by Rick Partlow
"I'm afraid that wouldn't be prudent, my dear," he said, stepping up to her, shoving McKay's pistol into his waistband. "This is a fortuitous turn of events. After the little fiasco here last month, the movement needs something like this. You and your Lieutenant friend will make valuable hostages when we again have to deal with the Fleet."
"We?" Val's voice was full of disbelief. "Miguel, you can't mean that you were involved with that man Gomez."
"Carlos was a friend," Huerta admitted easily. "But he was careless and sloppy. I told him he should have put a dead-man switch on that bomb, but he said we didn't have time...and he paid the price."
"But..." She shook her head helplessly. "He would have killed me."
"That was not the plan, but had it been necessary, I'm sure he would have," the man agreed readily. "You are like all the others, Valerita," he said, an almost sad expression on his face. "So willing to condemn violence when it is used against you, but so ready to accept it when it benefits you. How is government violence toward my people more justifiable than our violent response? You and your 'peaceful protest,'" he spat the words out. "You want us to sit around and sing songs while they slaughter us!"
"That's not true!" She shook her head angrily, close to tears. "I've tried to help your people!"
"For which you have our humble thanks," Huerta sneered. "Now, it is time for us to help ourselves. But I have no taste for political arguments at this late date. Now is the time for action, not argument. Our course is clear, and you are but a tool." He smiled, moving even closer to her, caressing the softness of her cheek with the fingers of his right hand. "And tools are meant to be used." His left hand slipped under his jacket at the small of his back and produced a long-bladed hunting knife, holding it centimeters in front of her face as his right hand seized the back of her neck.
Valerie shrieked in horror, trying to jerk away from her captors, but they held her fast as Huerta ran the flat of the knife across her cheek almost lovingly. Flinching away from the cold metal, she bit her lip to keep from crying out again, but the shaking of her shoulders betrayed her fear. Huerta chuckled, enjoying the dread in her eyes as he brought the knife down her throat to her chest. With one, swift, savage motion, he hooked the knife in her shirt and slashed downward, ripping the garment apart and drawing a sharp, startled cry from the woman.
Jason struggled against his bonds, but he was still groggy and weak from the concussion, and the ropes held fast. Jorge Mendoza, however, had finally decided that this was more than he could put up with and moved forward, grabbing Huerta's arm and pulling him away from the woman.
"No, Miguel!" He stared the older man in the face, eyes on fire with righteous indignation. "You cannot do this! She has never done anything to hurt you or the movement."
"Do not tell me what I can and cannot do, Mendoza!" Huerta jerked away from him angrily. "You would do well not to forget your place!"
"My place?" Jorge repeated, eyebrows going up. "You speak like a Republicista! Are we not fighting so that every man may make his own place, Miguel? Are we not fighting for justice? If you do this, how are we any better than them?"
"You fool." Huerta yanked the pistol from his belt and shoved it into the man's chest hard enough to drive him back a step. "Whatever gave you the idea we were better than them?" And without a word of warning, Miguel Huerta pulled the trigger.
Jason jerked in surprise at the ear-popping roar of the pistol, watching as Jorge's face screwed up in shock and pain. The farmer looked down at his chest, staring in disbelief at the smoking hole in his shirt, gushing a flowing stream of blood. He stood there for a long moment, seemingly unaffected; but then he staggered back a step, clutching at his chest, and collapsed backward to the floor.
There was silence for the space of a heartbeat as even Huerta's men seemed surprised at what their leader had done, but the still was shattered by the keening wail of Carmella Mendoza as she rushed across the room to fall at her husband's side, cradling his head in her hands. Even from where he lay, Jason could tell that the man wasn't breathing.
"Murderer!" Carmella screamed at Huerta. "Butcher!"
"Back with your children, puta," Huerta snapped at her, motioning threateningly with his weapon. "Unless you wish for them to lose both their parents this night!"
Carmella hesitated, not wanting to leave Jorge's side, but Huerta took a warning step forward, and she slowly made her way back to the kitchen. Anna and Elisabeth were watching her from there with haunted eyes, both of the little girls too terrified to move.
