Outside, gun fire twittered vaguely, felling the Irixian while he shot a second time – breaching the side of the tank as a last note of defiance. A barrage of artillery fire followed. But, the noise and what it signified was irrelevant to Nazeer.
Fire seemed to be devouring his left torso. Nazeer was unaware that he was screaming and writhing, until the right chest belt, which was almost severed, gave way. No longer held crooked, his back suddenly stretched evenly, while the lap and groin belts held him. For some reason, this lessened the pain. He stopped hysterically thrashing and clamped his mouth shut, turning the screams into muffled wails.
He girded his courage and looked down his torso. His left belly and lower rib cage had a new cavity, seething with pulpy viscera of varied textures, and edged by broken ribs. Meanwhile, blood was running down into his helmet like dark syrup and puddling in the curved top of the cockpit.
It's bad. Oh! It's bad.
He squeezed his eyes shut and moaned, as much for the pain as for this ridiculous fate. To die upside down – a defenseless scarab, on a mission without honor. Dejectedly, he unclasped the helmet and let it clatter into the bloody pool below.
I'm done.
But, after a few more shuddering breaths through the waves of pain, which he assumed would recede as death took him, nothing changed. Nazeer clung to his rapid, steady heartbeat a while, then thought, wait, the shell missed my heart?I'm breathing! Maybe there's a chance. He threw a fist at a gore-covered button on the console.
MEDIC CALLED flashed on a screen, and pain-killers leapt from a newly open compartment – bounced off his hand – darting to catch them, to plink in tank's inverted ceiling.
“Holy, fetid rot!” Nazeer spat. Then, fresh agony showered sparks before his squeezed eyelids and lead him to the brink of unconsciousness. Yet, though it all, he instinctively kept the pressure of his folded his arms over his wound.
Then, Ba-BUM, ba-BUM, ba-BUM – his heart beat pounded in his skull, reeling Nazeer back to the agonizing present. He groaned at this injustice, but decided on a different tact – distraction. Nazeer swiped the blood from his face, then with his arms again clasped around his middle, he faced the dead Irixian. Who killed him?
Fire seemed to be devouring his left torso. Nazeer was unaware that he was screaming and writhing, until the right chest belt, which was almost severed, gave way. No longer held crooked, his back suddenly stretched evenly, while the lap and groin belts held him. For some reason, this lessened the pain. He stopped hysterically thrashing and clamped his mouth shut, turning the screams into muffled wails.
He girded his courage and looked down his torso. His left belly and lower rib cage had a new cavity, seething with pulpy viscera of varied textures, and edged by broken ribs. Meanwhile, blood was running down into his helmet like dark syrup and puddling in the curved top of the cockpit.
It's bad. Oh! It's bad.
He squeezed his eyes shut and moaned, as much for the pain as for this ridiculous fate. To die upside down – a defenseless scarab, on a mission without honor. Dejectedly, he unclasped the helmet and let it clatter into the bloody pool below.
I'm done.
But, after a few more shuddering breaths through the waves of pain, which he assumed would recede as death took him, nothing changed. Nazeer clung to his rapid, steady heartbeat a while, then thought, wait, the shell missed my heart?I'm breathing! Maybe there's a chance. He threw a fist at a gore-covered button on the console.
MEDIC CALLED flashed on a screen, and pain-killers leapt from a newly open compartment – bounced off his hand – darting to catch them, to plink in tank's inverted ceiling.
“Holy, fetid rot!” Nazeer spat. Then, fresh agony showered sparks before his squeezed eyelids and lead him to the brink of unconsciousness. Yet, though it all, he instinctively kept the pressure of his folded his arms over his wound.
Then, Ba-BUM, ba-BUM, ba-BUM – his heart beat pounded in his skull, reeling Nazeer back to the agonizing present. He groaned at this injustice, but decided on a different tact – distraction. Nazeer swiped the blood from his face, then with his arms again clasped around his middle, he faced the dead Irixian. Who killed him?
Under the reinstated One Child, the luck of having twins of both genders growing up in their home, had directly revealed those contrasts to Jenaive and Nazeer.
Sneaking glances at her seat-mate, as he lowers his backpack to the floor between his sprawled thighs, Jenaive judges that he's a few years older than Huascar was when he enlisted at eighteen. There's a leanness to the man's face – his cheekbones and jaw are prominent and the mature, grey-green eyes show no whites in the corners.
After acknowledging Jenaive with a slight nod, he slouches down with his knees banking against the row of seats in front of them. He tips his head back and closes his eyes.
Academy-aged. A phase I missed. Jenaive turns away, but not before making out the message that runs down the sleeve of the stranger's frayed jacket. It says GOVERNMENT LIES, PEOPLE DIE, in letters made of bones.
Domina would love it. In fact, when her daughter's not playing the professional, she carries protest signs with similar mottos, despite the risk. Domina, who needs no one.
...leaning against the window, Jeanaive feels as bleak as her family and their dazed neighbors did when they emerged after the Fever was eradicated, to look upon the quiet, stricken city, as if for the first time. Emperor Yanif, the hope of progressives, was among the dead after only six years of reign.
Then his successor, Octivan, had lifted the grieving people with empathy and life-giving reforms. But, a few years into what had seemed like a wiser, safer era, Jenaive's father, Yustan, who, for Estifay's nerves, had willingly put away his rebellion and guns against the much loathed Migration (her parents had never married – too conformist) died in a crash.
It was then that eight-year-old Jenaive began to be shuffled between the households of her mother and her grandparents. Her quiet, studious nature was partially a coping mechanism for what soon became solo trips across the Lygon Ocean – between rugged, ice-capped Artin and milder, cosmopolitan Gimala. It was twenty years post-Migration, but even then, Jenaive had noticed how the contrasting climates kept their hold on people's character and imagination; their culture and memories seemed fixed, but starved.
