phillips, Unbroken’s chief flight engineer, shouted,“ 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....”

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 12:22:31 TAI

“...battle ready, battle ready, flight crew to stations, commander to astrogation, on the double, commander to astrogation, on the double!” 

Jamieson Sue Lanier, command astrogator of the Commonwealth Forces Ship Unbroken, was already out of her quarters, fumbling with her suit of Commonwealth grey, trying to seal herself up, halfway down the red-lit corridor to the inter-section connector by the time her senior astrogator had started shouted over the intecom for everyone to come running.

Jami had learned long time ago to sleep light....

She barely acknowledged the cry of “Commander on deck!” made by one of the security tac squad standing guard on the astro deck, barely even heard Senior Astrogator Stephanie Rhoads telling her “transferring command to conn,” as she sat down at the command conn, belted herself in, felt her ship break out into normal space, switching over from her Rittermark generator to her artificial gravity drive, hurtling headlong at c times one towards....

Motherfuck...that was a Rover...was a fucking Rover, now just twisted, shattered bits of monomolecular carbon falling slowly into the white A2V star filling up most of the master holodisplay, the Yanker Freeman Lang-class warbird who had killed her now turning his railguns on the escape vehicles and spaceplanes full of people just trying to get the fuck away from the goddamn kill zone....

Someone using her voice screamed,“Kill the motherfuckers!” one hundred electric blue bolts of light hissing out of the veteran Commonwealth Forces warbird’s ten 457-millimeter railguns, a hundred 31.5-tonne hyperdense masses of monomolecular carbon streaking towards the enemy machine at the speed of light, all of them striking home as he turned to engage Unbroken, bluish-white-hot flashes giving way to a shimmering rainbow, spotted with black where some of the shells had smashed through the shielding and monocarbon skin of his fusela—

Shit!

The astrogation deck shook, sparking briefly in places, more alarms howling inside her helmet, her weaps officer, Astrogation Lieutenant 1C Prudence Davidson, shouting over her commlink,“AG shielding reduced by 83%, primary electrical system 64% disrupted, secondary el system 41% disrupted, reactor one AG containment destabilising, antimatter reaction rate passing critical li—”

“Return fire!” Jami screamed. “All nonessential systems to secondary power, all excess reactor output to AG shielding!”

“Hit the son of a bitch again!” she added, unnecessarily.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 12:23:04 TAI

Malone laughed, even as his own astro deck smoked, sparked and briefly burst into flame.

“That’s got ‘em, for damn skippy!” he exulted, Welch reporting:

“Primary electrical system’s 100% disrupted, secondary el system’s 88% disrupted, teritary el system 82% disrupted, railguns two, three, six and nine knocked out, AG drive badly damaged, no better than c times point four-one-oh available; drive room and waist section opened to space, habitat and life support decks are holed, heavy casaulties, fourteen dead, 23 wounded, recommend we—”

“Bitch, we ain’t goin’ nofuckinwhere, not until they all fuckin’ burn in Hell!” Malone told him point-blank.

“Bring us back around, S.A.,” he told Major Phillip J. Snead,“ we’ve got our—goddamn!”

That interjection had been forced out of him, Atlanta Three taking a blow which threw his commander forward to the limit of the straps about to cut him to little pieces, before slamming him hard back into his chair.

“We’re fucked now,” Captain Andy Walden’s holoimage shouted. “AG shield jenny just gave up the ghost, Coloniel, I think it would be a real good idea if we did the Foxtrot outta D—”

After uttering a word beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet, Malone told Snead to get them into hyperspace as fast as he could, his senior astrogator playing his fat sausage fingers over the astrogation holodisplay, the Rittermark generator kicking in with a teeth-rattling whine as Atlanta Three ducked into hyperspace.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 12:23:57 TAI

“No, fuck you don’t, son of a bitch!” Jami screamed, as the Yanker frigate went NGE.

“Pursuit vector, S.A.!” she ordered, Stevie’s fingers already flying across the astrogation holodisplay, Unbroken’s own Rittermark generator whining as it kicked in, the field forming around the Commonwealth warbird simulating the precise mathematical conditions of her intended band of hyperspace, driving her through it at over a half million times the speed of light...if her wife had anticipated correctly—and she had, she was the best Jami had seen—they should be on his sorry ass when they broke out of hyperspace and finish the job they’d started of sending him straight to Hell to burn where they all fucking burned best...Tau Ceti hadn’t settled a goddamn thing, nine fucking years of war, all those billions of people dead, worse than dead....

....oh, dear Jesus God, she was a skeleton with skin, sores and bruises and welts all over her naked body, her eyes vibrating with fear and fever as she got up to the limit of the fucking chain around her neck, kneeling on a floor full of piss and shit and hoarded food amongst the crap....

...hands tearing her panties off her, ripping open the tank top, grabbing her arms and legs, slamming her down onto the cold ferrocrete as she stupidly tried to climb the walls of the fuck tank, opening her mouth to scream as they held her down and shoved themselves into her, only to have someone ram a fucking dildo down her throat, telling her ”bitch, that whut yo’ fuckin’ mout’ good fo’....“ 

...no, not now, damnit, not now...later, she could give in, but right now, she had to be the commander of this bird, directing the efforts of 57 women and men towards making those murdering Yanker animals pay for what they’d done...only thing they could fucking do, they’d fallen down on the goddamn job, 397 scientists, scholars and students murdered in Commonwealth home soil because she had not gotten there in time to save them....

...the broken body of what had been a permanent terraforming station tumbling end for end into Sirius C, she just had to direct the view tailward, to all those she couldn’t fucking save, the fingers of her left hand blindly playing over the astrogation holodisplay, the generator whining as it took Unbroken into hyperspace....

...sons of bitches had to die, only thing she and hers could do.

It wouldn’t even come close to being enough.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 12:25:00 TAI

“It was communicated to me,” that goddamn Reggie bastard calling himself an expert on children said on the stand,“ by one of Alexandra’s teachers, that her mother’s homosexual relations with Rhonda Whitman was causing her to act out and rebel, possibly even leading to another Girasol incident in the near future.”

