by Daniel Gibbs
“Master Chief, we could hide the bodies… steal the transport,” Ahmad interjected.
“This isn’t a debate. I’m in command, and we hold.”
Ruth closed her eyes, deep in thought. I remember being that girl. I’ll never forget that day, and I’ll always remember what they did to me. I can save her from a fate worse than death. “Do whatever you want. I’m going in,” Ruth announced, tossing her battle rifle aside and taking off toward the distant figures at her fastest running speed.
“Get back here, LT! That’s a direct order!” MacDonald thundered into her ear; Ruth turned the commlink off in reply. She covered the distance without making a sound, tracking her targets like a hunter. These Leaguers are so drunk, they probably wouldn’t notice if I started screaming at them and waving my arms.
The two soldiers dragged the girl through the door of the barn, and Ruth poured on everything she had for speed. Twenty meters from the door, her hand found the silenced sidearm on her leg, and she charged through the door at full tilt, knocking it backward with a loud crash.
“No! No!” the teenaged girl screamed, trying to in vain to push the two away. Ruth quickly took in the scene; the girl was wearing clothing consistent with what she remembered of the Amish. A basic, no-frills dress that looked like it had come out of a museum. The drunk men glanced her way, apparently surprised at her sudden appearance.
“What’s this here?” the one directly to her right said as he walked toward Ruth. “Want to join our little party?”
“Rot in hell, Leaguer,” Ruth replied, bringing the butt of her sidearm up and using it as a blunt force weapon. She rammed it into the throat of the closest Leaguer, leaving him clutching his throat and gasping for air. Turning to the next man, she leveled the sidearm and squeezed the trigger three times; twice into his center mass, once into his brain.
The stunned Leaguer meanwhile began to fumble with the sidearm he carried; Ruth turned back to him. Without another word, she shot him three times in the same locations. Cool as a cucumber, she then holstered the pistol on her leg. Silence descended like a curtain over the barn. The girl looked between the two dead men, then up at Ruth.
I guess I’ve still got combat reflexes. Ruth surveyed the interior of the barn. The girl curled up in a fetal position and began to sob.
“It’s okay,” Ruth said as she walked toward the girl. “I’m a friend.” Ruth embraced her, and the girl just cried, seemingly overcome with emotion.
“Tha…thank you,” the Amish girl finally said between sobs.
Meanwhile, Ruth’s mind raced. Shit. Okay, I killed them. What’s next? I need to find MacDonald and the team. We’ll have to clean this mess up. Another figure came running through the door; Ruth drew her sidearm in a lightning-quick manner and aimed it toward the opening.
“Safe your weapon, Lieutenant!” MacDonald barked.
Ruth immediately dropped her hand to her side. That was close. “Sorry, Master Chief, didn’t realize it was you.”
MacDonald took in the scene in the barn, finally looking back at Ruth. “Not bad. Two tangos down?”
“They won’t be getting up from this,” Ruth replied, just a touch of smugness in her voice. Harrell and Meissner came through the doorway next, weapons at the ready.
“Guess you didn’t need us, Master Chief,” Harrell said, glancing around.
“Lieutenant didn’t need any of us, Harrell,” MacDonald corrected.
“She put those bastards down?’ Harrell asked, clearly dumbfounded.
“Yeah. So, stow the cake eater crap,” Ruth grated out. “I’m sick of it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Harrell said.
Hah, that sounded like genuine respect for once. “Thank you, Senior Chief. I think the bigger question right now is what now?”
“Which we wouldn’t have to answer if you’d followed my orders, LT,” MacDonald grumbled through gritted teeth. “Now, thanks to you, the entire planet will know we were here because, while there was no noise, there is enough trace evidence for several murder scenes!”
“It was the right call,” Ruth replied, her voice steady and sure.
“Maybe it was. Doesn’t matter now, LT. Any suggestions, gentlemen?”
“Load their bodies into the transport, drive it into the woods, bury the bodies, and hope the Leaguers take a while to figure it out?” Harrell said with a shrug.