"Filipe," Huerta ordered, motioning at Jorge's body, "take this trash outside." One of the men, the one Jason assumed had hit him from behind, slung his weapon---an Invader autorifle---and dragged the corpse out of the front door by its feet. Jorge's eyes were open wide, still staring into eternity with that same look of shock and surprise.
Valerie had stopped struggling and was simply staring at Jorge's body. Her face was pale, eyes filled with abject terror: a rabbit caught in the headlights. She seemed not to notice the way her ripped blouse exposed her, but Huerta hadn't forgotten. Turning back from the door, the farm council chairman stepped back toward her, all faux smiles and conversational patter gone, his eyes glowing with the predatory hunger of the wolf.
"Take her to the table," he grunted.
Huerta's bodyguards pulled Valerie between them back to the kitchen table, laughing coarsely as they let their hands travel across the expanse of skin exposed on her chest. Valerie didn’t make a sound, too paralyzed with fear even to scream, as she was dragged back onto the flat surface. Huerta calmly, matter-of-factly moved between her legs, shoving her skirt back around her hips as he held the knife at her throat.
McKay struggled frantically against his ropes, feeling the adrenaline of desperation pumping in his blood. He was getting ready to call out, to try to draw their attention away from her; but in the second between making the decision and carrying it out, Carmella Mendoza appeared in front of him like an apparition, a wicked-looking carving knife clutched in her fist, face screwed up in a mask of rage.
"No." He shook his head, brain too scrambled to find the words to tell her that her husband's death wasn't his fault. But she just knelt at his feet and used the knife to slice through the ropes securing his legs together. Jason let the breath he had been holding trickle out in a quiet sigh of relief, as he twisted around to expose his wrists to her. He felt the ropes part to the blade, then touched the crude, wooden handle of the knife as it was pressed into his right hand.
Rolling to his knees, he took in the scene before him, trying to channel his rage and prioritize his targets. The first had to be the closest of the gunmen: he'd kept his autoshotgun in the crook of his left arm while he held Valerie down with the other. The other thug had his weapon slung---he could wait. But Huerta, while he'd returned Jason's service auto to his belt, still held a knife to Val's throat as he ripped at her panties with his free hand. And, of course, Filipe was outside and could return anytime. Best to deal with the ones inside as quickly as possible.
Feeling the pins-and-needles beginning to fade in his extremities, Jason hopped to his feet and lunged across the room, hammering downward with the carving knife and burying it in the base of the closest gunman's skull. The big man's back arched, his hands clutching in the air behind his head, mouth open in a silent scream as he staggered back from the table. His shotgun clattered to the floor, but Jason hadn't the time to retrieve it. Huerta and the other bodyguard snapped around, the older man's knife coming off of Valerie's throat and giving McKay the opening he needed.
Jason’s forearm caught Huerta across the throat, throwing him off his feet and sending his knife clattering across the floor. The second bodyguard struggled frantically with his slung CAWS, but Jason was already wrenching his service pistol out of Huerta's waistband. He was bringing it up in line with the second gunman when Filipe burst in through the front door, autorifle blazing wildly.
With slugs chopping into the walls and
floor all around him and no cover to be found, Jason risked a forward barrel roll under Filipe's point of aim and came to a stop on his butt between the Central American's legs. Firing one-handed, he punched three shots up through the man's groin, sending Filipe collapsing backwards with an agonized scream, his intestines flopping out of the gaping hole in his lower abdomen.
Rolling onto a knee, McKay saw that the second bodyguard had finally freed his shotgun and was swinging the muzzle around toward him. With no time to bring his sights to eye level, Jason fired instinctively from the hip, the double-tap impacting the shotgun's receiver and wrenching it from the man's hands. Unarmed and desperate, the Central American seized Valerie around the neck and hauled her off the table, holding her in front of him as a shield.