“Mama,” Lexie whispered to Susan Watson,“ that’s a goddamn—”

“There will be none of that in my courtroom, young lady!” the judge barked at them, Susan gently squeezing her oldest daughter’s hand.

“Please continue, Mister Spiers,” he said to Horace’s three-time fucking loser politico of a lawyer, the chief administrator of Flynt County, Franklin McKinley Spiers.

“I’ve nothing further to ask of this witness, Your Honor,” Spiers replied.

“The defense may cross-examine,” the judge said, Susan getting up, Spiers saying,“ I renew my objection, Your Honor. The defendant is not a lawyer and has no business—”

“Miss Watson,” the judge said, looking down his nose at her,“ if memory serves, this court instructed you to secure the services of an att—”

“I can’t afford one,” Susan replied.

“That is no excuse,” the judge replied,“and your obstinate refusal to secure the services of someone competent to conduct your defense speaks volumes about your ability to be a fit mother for these children.”

“Excuse me, Your Honor,” sixteen-year old Rose of Sharon spoke up,“ I believe you are editorializing, and that’s not allowed under the—”

“As does,” the judge snapped,“ your children’s lack of discipline and self-control.”

“No,” he concluded,“ I am going to have to agree with the plantiff’s expert witness—”

“He hasn’t offered one solid shred of eviden—” Susan objected.

“—these children are all clearly suffering the effects of Stockholm syndrome; it is obvious they—the three girls in particular—have all been brainwashed by their mother and her alleged lover, and thus are incapable of making an informed decision concerning who they wish to live with.”

“The social worker—” Lexie started to say.

“One more word out of you, you goddamn little bitch, and you will be in YDC until you’re old enough to draw fucking Social Security!” the judge roared.

“You don’t call my sissy a bitch, you goddamn motherfucker!” fourteen-year old Joshua said, on his feet, his face red.

“Those outbursts,”the judge replied, Susan feeling her heart sinking,“ just prove the poisonous influence the lack of a male role model in the home has on the developement of young ladies...and young men.”

“As any of the children, though they are of the age of consent, are clearly incapable of making any informed decisions for themselves,” he concluded,“ the court has no choice but to set aside their desire to remain with their mother and her alleged lover and make its ruling based on the facts in the case.”

“The witness,” he added,“ may step—”

“I have the right,” Susan insisted, knowing she wasn’t going to get anywhere,“under the law, to—”

“You open your goddamn mouth just one more time in my court, bitch,” the judge screamed,“ and I will fi—”

“Don’t you dare call my mama a bitch!” twelve-year old Suschenka screamed at the motherfucker.

“Bailiff !” the judge screamed.“Take that little whore down to the boot camp, and you fucking tell ‘em to teach her some goddamn manners, any way they ha—”

“You ain’t got no right to do that to her!” Susan screamed, clutching her baby to her and holding on tight.

“This is my courtroom,” the judge said, a man-mountain of a fucking tarbaby grabbing at Suschenka, trying to pull the screaming child away from her mother,“and, in my courtroom, what I say goes!”

“Gimme that dam’ child, bitch!” the Gnat snapped at her, Rhonda getting up, telling him flat out:

“You’ll have to go through me first, tarbaby!”

“Use your goddamn nerve pistol on ‘em, you goddamn fuckin’ nigger!” the judge shouted. “Use your—I thought I said no goddamn reporters in my courtroom—National Policemen—”

“Not,” Jay Todman, one of the most famous journalists in human space said, a 2.5-millimeter rail pistol in his right hand aimed dead at the fat pig calling himself a judge, his sensorshades recording every second of what was happening now, “ a very good idea...nor is having that icewarrior there tear a child away from her mother, not unless you want images that are right up there with those of Bearclaw Station going up in smoke—or Guy Zellner in his underwear—splashed all across the Net.”

“Things ain’t bad enough these days,” the judge groused,“ without the goddamn Commies and their bitches havin’ to make ‘em worse.”

“Fucking let ‘em go,” he growled. “This court is in recess until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

He banged his gavel, everyone heading for the door as quickly as they could, Susan, still holding on to her youngest daughter, walking out of the courtroom, her other children and her lover—her only reasons to live—beside her, as they walked down the hall and through a sliding clearcarbon door leading out of the annex.

The Gnats were out in force, holding back a whole bunch of people waving signs around, cheering when Susan, Rhonda and the kids came out, chanting “Justice for Susan!” almost drowning out the Gnats, nervously clutching their assault railers, ordering them to stay back or else.

When Horace and Spiers came out, escorted by half a dozen Terranovan Security and Intelligence Directorate goonboys in full tactical gear, someone in that crowd started booing, another shooting a bird at them...then, everyone started booing and heckling them.

“C’mon,” she said, walking towards the parking lot,“ let’s go, y’all.”

The six of them walked towards where Rhonda’s ‘20 Windstar family transport vehicle was parked, Gnats less than kindly shoving back reporters wanting to talk to them...she could swear there were more people out here than yesterday...why they were here at all cheering for her was something Susan still couldn’t understand...and wasn’t used to....

Turning away from the crowd, Susan walked around to the front passenger side door and got in.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 12:32:15 TAI

“There were no survivors,” Shelli Krebs’ barely-restrained angry, grieving voice said to a a packed-out house.

“Those Yanker sons of bitches,” she said, the veteran Commonwealth Broadcasting Corporation reporter’s voice taut,“killed them all.”

To which a regular exulted,“Hell, yeah, turn it up!”

“’Bout motherfuckin’ time!” his friend choursed from their perch in the stretch end’s middle booth.

“Should bomb the hell outta all dem bitches, like Toby X say do!” a tarbaby sitting at the high counter shouted out, to which Loudmouth Jim Hunter added a “y’damn skippy we should!”

“That’s always been the problem with Guy Zellner and his whole fuckin’ crew,” Marc Bevill sagely observed over his tenth large to-go cup of Moot House coffee’“always worried bout what everyone else was thinkin’, when they shoulda been sayin’ ‘fuck y’all’ and do what they gotta do.”