“Hope is not a strategy,” MacDonald replied. “That idea does nothing to solve the problem of cleaning up this mess. We need chemicals.”
As they spoke amongst themselves, the girl stirred. She walked to Ruth’s side and clutched at her arm. “Will you talk to my parents?”
Ruth nearly jumped out of her skin at the touch of the girl’s fingers on her arm. She whirled around to face her. “Can they help us?”
“My father will be grateful, even though you are English.”
“I’m not English, I’m an American,” MacDonald replied in an annoyed tone.
“Master Chief, to Amish, everyone that isn’t one of them is considered English. It’s just a term,” Ruth said. “What’s your name?” she said toward the girl.
“Susanna,” she began, her voice trailing off. “Susanna Nussbaum.”
“Ruth Goldberg, Coalition Defense Force. These gentlemen are space special warfare commandos,” she said, gesturing back to MacDonald, Harrell, and Ahmad. “We’re here to free your planet from the League.”
“The League says the Terran Coalition abandoned us. That we’re socialists like them and have a place in their society.”
“Are you buying what they’re selling?” Harrell asked dismissively.
“No. Some of them are decent, but most are like these two. They prey on us, especially when it is time for courtship to begin,” Susanna said, beginning to tear up. “I turned sixteen a few weeks ago. Now I’m marked.”
“Susanna, why don’t you go with Senior Chief Harrell and Chief Ahmad to wake up the rest of your family?” Ruth began. “I need to discuss something with Master Chief MacDonald.”
Harrell and Ahmad both looked toward MacDonald, who nodded his assent. Harrell guested toward the barn door. “Let’s go,” he said gruffly.
Susanna walked off with them but turned back toward Ruth as she reached the door. “Are you going to help us?”
Ruth flashed a brief smile. “We’re going to help you all by getting rid of the League once and for all.”
“Thank you,” Susanna said, a genuine smile gracing her face for a moment.
Ruth could feel the outburst coming from MacDonald. As soon as the others left, he turned toward her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Lieutenant?”
“The right thing,” Ruth countered.
“We’ll be lucky to get off this damn rock. How do you expect us to free the planet at the same time? I mean, come on, I get the John Wayne stuff on these idiots,” MacDonald said, jerking his thumb back toward the dead Leaguers. “Even though it compromised our mission, in the end, I probably would have done the same thing.”
Ruth stood stoically as the verbal barrage continued.
“Now we need to put as much distance between us and these people as possible before sunup. Otherwise, Lieutenant, they’re going to be executed. Do not make promises you can’t keep.”
“Are you done?” Ruth said quietly. “You think all of this happens in a vacuum, Master Chief? The six of you are the best-trained soldiers the Terran Coalition has to offer, yes?”
“We’re not superheroes. We have no eyes in the sky, no backup, no fleet support, and no air. Nobody is coming for us because I won’t allow QRF to risk insertion when our stealth was ineffective,” MacDonald replied.
“You guys can move on if you want. I’m going to try to help these people,” Ruth insisted. “This is my home. It’s where my parents were killed in front of my eyes. This is where I fought, bled, was tortured, and survived. This is where I belong,” Ruth stated calmly but with fierce determination.
MacDonald’s fa
ce turned red, and his nostrils flared as he spoke. “Do you have any plan at all?”
“First things first. Enlist the locals to help us, hide the bodies, stash the transporter somewhere. Maybe Rostami could disable whatever tracking system it has, and we could use it under cover of darkness to get closer to our objective.”
“And then?”
“Continue with our existing mission. Find the control center for the defense grid. Take it down, call in the fleet. You guys can get some beers and toast the TCMC arriving.”
MacDonald threw back his head and smirked. “Let’s say, in some weird alternate reality, I might even consider doing what amounts to a suicide mission. Where the hell did a fleet tactical action officer learn how to fight like this?”