Not wanting to give the man a chance to use Val as a hostage and not trusting his shaking hands to attempt a headshot, Jason threw himself across the table and took them all three of them to the floor in a heap, with Valerie sandwiched between the two combatants. Letting his pistol drop, Jason managed to grab the bodyguard's left forearm and force it away from Valerie, then raised up on his knees and threw the senator's daughter out of the pile.
That action, unfortunately, left him open for a punch from his opponent's free hand that grazed across his cheek, snapping his head around and throwing him back off balance. The bodyguard immediately tried to press his advantage, hooking a leg around Jason's arm and throwing him halfway across the room. McKay used the momentum to roll back to his feet, taking up a low, wide-legged stance just in time to meet the man's headlong charge.
Running on training, instinct and endorphines, Jason responded to the assault just as his unarmed combat instructor in Basic Training had taught him. Sliding slightly to one side, he lashed out and drove a heel into the bodyguard's knee, shattering the kneecap with an audible crunch. His balance gone and his leg buckling beneath him, the thug collapsed forward, directly into Jason's upward palm strike. The meaty part of McKay's hand caught his opponent across the bridge of the nose, shattering the bone and driving one of the larger fragments into the man's brain.
McKay stood there, his palm still frozen at shoulder-level, watching through a haze of pain and lingering rage as the bodyguard collapsed in a heap, eyes rolling back into his head, a thin trickle of blood issuing from his nose.
"Mericon." He spun at the malediction and found himself staring into the bore of his own pistol, held in the shaking hands of Miguel Huerta. The farmer cum revolutionary had recovered from the blow to his throat and taken possession of the weapon after Jason had dropped it during the fight.
Jason was tensing for a desperate leap at the man when Huerta stiffened, an explosion of breath escaping his lips and his face twisting into a mask of agony. One hand left Jason's weapon to feel around behind his back, and then the pistol seemed to become too heavy for his other arm. It slipped from his suddenly-nerveless fingers and struck the floor with a plastic clatter; a heartbeat later, Huerta joined it, the breath going out of him as he crashed to the ground like a felled oak. Imbedded in his spine up to the hilt was his own knife, and standing over his lifeless form was Valerie O'Keefe.
Jason just stared at her for a long moment, mesmerized by the wide-eyed, savage visage into which her face had been transformed. With her hair tangled in a spikey mess and her clothes in tatters, she brought to mind some ancient Amazon warrior just stepped through a time machine.
"Are you all right?" he asked her. She didn't reply, staring at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. Jason staggered a step, feeling his pulse echoing in his pounding head. "We've got to leave," he told Valerie, trying to penetrate the trance into which she'd fallen.
"You can't leave me here!" Carmella Mendoza ran up to him, clutching at his arm so violently that he almost fell over. She motioned at Huerta's body. "Their friends will come. They will kill me and my children as a lesson to the others. Do not leave us here to die!"
Jason looked her in the face, searching her eyes, curious as to the ratio of self-interest to concern for her children. In the end, he found it didn't matter; either way, he couldn't fault her.
"All right." He sighed, grinding the gears in his brain as he tried to plan their next move. "Get together all the clothes you'll need, and as much water and food as you can carry, and meet us outside in fifteen minutes." She nodded gratefully and hustled back to the kitchen to gather supplies, while Jason turned back to Valerie. "Are you okay?" he asked her again.
"I'll be fine," she told him quietly, making a futile effort to straighten her ragged clothes. She looked far from fine to him; as a matter of fact, she seemed to be teetering on the brink of a complete breakdown. But he wasn't a psychologist, and they didn't have the luxury of therapy standing in a house full of dead bodies.
"Why don't you go pull the rover around next to their vehicle," he suggested. "We can decide which one we're going to take and take the fuel from the one we leave behind."
She stepped over Huerta's body like it wasn't there, and headed for the door.
"Wait a second," he said, holding up a hand. Bending down, he retrieved his pistol and handed it to her. "Just in case," he explained.