“Damn straight,” ran the equally-sage wisdom of David Bell, seated with his fellow wits at the stretch end’s middle table.“Look where that bullshit’s gotten us, jackin’s in the middle of the fucking street, gangs runnin’ wild, kids going out and killin’ other kids, fuckin’ dykes telling everyone it’s all right for lickety-split to be fuckin’ raisin’ our goddamn children, and the courts goin’ right along with ‘em...sheeit, they let the goddamn Commies get up in our business, tellin’ us what to do, after we done went and kicked their asses at Tau Ceti ten years ago!”

“How the fuck is that for ya?!” Loudmouth Jim asked, shaking his page-boy cut head.

“They took the prayer outta the schools,” old Calvin Hobbes farted off from his seat at the low counter,“ gave the women everything they wanted, let them kill their babies and leave their husbands and eat each others’ pussies just like that, and now, the fuckin’ Commies are tryin’ to force our courts to enforce their so-called fucking lifestyle, to let their kind fucking raise kids and brainwash them into bein’ dykes just like them, and they have the nerve to wonder why we attacked them.”

“We all goin’ to Hell,” was Charles Dunlap’s sole observation, taking another bite of his bacon scrambled cheese, at the same time he shook his head.

Carson Selkirk, cutting into one of his four pork chops, could only nod his head in agreement, his eyes fixed on the dark sky outside and the bloated red scab of a planet hanging in it...every eight years, Judas, Delta Trianguli’s second planet, came close enough to Terranova to be seen in its night sky, both of them....

“Certainlly is the weather for it,” he remarked.

“Yeah,” Charles’ wife Wilma said, Miss Sarah bending over to recharge Carson’s large to-go cup of coffee, mixed with hot chocolate, chocolate milk, vanilla flavoring and Corona Real cola, Wilma sighing, remarking bitterly,“gonna be another fuckin’ war, mo’ people kilt, and fo’ what?!”

“So Toby X can write more jingoistic drivel,” Carson observed equally bitterly, as Toby’s latest rap,“Courtesy of the Red, White, Blue and Green(Terranova Gonna Give It To Ya) ,” replayed itself on the jukebox for only the nth fucking time since the news of Rover Four getting blown out of the fucking sky had first come over the Net...this was it then, Carson felt it in his bones, the war that really was going to end all wars and everything else too was just around the corner...everyone had thought the 9YW had been the Armageddon foretold in the ancient tales....over three quarters of a trillion dead on the fucking deck, trillions more missing and probably better off dead, the economies of half a dozen nations, including the Rude Union’s, trashed out, and, it had all been just a warm-up...now with the League’s collective military forces rebuilt to five times what they’d been before the war and the bloodbath at Tau Ceti a decade behind them, every hardened politico, convicted media talking head and the dumb SOBs tuning in to their every word were all swearing up and down that they coulda whupped those damn Commies, if only....

He sighed, feeling the crap rattling in his chest as he looked up at Judas...his older brother’s daughter, his niece, had been right there at the start of 9YW, defending Bearclaw Station, buying time for most of the Midnight Sun Resources Cooperative personnel stationed there to get the fuck away from those out to get them...not all of them, though, that had torn at her, especially after Unbroken had stumbled onto fucking Mont Noir eight years later...his son of a bitch brother had run over her mum, nine and a half months pregnant with Jami’s unborn sister, got the Martinez County Kangaroo Court of Inferiors to pin the blame on Jami—amazing the damn things one could do with four stars on his shoulder—and, supposedly, she’d been sent to the YDC in Flyntsboro...in reality, they’d packed her off to that frozen hellhole, fucking Witch’s Tit, from which she’d never fucking escaped, not completely....

“That cold’s gettin’ worse,” Wilma remarked...neither of them were stupid, he’d been having lunch with them, on and off, at the old Moot House in Owensboro for the better part of three decades...they knew, they just hadn’t confronted him with the lie he was telling everyone, that it was just a cold, even though he’d had this “cold” since September...same damn thing which had taken its time killing his Mum ten years ago, all those years slaving away at that fucking sweatshop in Ford’s Valley for fucking nothing a week....

Another sigh, the bass drivings of Toby X’s latest crime against humanity pounding in his skull, the holo of him gyrating in front of the Union Colors floating over the jukebox.

“Say we gonna put a boot up in dat ass,” rapped Toby X, to the accompiment of gastric noises,“ ''‘Cause dat the Terranovan waaayhay. Terranova gonna give to ya Terranova gonna give it to ya Terranova gonna give it to ya yay yay! yay yay! Evil gonna fly there gonna be some hail, when ol’ Guy Z. start rangin’ yo’ bell Terranova gonna give it to ya Terranova gonna give it to ya say T-Nova gonna give it give it to ya....”''

“Yeah,” Carson whispered,“ it’s getting worse.”

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 12:38:20 TAI

“Gentlemen,” Dick Grissom said to a roomful of N.L.A. cops, the series’ theme, “Who Are You?” playing in the background,“you are to expirience the most fascinating field of police work: The world of forensic medicine.”

All the iceboys fainted dead away on cue when Grissom pulled back the sheet and showed them the deader underneath it, that scene dissolving to those of him doing his job and finally to one of him on the deck of his AG sailer with the stripper bitch—who was wearing very little—putting her titties all up in his face.

Nodding his head, Malone relaxed on the sofa in Atlanta Three’s relief deck, sipping on a self-chilling bottle of Red Dog Genuine Draft, watching a shitcanned ep of Dick Grissom, M.E., absently studying the ship’s status report displayed on his holopad...Walden’s flight engineers had managed to install a replacement AG shield generator, and most of the rest of the hurt that Commie dyke bitch had put on his bird had been fixed...there wouldn’t be a fucking scratch on him when he broke out in the New Whitehorse corridor, cruising into atmosphere on his AG drive, surrounded by every camera bird the Movie Board could muster up for the occasion; he told Walden to make damn sure the internal cameras were up and running when they broke out, the whole command staff were going to be standing at attention, their blue suits neatly pressed, all the medals in place...been a while since he’d stood in the South Garden of the Governor’s Mansion and had a medal pinned on him, and this merited at least a Distinguished Flying Cross, if not another Medal of Honor.