“It started when I was fifteen,” Ruth began to recount. “The League had invaded about six months prior, and they were stepping up their activities to reeducate the population to our glorious future under socialism,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “It’s a night that’s seared into my mind for as long as I draw breath.” It was just after her fifteenth birthday and the first frost of the year had occurred the night before. Strange how little details like that still stick out. Her father had just come home from work. An accountant by trade, he worked for a firm that she couldn’t remember the name of. Odd how some things are lost to the sands of time.
The front door of their small suburban house swung open, and in walked Yaakov Goldberg. He was a man that reached nearly two meters and had brown, thinning hair. “Girls, I’m home!” he shouted cheerfully.
“Dad, I’m not a girl anymore,” Ruth said, looking up from her tablet that contained the lessons she was completing for homework.
“You’ll always by my little girl, Ruthie,” Yaakov replied, dropping his briefcase on the table and sitting down on the couch in the living room.
Ruth rolled her eyes in return. “Always hated that nickname, Dad.”
“Alright, alright! Then tell me what big girl stuff you are working on tonight.”
“Civics lessons,” Ruth replied, dropping the tablet into her lap. “It’s just they’re not the same. All the things we learned throughout middle school and my first year of high school are gone. The League’s trying to tell us that our religion is the root of all problems among humans and that we should renounce it voluntarily.”
“How do you feel about that, Ruth?” Yaakov asked quietly.
“I’m proud of our heritage, and I’m not turning my back on God,” Ruth said.
“Good,” Yaakov said. “Very good.”
“Besides, the Leaguers are hypocrites. All of us can see it. They talk about socialism for mankind, then take bribes and look the other way. Everyone in school knows who you go to if you want to pay them off for a pass out of classes you don’t like.”
Yaakov laughed. “Is that what your allowance goes toward?”
They were interrupted by Ruth’s mother, Leah Goldberg. “Dinner’s almost ready!” she yelled from the kitchen.
Ruth sprang up, leaving her tablet behind, and raced into the kitchen. “What do we have tonight?”
“I got some chicken at the market today, so we’re having that with potatoes and leeks,” Leah said.
“Ugh, Mom. More potatoes? Can’t we have something else?”
“Be thankful for what God has provided for us,” Yaakov interjected as he walked up behind Ruth. “We’re lucky we have this. Many of our friends are doing worse.”
“Sorry. Dad. I forget that,” Ruth forced out.
“Now let’s sit down and enjoy your mother’s hard work,” Yaakov said with a warm smile.
A few minutes into the meal, the sound of loud knocking on the front door reverberated throughout the house. Leah looked at Yaakov, her face dropping and her hands beginning to shake on the table.
Ruth recognized the sound of the knocking; League soldiers using the butts of their rifles to smack the door. It had happened three times previously over the last few months.
“Stay here,” Yaakov said as he stood up, dropping the napkin that had been in his lap on the table.
Ruth jumped out of her chair, as did Leah. Yaakov walked to the front door and opened it; she could see that much through the opening between the dining room and the living room. Three League soldiers forced their way inside of the house, pushing him back.
“Yaakov Goldberg?” one of the soldiers asked.
“That’s me.”
“Where’s your family?”
“My wife and daughter are in the other room, eating. Please, what can we do for you? Would you like some dinner? We’ve got chicken tonight.”
“Shut up, old man,” the soldier replied.
Another man walked into the house; he wore the dreaded armband of the League political commissars, emblazoned with the logo of the League: a fist on a black and red background, with the nut of a bolt surrounding it. Supposedly to show the solidarity between all classes and that the League is built on workers. Such utter crap.
“Yaakov,” the new arrival said as if he’d somehow known her father for years. “May I call you Yaakov?”
“Of course, sir.”
“You know your place, then. That’s positive,” he said, walking around the living room. “We’ve been watching you, Yaakov. We know about your ties to the so-called resistance.” He stopped, turned on his heel, and stared directly at her father in a way that made Ruth’s blood run cold.
“Is that your wife and daughter there?” the man said, pointing toward Ruth.
“Yes,” Yaakov replied. “Please, don’t harm them.”
“Come here, Ruth,” the man said as he pointed at Ruth. “You too, Leah. We’ve been watching the lot of you for weeks.”