She nodded, hefting the weight of the weapon in her hand for a moment before she stepped out the open door into the night. Jason watched her go, shaking his head slightly, then went to work scavenging weapons and ammunition from the bodies. He hoped that Huerta had been correct about the Invaders pulling out---he had to pray he was, because there was no way they could stay in the Wastes now. Carmella had been right about that: Huerta had been the leader of the revolutionary movement, and he wasn't without friends.
There was only one place they could go now, if he was right. And God help them if he was wrong.
***
Shannon Stark cried out sharply, snapping a punch into the face of an imaginary foe, then sweeping the motion into a downward block and following through with a spinning kick. The spin brought her around to face the gym's mirrored wall, and her face darkened at the reflected image. She was, appropriately enough, fighting herself.
She'd tried to avoid the others in the days since the attack on the spaceport, keeping to her room and taking her meals alone. Thankfully, there wasn't really anything for her to do: they didn't have the forces left to permit even a basic recon, much less any kind of attack. But she'd grown claustrophobic and restless, so she'd waited till everyone else had gone to bed and ventured out to the small workout room constructed near the back of the shelter.
Maybe, she had thought, running through a few katas would help her to break out of the depression she'd sunk into since the raid. Taking a breath, she fell into a deep stance, judging her style critically in the mirror. Dressed in a halter top and loose shorts, she could see the muscles playing in her long legs as she settled into her stance, but she felt a slight tightness in her hamstrings---she hadn't been able to work out enough the last few months.
Depending on how long it took for a rescue ship to reach them, though, she might have plenty of time to get back into shape. Or, she thought soberly, if the Invaders found them before the Fleet did, it might not make a difference.
Shaking her head clear of such speculation, she tried to empty her mind and let the flow of the kata carry her motions. Launching into the next form, she tried to snap the kicks and punches cleanly, hoping to connect with her ki and purge herself of the negative emotions that burdened her. But with every punch, she saw the faces of Gunny Lambert and Bobby Comstock and the rest of the Marines; with every kick, she experienced anew the spear of despair as the orbital missiles intercepted their vehicles. And with every labored breath, she could hear her inner voice screaming the accusation at her: "You killed them, Shannon! It was your fault!"
Rage and futility crowded the focus and concentration from her mind, and her strikes became more desperate and uncontrolled. The sequence of the kata fled her thoughts, the punches and kicks running into each other with no order or design. She lashed out sloppil
y at her memories and her own image, her crisp "kia"s devolving into mindless screams, the out-of-control moves throwing her dangerously off balance. Finally, in the middle of a spinning crescent kick, she lost it: her plant foot flew out from under her and she landed hard on her back. The wind went out of her with a pained grunt, and she stayed where she lay, not able to move.
When her breath came back to her, it was in quiet sobs that shook her shoulders; and the tears she'd held back for days finally poured down her cheeks. The tears racked her body, coursing through her spasmodically like electric shocks, almost painful with their violence. Eyes squeezed shut, senses deadened, she was only vaguely aware that strong arms were enfolding her, cradling her gently, hands stroking her hair.
It was minutes later before she regained enough control to pry open her tear-sealed eyes and realize that the one holding her was Nathan Tanaka. Seeing that she had stopped crying, the Japanese bodyguard produced a handkerchief from his hip pocket and offered it to her. She took the rag without comment, pulling away from him with a little embarrassment as she wiped her face.
"Thank you," she finally said, not meeting his eyes.
"There is nothing to be ashamed of," he told her frankly. "It is a natural thing to grieve for fallen comrades, Lieutenant Stark."
"I'm not ashamed of my grief," she corrected him. "I'm ashamed at my failure."
"Why was the failure yours to bear?" Tanaka wanted to know. "Your plan was sound, and its objectives were achieved admirably. Your troops knew the risk, and they accepted it as their sworn duty. As should you."
"And what if I can't accept it?" she snapped, throwing down the handkerchief and springing angrily to her feet. "What if I can't accept throwing good people---Goddamned teenagers---into a furnace like they were disposable, replaceable pieces of machinery? What would the perfect, all-knowing ninja have to say about that?"