They were going to be national heroes, the first in too long, and too long overdue...everything had gone straight to hell ever since his Union had gotten their asses kicked at Tau Ceti ten years ago, goddamn bitches were running roughshod over the government, had total control of the fucking media, infiltrated the military, weakening it even further than it had been during 9YW—that had been the whole problem right there from jump, goddamn dyke feminazis forcing affirmative action down the thorats of the Union Security Council, couldn’t have been no other outcome than defeat—fucking bitches being allowed to eat each other’s shit, fuck each other with dildos and raise kids without a fucking man in sight.

Yeah, things had been going wrong for too goddamn long, too goddamn long, until now...taking out Rover Four had sent a message those Commie dyke bitches had better fucking take seriously, if they knew what was good for them, it wasn’t like it was ten years ago, his peeps were gearing up to do it all over again, and, this time, they had everything they needed to fight the war right this time.

They’d all just better fucking get the message.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 12:41:45 TAI

She watched the streamers of ghostly bluish-violet in the master holodisplay, the fingers of her wife’s left hand surely, deftly playing across the buttons on the astrogation holodisplay, constantly feeding calculation after calculation into the Rittermark generator to keep Unbroken in hyperspace...the best she’d ever seen....

The best, period...Jami smiled slightly, as she kept watching her pilot the Commonwealth Forces frigate through this spacetime composed entirely of tachyons...it would be twenty years next September, and she still didn’t know what she’d done to deserve having Stevie in her life, she certainly hadn’t made it easy for her, especially when they’d been in Academy together, and she’d been so messed up she’d actually tried everything she could to hurt her and push her away....

She sighed, the smile fading....

...up against the railing, the guard pulling her panties down, pulling on her matted, tangled hair, keeping her from moving, shoving his nightstick up in her, slapping her ass and telling her to fucking....

“...stop your goddamn fucking crying, you spoiled, goddamn little brat!” Daddy screamed, clawing her face as he just kept on shoving himself into her.

''“You fucking brought this on yourself, bitch!” he shouted, slapping the twelve-year old girl across the face. “I fuckin’ told you what was gonna happen if I ever saw you talkin’ to that goddamn little slut Sunni fucking Smith, I fuckin’ told you, and you go and fuckin’ talk to her anyway...your goddamn manager called Rahman out at the fuckin’ base, told him every fuckin’ thing you two sick little fucks were doing in the bathroom of the goddamn Poot House, and he fuckin’ called me in his office and told me all about it!”''

“I said, shut up!” he shrieked, slapping and ramming her again.“Shut up! You ain’t the fuckin’ victim here, bitch, do you know what you’ve done to me?! Rahman told me I might not get my fourth motherfucking star, that I might even be in line to fuckin’ get hit by a motherfuckin’ truck , all thanks to your stinking little motherfuckin’ ass going down on that other goddamn, fuckin’ little whore and lettin’ her do God only knows what kinda sick shit to you.”

“Goddamn you, I said shut up''!” he kept screaming at her, grabbing a handful of her hair, smashing a pillow into her face, tearing into her even worse. “Shut up, you goddamn, lazy, stupid, good-for-nothin’ sick goddamn fuckin’ little piece of shit, or by God....”''

...he was really going to give her something to cry about.

She sniffled, swallowed, forcing herself to concentrate on the master holodisplay...they follow that Yanker warbird back to Terranova, fucking blow it out of the sky, then she could let it go.

Another swallow...the astro deck was red-lit, quiet, even given that it was in vacuum...her commlink was silent, none of the flight crew saying anything, and given what had happened, who could blame even veterans of the fucking 9YW for still being shocked at innocent civilians—people under their protection—getting murdered in their own backyard...they had just come off of a long patrol cycle, incidents beyond number over the past six months, on final approach along the New Toronto corridor for rest, relaxation and a much-needed overhaul, when Rover Four’s distress call had come in....

No rest or relaxation now, not until after they’d made those sons of bitches answer for what they’d done...probably not even after that....

...Bearclaw Station’s broken body tumbling end for end into Sirius C, shedding blue sparks of itself into the red sun, enemy machines moving in to capture those who hadn’t made it out in time....

...probably not even after that, she thought to herself, as Unbroken continued onward to Terranova.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 13:12:21 TAI

“While the bleeding-heart liberals,” California Broadcasting Service’s Juan Rivera’s holo said,“and the rabid bull-dykes controlling the Vargas Movie Board will no doubt attempt to denounce this as an act of terrorism, there are still those of us who see it for what it truly is, a blow for liberty, democracy, common decency, and a strike against the politically-correct claptrap the feminazis have been forcing down our throats for the last decade or more.”

“Correct,” his co-anchor, Sawyer Forrester, added. “They knew they could not defeat us militarily, so they decided on subversion, knowing that was the very thing which provoked the last war...I mean, just how stupid is Angelique Gault...is Mistress Babylon really willing to sacrifice hundreds of billions more innocent lives to make the same mistake twice...even she has to admit the feminist-lesbian social expiriment has failed, it failed two centuries ago, it failed ten years ago, it is failing now, simple as that.”

“Simple,” Rivera said, the footage of Atlanta Three smashing Rover Four into trillions of blue sparks replaying in the background behind them,“as that.”

Pointing the mouse at the HV projector in her living room, Susan switched the damn thing to another feed...Terranova Media Syndicate, Rachel English telling the worlds:

“—national heros by a unanimous vote of both houses of the Common Legislature, Governor Zellner immediately signing the resolution into law, announcing that he will personally award the Atlanta Three’s commander and flight crew with the Union Medal of Honor upon their arrival in New Whitehorse this afternoon.

In Rittermark, Hong Kong Prime Minister Roger Tarrant, Chairman of the Executive Council of the League of Interstellar Republics, has just announced a passage of a joint statement by the League supporting the attack on Rover Four:”

Behind her, the holoimage of Roger Tarrant said:

“If Mistress Babylon’s people choose to follow her, then they must suffer the consequences...in willingly remaining under her thrall, they have ceased being innocent bystanders, and have become unlawful enemy combatants engaged in an unholy war to bring down civilisation itself and replace it with depravity and feminine perversion!