Somewhere deep within Ruth, she heard a voice. Don’t be afraid of them, it said. She stepped forward, and her eyes flashed defiance. Her mother was close behind.
“Such a happy family. Did you know that family is the root of the League? It’s what we live for. The family of humanity. What happens in your family, Yaakov, when your daughter misbehaves?”
Yaakov opened his mouth, but words didn’t come out at first. “I counsel her and redirect her behavior.”
“You correct her, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You make her see the error of her ways?”
“Well, as best as I can.”
The man smiled thinly. “You love your family, Yaakov?”
“Of course. They’re my entire life.”
“Then you are going to tell me the names and addresses of everyone in your resistance cell.”
“No, Father!” Ruth blurted out.
“Don’t listen to your daughter, Yaakov, unless you want to watch her die in front of you,” the man said, his exaggerated pleasant demeanor dropping in an instant.
Leah had turned entirely white. Her hands were on Ruth’s shoulder and shaking so hard that Ruth shook too.
“You will let my family go?”
“Not only your family, but you too. After all, we’re all part of the human family,” the man replied, his fake exterior returning.
“I have a list hidden in a safe, right here,” Yaakov said, gesturing toward a painting on the wall of the living room.
“By all means, get it for me.”
Yaakov slowly turned and walked to the painting and pressed a button under it. The portrait swung back off the wall, revealing a hidden safe that Ruth had never seen before. He pressed his thumb against the biometric lock, and it popped open. She watched in amazement as her father swung back around, holding a small pistol. There was a loud pop, and Yaakov stumbled forward, clutching his chest as a dark red stain spread across his shirt.
“Yaakov!” Leah shouted at the top of her lungs. She lunged forward, seemingly to catch him as he fell. There three more loud pops, and she collapsed next to him in a heap.
Ruth’s eyes tracked over to the League commissar. He held a pistol in his hand that had smoke wafting up from the barrel. “Such a
pity,” the man remarked to the other soldiers, who had unslung their rifles and had them trained on the two bodies.
Ruth remained rooted in place. She felt something break inside of her. Her emotions, her ability to feel, just stopped. The tears wouldn’t come; the cries that she desperately wanted to scream were lost in her throat.
Her eyes fixed on the pistol her father had dropped; she knew how to use it from target practice with him. They had spent many a Sunday morning at the range with Ruth even entering marksmanship competitions at her school.
“Call the social services cadre,” the commissar remarked to one of the soldiers. “The orphanages need additional charges, especially ones that we can cleanse of this mental crutch they call religion.”
I could kill them when they turn their backs to me. That pistol has a seventeen-round magazine. All I have to do is shoot them.
“Yes, sir,” the soldier replied. “What would you like us to do with the bodies?”
“Send them to central processing. I want this house torn apart, and every last piece of actionable intelligence found.”
The commissar turned on his heel and flashed a smile at Ruth. “Don’t worry, little girl. You’ll be in better hands soon, in the bosom of the family of humanity. The League will take care of you.”
I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill all of them. I’ll start with these four, and then I’ll kill every last Leaguer in the galaxy, and I’ll keep killing them until they kill me.
Once they had all turned their backs on Ruth in their arrogance, she reached for the pistol that was lying on the floor. Real soldiers would have picked up that weapon and never turned their backs on a potential threat. These men aren’t soldiers; they’re thugs and murderers. As it slipped into her hand, it was like the weapon spoke to her. She sighted down the iron sights, first at the commissar. If I only get one, it’ll be him.
She squeezed the trigger twice, sending two bullets directly into his back. The short distance guaranteed there was no possibility she’d miss. Her aim shifted, settling onto the next soldier, again she squeezed the trigger twice, before moving to the third.
The last man turned around and had started to bring up his rifle when Ruth fired again, another two rounds that hit him directly in the center mass. All four men fell to the floor, a couple of them clutching their wounds. Ruth slowly walked to where the commissar had collapsed. She stood over his body as he tried in vain to pull out the pistol he had used to murder her parents.