They do not merely seek our eradication, but our feminisation as well, they can never be like us, so they intend to lower us to their sta—”

Now, the goddamn phone bleeped for her attention...Horace again, he couldn’t fucking wait until they were both at work to start in on her, he had to do it now, show her he still had power over her....

“Bitch,” Horace’s voice said,“ I kno’ you there, and I kno’ you can hear me. You gonna lose ‘em kids, ain’t a dam’ thang you—”

“Phone, fucking shut up!” Susan snapped.

“Block his NPI!” she added.

“The Net Protocol ID for this person has been blocked,” the phone told her, same as all the other fucking times. “All further calls from this person will automatically result in immediate disconnection.”

“Sure they will,” Susan commented bitterly, sighing, shaking her head, her eyes throbbing from the pain.

She felt fingers gently massaging her scalp muscles...she looked into Rhonda’s dark brown eyes, and that smile...she and the kids, only fucking things that had pulled her through the dark times, everything was just starting to come together, and, now....

“Baby,” her lover said, with a faith Susan envied,“we will get through this.”

“We will,” she repeated firmly,“ get through this.”

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 13:51:36 TAI

“As education professionals,” that fat bastard John Jimson said to Terranova Public Broadcasting’s William Charon, “our hands are tied by teachers’ unions, parents groups, and, of course, the feminist movement. On top of that, we have the government come in and take God out of the classroom...the question shouldn’t be why Girasol happened, but why it doesn’t happen more often.”

Behind the principal of Flynt County High, a line of girls standing in the middle of the gymnasium began taking off their clothes as male teachers, coaches and a tac unit of Gnats all stood there fucking ogling them...Amendment fucking 42 in action, Gotchanow Guy’s response to the slaughter at Girasol nearly two months ago, mandatory locker, backpack and strip searches of female students, with a trip to YDC—if they were exceedingly lucky—for anything which could be even remotely construed as a precursor to another Girasol...no surprise that “anything” included even the merest hint of lesbiannism...last week, in McDonough, a seventh-grade girl who’d lent another girl her inhaler when she’d started having a bad asthma attack on the school bus ended up being sent to the regional boot camp in Concord, the Henry County Board of Education having decided her act of common fucking decency was the same thing as some bastard peddling kike rock in the fucking projects, and thus had invoked their right under Amendment 42 to incarcerate her without even the pretense of a fair trial.

“That’s exactly what’s wrong with the schools today,” Jimson continued farting off, the men behind him groping and pawing the girls, slapping the ass of one of them when she whimpered in pain, “ the feminists have come in there, set the females free, and look what happens...some girl seduced a young man with a bright future ahead of him, forced him to give her a child, sued him for sexual harassment, won, and, in his anger and rage, the poor boy—”

“Goddamnit, shut the fucking thing off!” Carson snapped, the HV projector in the living room fading to black...TPB had been the only feed not covering the murder of Rover Four and its nearly 400 scientists, scholars and students...he’d just gotten off the phone with Jay Todman, who he’d known from the Jolian War...FedNewsNet had sent him here to cover Susan’s custody battle, after word of it had already spread like wildfire across the Net, after her co-workers at the plant, Lexie’s and Rose of Sharon’s unit manager, assistant manager, district manager, division manager, area VP, fellow associates and regulars at the Moot House in Wesley, and mutual friends of Susan’s and Rhonda’s had all petitioned the Baldwin County Kangaroo Court of Inferiors, the Supreme Court in Atlanta Three, the Attorney General, Micheal Bauer, in New Whitehorse, the Union PM, Terrence Marc Coleman, and, even Guy Zellner himself, in favor of her keeping her kids...hell, the social worker sent to try and find a reason to take her children away from her had told the truth instead, and not just in court either.

Which, of course, had completely destroyed any career she’d had, Orson Perdue, Zellner’s attorney, boot boy and Minister of Family and Children Services, had seen to that with a quickness...and, it had only stirred things up even more...the Commonwealth had nothing to fucking do with it, just a case of the people who had put Zellner and the rest of his fucking crew into power getting fed up with business as usual in New Whitehorse.

Carson sighed, his chest rattling even worse than before...the Commonwealth was going to have a hell of a lot to do with it now, that was for damn skippy...Jami was on Atlanta Three’s trail and she wasn’t going to stop until that son of a bitch was spread across the stars in a shower of blue-hot sparks...and the Commonwealth Forces were not going to let this go unpunished, a retalitory strike was on its way from Cor Leonis, three aerospace divisions, nine thousand Commonwealth Forces frigates under Chief Tilghmann’s direct command, coming here to smash every military, economic and government target into little bits...Angelique Gault had personally led the last strike against Terranova ten years ago—from the Unbroken’s astro deck—pounded the Governor’s Mansion right into the fucking planet and chased Guy Zellner down Terranova 29, poor bastard not even having a chance to get dressed before running for his murdering, miserable shit of a life.

Another sigh, Carson reassembling his Commonwealth Forces-ish Browning M2 rail pistol, carefully checking the AG accelerator coil for any signs of heat damage or gravitic stress before hooking it back up to the AG generator's first-stage and infinite mass compression units and placing the entire assembly carefully inside the weapon...he’d been out back, in his own private shooting gallery, working off frustrations by vectoring two and a half millimeter hyperdense monocarbon slugs at the speed of light into holographic enemies...during the 9YW, especially, this weapon had saved his sorry ass more than once; it would doubtlessly be called upon to do that again, a few more times before the fucking virus inside him finished its work of killing him.

He smiled...no regrets, everything had worked out the way it was supposed to, even if it hadn’t seemed that way at times...he was going to miss Annesha like crazy, she’d been the reason he’d been able to find his way back at all, and he could never repay that...he’d seen his niece grow into her own, and he was proud of her...if only Dunstan, his twin brother, could find someone special...he’d told him, flat out, last time they’d talked, it just wasn’t worth it without that someone special in your life....

Nodding his head, Carson finished putting his weapon back together.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 14:04:06 TAI

“For too long,“ Guy Thomas Zellner, Governor of the Union, shouted, his voice taking the fire and brimstone quality his Orthodox Baptist preacher father would’ve been proud of, “ we have allowed the feminazis and their fellow travellers to poison our minds with their feminist claptrap and their lesbian dogma...for too long...far too long...we have allowed lesbian animals to corrupt our girls, luring them away from the civilized path we would have them take, telling them it is acceptable for them to fall back into savagery, fall back into depravity, fall back into predation, fall back into misery, damnation and death!”

The Governor of the Union paused for effect, his dark brown eyes glaring straight ahead for a few moments, before he resumed his speech:

“The consequences of our tolerance of their perversity are all around us. Because of them, a young man with all the worlds before him was driven to commit unspeakable acts of wanton violence, our schools have been turned into pits of fornication, drug abuse, violence and depravities beyond number, unsafe for young people who want to learn to learn!”

Another pause, Zellner looking round the floor of the General Assembly, at the members of the lower house of the Common Legislature, the members of the House of Commons, his Cabinet and all the Movie Board reporters currently on planet, all assembled for a special joint session to honor the men of Atlanta Three for a job well done indeed.

“Now,” he said, calm, soft, firm,“they are trying to force our courts to accept their so-called lifestyle, to legalize them being allowed to corrupt the morals, the very souls of innocent children, to turn them into lesbian animals like they are...how dare they denounce what we did today as an act of terrorism, when they have been the terrorists all along,” he stoked up the fire now,“we are guilty only of committing an act of self-preservation, ladies and gentlemen, self-preservation against Mistress Lilith Angelique Babylon and all her dark coven hellbent on destroying everything we hold dear, we are not terrorists, and those were not innocent bystanders, we are the persecuted, they are the harlots out for our blood, and we need to stop cowering in fear and bomb the h—”

The whole fucking Capitol shook, right down to its foundations, the lights expiring in a shower of sparks, the Governor of the Union knocked into his podium, holding on to the motherfucker for dear life, painfully aware of something wet and warm soaking the crotch of his fourteen-thousand dollar TSC grey Armani slacks, the fucking building continuing to shake, the crash of clearcarbon shattering almost, but not quite, overwhelming the sound of explosions outside and entirely too fucking close by.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 14:05:14 TAI

This was why starcraft did not break out or ingress in atmosphere.

The inside of Jami’s helmet was alive with alarms, Stevie fighting Unbroken as she broke out...eight and a half goddamn klicks over New Whitehorse, more on top of the enemy machine they’d been pursuing than they wanted to be, the sky livid with tachyons from the upper bands streaking down to earth to detonate with all the massive kinetic energy they had before they could decay into photons and van Gripstra particles, those tachyons which had had time to decay upon emission from hyperspace making for one hell of a light show as their component parts came rushing down at c times one to wreak more havoc...the dome of the Capitol had a gaping wound bleeding molten monomolecular carbon and dyspropsium foil down its sides....

“Leftenant,” she snapped at Prue, focussing on what they’d come here to do, “launch Raptors, have them seek out every military, economic and government target on planet and tell them to start blasting; divert all excess power to AG shielding, take all nonessential systems off line! Med deck to local power!”

The Yanker frigate they’d been hunting down was wheeling about to bring his guns to bear on Unbroken, his AG shielding radiating blue, indigo, violet, even black in some spots, emitted tachyons passing right through him, blasting massive holes into his fuselage along the dorsal waist section.

“Take him down!” she snapped, her weapons officer not needing her order to hose that bastard with a hundred 457-millimeter hyperdense monocarbon shells, Stevie’s right hand playing across the piloting holodisplay, twisting and turning in every direction at once in an attempt to dodge the hundred 406-millimeter shells being vectored their way.

The master holodisplay flashed blue-white, the ship shaking, more alarms going off, Prue shouting “AG shielding reduced by 72%, primary electrical system’s 100% disrupted, secondary el system 58% disrupted, reactor AG containment, both reactors, destabilizing, reactors one and two both above critical line, antimatter reaction rate in one now 550 microgrammes per second and rising, reaction rate in two now 620 microgrammes per second and rising—”

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 14:06:00 TAI

“—reinforcing AG shielding!” Welch said, finishing the litany of motherfucking disaster, as the astro deck continued burning and sparking, Snead desperately trying to dodge all those shells being vectored towards Atlanta Three at c times one, not quite succeeding, the already-stressed AG shielding flashing blue-white in way too many places, more black spots appearing in the field, the ship shaking and blasting himself to pieces all around Malone, crushing the arms of his chair underneath his hands, breathing raggedly, not smiling when a trio of 406-millimeter shells struck home against that Commie dyke bitch’s forward shielding, nothing to fucking smile about, she’d succeeded in launching all her UAVs, their 127mm railguns were wreaking more havoc on the planet below them, Atlanta Three’s own Predators now nothing but junk spilling out of the ragged wound a tachyon emitted from hyperspace when the Commie warbird had broken out right on top of them had made going thr—

The master holodisplay went out in a shower of sparks, a more massive explosion propelling pieces of the inter-section connector through the air like lead pellets from an ancient shotgun, one of the fragments neatly slicing through Snead’s helmet and his smoothly-shaven, perfectly-black skull with no effort at all, embedding itself on the bulkhead just above the noseward escape hatch...Malone himself was slammed back into his chair, the wind knocked completely out of him, the only one alive on a deck lit up only by fire...the only one alive, period, he craned his head to look through where the inter-section connector had been and saw only Judas staring back at him, what remained of Republican Union Starcraft Atlanta Three plummeting rapidly towards Terranova entirely too fast for his comfort.

Unbelting from his chair, Malone struggled to reach the noseward escape hatch, pulling down on the lever to the left to cycle it open, stepping through it into the shitcan nestled inside it, sitting down in the piloting chair, inputting the commands into its holodisplay which would blast him free of this wreckage.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 14:07:11 TAI

“Uh, Boss….” Astrogation Lieutenant 2C Genera Muncie said slowly, as more enemy warbirds streaked up to take the place of the one they’d just blasted out of the sky “…I think they’re pissed at us.”

Shells streaked past them from both ground and orbital defenses, Stevie just barely managing to evade them all, a volley of 457s slamming into a Yanker Governor-class battleship, smashing through his AG shielding, shattering his fusleage into trillions of blue sparks raining down onto the planet below them, bouncing off the forward shielding of another battlewagon now hosing the sky down with his forty 406-millimeter railguns, launching his 48 Preadtor UAVs out in front, Prue pumping hyperdense 457s at them in reply, the ship shaking again, more alarms howling, her weaps officer rattling off the damage and status, returning fire, reinforcing the AG shielding, small showers of bluish-white-hot sparks indicating the remains of the battlewagon’s UAVs, the battleship itself taking one hell of a pounding, sheathed in nova-hot explosions where 457s had smashed into, and, in several cases, through the AG shielding, through his fuselage in multiple flashes, the battlewagon tumbling as he went down, more coming up to take his place.

“Flight crew from astrogation, stand by for atmospheric NGE!” Stevie shouted, the Rittermark generator howling as it kicked Unbroken into hyperspace, Jami screaming, demanding to know what the fuck Stevie was think breaking off the engagement like that.

Only to realize her better half had no such intention, the battered Commonwealth Forces frigate breaking out at point-blank range in the midst of all those enemy warbirds, Prue having her choice of targets to drive 457s into, bringing down enemy machines left and right before Stevie kicked the Rittermark generator in again, breaking out in a different part of the Terranovan sky.

Unbroken staggering as a battleship broke out right on top of her, nailing her good with a volley of 406s.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 14:08:22 TAI

“Hell yeah!” exulted Commanding General Bradley Richard Selkirk, Chairman of the Union Security Council, as his command warbird, Republican Union Starcraft Governor Archangel Micheal Zephiniah Lang, scored a direct hit on that little bitch, “that’s the fuckin’ way to do it!”

Ungrateful goddamn little fucking whore, she was finally gonna get payback for everything she’d fucking done to him, every motherfuckin’ thing...goddamnit, he’d had his problems—all caused by his bitch of a wife, licentious howling whore of a sister, and those goddamn, fucking twins—he’d done the best he could for that ungrateful little tramp of a daughter, bailing her out every time the Gnats had arrested her, trashing his career, because of his constant worrying about her running around, getting drunk, smoking pot, nosecoking fucking sheen, whoring herself to everything that moved, running with that gang of girls in Freeman Lang, being a fucking dyke and eating the shit of that goddamn Sunni fucking Smith...he could’ve been one hell of a lot more than what he was, if only he hadn’t pissed it all away worrying about that nasty little slut, constantly bailing her out of jail, worrying about the girls at the YDC turning her out and making her even more of a hardcore dyke than she had been....

He’d even kept up with her career, not that that little bitch of his would ever even acknowledge that, or the fact that she wouldn’t even have ended up in the service in the first place if it hadn’t been for what her daddy had tried to do for his little princess, in spite of that miserable bitch of a wife always dragging him down, holding him back and making excuses for why she wasn’t anything more than a worthless piece of a—

“Goddamnit!” he screamed, Archangel Micheal lurching from a fusillade that useless as bull titties fucking bitch of a so-called senior astrogator had steered them right into.

“If you can’t fuckin’ drive,” he snapped, Archangel Micheal’s weaps officer returning fire with the battleship’s twenty-three working 406s,“ fuckin’ turn the wheel over to someone who can!” 

“Sir,” that bitch Stilwell started to whine, “I—”

”Always ready with the goddamn excuses, aren’t you, bitch?!“ Selkirk spat back in reply, his battlewagon staggering from another brace of 457s smashing through the AG shielding...goddamn fucking North Coast rich daddy’s boy piece of fucking shit, almost as fucking incompetent as that stupid fucking little bitch of his when she tried to drive and ended up wrecking the fucking cars she fucking boosted for goddamn joyrides...goddamn mint-condition 1986 Monte Carlo SS, won it with five aces in an all-night poker game, an honest to God gasburner, worth over a half meg cool silver and that bitch had gotten stoned, stolen it right out from under him and ended up wrapping the goddamn thing around a motherfucking lampost on fucking Long Street, just after using it to run down her bitch of a mother, nine and a half months fucking pregnant with another goddamn bitch she’d made him give her...she’d done eighteen months in YDC for that little joyride, eighteen months of her being fucked and beaten down by girls bigger and harder than she was and learning how to be just like them, ending up going before before a judge for beating down one of the new girls, raping her ass with a goddamn broom handle and forcing her to eat her pussy and say she loved her before she strangled her and cut her titties off for a trophy...and, all the judge had given her—because she was a girl, and they literally got away with murder—was a choice between the service and being some Helga’s sweet little Darling Childe in pri—

Motherfuck!

That one tore right through the fucking shielding, blew everything to hell, Selkirk thrown forward and slammed back into his chair by the force of the impact.

“Pedersen, you fucking bonesmokerbonesmoker: dick sucker, monkeybone being a common 23d century euphemism for penis.,” he screamed at his weapons officer, Captain John Pedersen,“why the fuck didn’t you reinforce the goddamn AG shielding?!”

“I did, sir,” the fucking bitch had the unmitigated fucking gall to fucking lie to her damn daddy,“but—”

Selkirk was out of his chair, jumping that miserable, lying goddamn little bitch and giving her exactly what she had coming to her for lying and for not accepting responsibility for her actions—the back of his goddamn hand—screaming:

''”All the hell you know how to do is make fucking excuses for your incompetence, and I won’t stand for it anymore! Goddamn you, bitch, my daddy taught me to fucking take responsibility for my actions...by God, when old Master Sergeant Richard C. Selkirk caught your ass doing something, you said, ‘yes, sir, I did it, sir,’ pulled down your britches, bent over and thanked him, sir, for taking out his belt and using it to make your fuckin’ pu—“''

Archangel Micheal’s astrogation deck exploded, hurling Selkirk through the weapons holodisplay and onto the worthless bitch of a so-called weaps officer, both of them slamming into the bulkhead beside the inter-section connector now spraying its trillion fucking pieces all over the goddamn deck, alarms by the dozen screaming inside the helmet of the Chairman of the Union Security Council as he continued shaking Pedersen, slamming him into the goddamn bulkhead, calling him a good-for-nothing, useless goddamn fucking bitch over and over.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 14:08:36 TAI

“Starcraft emerging from hyperspace,” Genera shouted, absolutely the last fucking thing Jami needed to hear,“inside the New Whitehorse and the Atlanta Three aerospace corridors!”

A pause, before Unbroken’s electronic warfare officer added,“ Nine thousand Commonwealth Forces Dauntless-class frigates plus nine thousand Federation of Midnight Sun Polaris-class frigates, all moving towards atmosphere at c times one.”

“Oh, hell yeah!” Jami exulted, as Prue put another volley of 457s right into that battlewagon, loosing another hundred hyperdense 31.5 ton shells into a couple of Yanker frigates trying to come to the aid of their larger cousin, sending them down to burn where they fucking burned best.

“Additonal starcraft emerging from hyperspace inside the New Whitehorse corridor,” Genera reported,“ new arrivals are nine thousand Jolian Alliance Jeanne d’Arc-class warbirds, nine thousand Confederation of Horizon Talon-class frigates, nine thousand Japanese Yamamoto-class frigates, nine thousand Nova Australian Canberra-class frigates, nine thousand Donovanian Kira Donovan-class frigates and nine thousand Russian Kirov-class frigates, all assuming blockade station at the breakout point...incoming communication from Commonwealth Forces Chief of Staff Rebekah Tilghmann, aboard Commonwealth Forces Ship Defiant.”

“Let’s hear it,” Jami replied, as Unbroken blasted three more enemy warbirds out of the sky.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 14:08:50 TAI

“To Terranova Governor Guy Thomas Zellner from Rebekah Lee Tilghmann,” the holo of Angelique fucking Gault’s goddamn little girlie said as she stood on the floor of the General Assembly,“Chief of the Defence Staff of the Commonwealth Forces. Under your direct orders, Republican Union Starcraft Atlanta Three carried out the wanton, cold-blooded murder of 397 defenseless civilians, our own citizens, in the home soil of our Commonwealth.”

She paused, Zellner, his Cabinet, the members of the Common Legislature and the press corps all struggling to gather their wits.

“This,” the blonde bitch spoke again,“ is unacceptable, as is your attitude in the matter. What you did to us simply cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Therefore, as of this date, the aerospace of the Republican Union of Terranova is now under blockade; all military starcraft entering or leaving Terranovan aerospace will be shot down without challenge. All commercial transports entering or leaving Terranovan aerospace, save those carrying food, clothing, medical supplies or similar such materiel, will be challenged, crippled, boarded and their cargoes dumped into space. All starliners and medical starcraft will be allowed to enter or leave unmolested.

The blockade will remain in effect until such time you choose to apologize. That is all, discomming.”

“That’s all?!” commented Attorney General Micheal Bauer. “Goddamn, that’s enough.”

“We aren’t just going to take this lying down, are we?!” Orson, standing beside his man, had the stupidity to fucking ask.

Zellner was already on the link with Selkirk, his holoimage standing directly in front of the Governor of the Union, instantly telling him,“sir, we can take ‘em, just give the word, and—”

“Stand down,” Zellner ordered him.

“Sir?!” his Security Council Chairman asked.

“Fucking stand down!” the Governor of the Union bitterly spat the words out, his voice echoing in the pitch-black of the General Assembly chamber.

“For now,” he added quietly.

8 NOVEMBER, 2225 14:09:05 TAI

“Enemy warbirds standing down,” Genera reported,“ returning to their bases.”

“Recall the Raptors,” Jami, her whole body starting to shake in spite of her, said,“ stand down from battle ready.”

She could just barely control her trembling hands, her fingers fumbling with the buckles of the command conn’s restraining straps, managing to undo them, her knees almost going out from under her as she stood up, eyes on the master holodisplay and the snowfall of glowing blue junk and exploded bodies, on her own shambles of an astrogation deck, on the afterimage of the final casualty report holoprojected in front of her station...nineteen people, one-third of Unbroken’s crew complement, weren’t coming home alive, because of her insane, futile, pathetic fucking need for closure.

“Effect repairs,” she said quietly into her link, as she turned and rapidly walked towards the inter-section connector. “Transferring....”

“...command to astrogation,” Unbroken told her, as a burning....

...white light blinded her, his voice, stinking of alcohol, screaming at her, calling her a bitch, grabbing her, turning her around just so he could knock hell out of her, Jami making the mistake of trying to get back up, Daddy stomping her into the pavement, kicking her, hauling her back up onto her feet, slamming her up against the hood of the car, unzipping her jeans, pulling them and her panties down, laying into her ass with his belt and his boots, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he called her a murdering goddamn bitch, telling her she did it, she did it, she was the one who’d run over her own mama, because she was a chickenheaded goddamn fucking dyke bitch who hated other bitches, even the one that gave birth to her, and how dare she fucking try and put this all off on him.

Blue lights were strobing in the darkness, another man telling Daddy,” we’ll take care of it from here, General Selkirk, go on back home and sleep it off,“ someone grabbing hold of her hair, shoving something hard, metallic up her ass, Jami screaming her head off, pissing herself, every last nerve in her body on fire, a gauntleted hand reaching up into her t-shirt, snatching off her bra, grabbing her tits, another hand slapping her ass, wrenching her arms behind her back and snapping on a pair of neural-paralysis handcuffs, pushing on whatever had been shoved up in her, before pulling it out and throwing her down into the street, the same man who told her Daddy to go home screaming for her to get up, you sick piece of shit, get the fuck up, as he stomped on her, kicking her ass as hard as he could with his boots....

...Jami falling down onto her hands and knees on the now-repressurized relief deck, gakking up all over the floor and herself, her body heaving and trembling, her stomach tearing itself apart, her breath coming in ragged sobs, Unbroken’s command astrogator unable to do anything else except puke, shake.

And cry.

—endit—