Estifay had encouraged Jenaive to pursue her dreams and unique strengths, while she got into her “secret” drug use and serial relationships with less and less stable men. Meanwhile, her grandparents covered Jenaive with the warm cloak of practicality and resignation. Gradually they entirely assumed parenting her.
Jenaive's mother overdosed on Dawners (tranquilizers), when she was 21 and immersed in her medical training. I was racing against your end.
“You weren't meant to save me. I'm sorry, baby,” comes her mother's tearful voice. Estifay's sob swoops down and transforms in Jenaive's fanciful mind into one of her mimicked wild bird calls, which she would let fly at random to shake things up – even after poor health had curtailed her visits to the surface. Natural sounds were key elements in Estifay's music, lending her environmental message an urgency unlike anything else.
Jenaive answers, you did what you could, Mother.
Sneaking glances at her seat-mate, as he lowers his backpack to the floor between his sprawled thighs, Jenaive judges that he's a few years older than Huascar was when he enlisted at eighteen. There's a leanness to the man's face – his cheekbones and jaw are prominent and the mature, grey-green eyes show no whites in the corners.
After acknowledging Jenaive with a slight nod, he slouches down with his knees banking against the row of seats in front of them. He tips his head back and closes his eyes.
Academy-aged. A phase I missed. Jenaive turns away, but not before making out the message that runs down the sleeve of the stranger's frayed jacket. It says GOVERNMENT LIES, PEOPLE DIE, in letters made of bones.
Domina would love it. In fact, when her daughter's not playing the professional, she carries protest signs with similar mottos, despite the risk. Domina, who needs no one.
...leaning against the window, Jeanaive feels as bleak as her family and their dazed neighbors did when they emerged after the Fever was eradicated, to look upon the quiet, stricken city, as if for the first time. Emperor Yanif, the hope of progressives, was among the dead after only six years of reign.
Then his successor, Octivan, had lifted the grieving people with empathy and life-giving reforms. But, a few years into what had seemed like a wiser, safer era, Jenaive's father, Yustan, who, for Estifay's nerves, had willingly put away his rebellion and guns against the much loathed Migration (her parents had never married – too conformist) died in a crash.
It was then that eight-year-old Jenaive began to be shuffled between the households of her mother and her grandparents. Her quiet, studious nature was partially a coping mechanism for what soon became solo trips across the Lygon Ocean – between rugged, ice-capped Artin and milder, cosmopolitan Gimala. It was twenty years post-Migration, but even then, Jenaive had noticed how the contrasting climates kept their hold on people's character and imagination; their culture and memories seemed fixed, but starved.
Estifay had encouraged Jenaive to pursue her dreams and unique strengths, while she got into her “secret” drug use and serial relationships with less and less stable men. Meanwhile, her grandparents covered Jenaive with the warm cloak of practicality and resignation. Gradually they entirely assumed parenting her.
Jenaive's mother overdosed on Dawners (tranquilizers), when she was 21 and immersed in her medical training. I was racing against your end.
“You weren't meant to save me. I'm sorry, baby,” comes her mother's tearful voice. Estifay's sob swoops down and transforms in Jenaive's fanciful mind into one of her mimicked wild bird calls, which she would let fly at random to shake things up – even after poor health had curtailed her visits to the surface. Natural sounds were key elements in Estifay's music, lending her environmental message an urgency unlike anything else.
Jenaive answers, you did what you could, Mother.
Gorsifar also watches the screen over Domina's head – the light of which makes his dilated pupils flash ghostly green from under the brim of his hat. Women's pupils also have the “moon glimmer” caused by light bouncing off the reflective layer behind the retinas, when in an otherwise dark place. Still, Domina's overtaxed adrenals jolt, and the news story blends into the background mush of voices.
Beneath Gorsifar's mild exterior, lies the whetted reflexes of a fighter who currently trains the Resistance in weapons and defense. Domina's gaze is once again caught by the mountainous range of scars over his right hand and (she knows) climbing up his forearm beneath his sleeve – his payment for six years in the military. And now his repaired, muscular arm makes a comfortable nook for Treena to lean against.
Moments like this steer Domina's thoughts to Huascar. He's probably even stronger, and scarred too, yet...we've lost him.
Yet, Gorsifar's gentleness with Treena reminds her how Huascar doled out his strength, so as not to hurt her, when they wrestled as children. Sometimes, in response to her desperate fury at their uneven match, he would let her win. Damn him!
Just then, Gorsifar meets Domina's gaze and nods. She's a little sister to him.
That's two unavailable brothers.
Scowling, Domina looks away, but not before catching Treena's questioning expression.
And Ronin saw it all. His lips, still inviting after thirteen years of not kissing them, tug downward.
It's not that, Ronin. It's the other, worse thing.
To conserve resources after the Zentoril Fever, Emperor Octivan had reinstated the One Child rule sixty years ago. Twins are the only exception – making them “lucky.” But, growing up, Domina and Huascar's relationship was a vibrant entity to itself. Maddeningly, those heart-bonds remain, despite her attempts to sever them and the damage that his choices wrought – always, the keening for the other.
It was Domina's “obsession” with Huascar's well-being, while he was undergoing secret and extreme military training, that had fashioned the wedge that drove her and Ronin apart. They were in their twenties then.
And here I am. Thirty-seven – still obsessed. Damn him!
Beneath Gorsifar's mild exterior, lies the whetted reflexes of a fighter who currently trains the Resistance in weapons and defense. Domina's gaze is once again caught by the mountainous range of scars over his right hand and (she knows) climbing up his forearm beneath his sleeve – his payment for six years in the military. And now his repaired, muscular arm makes a comfortable nook for Treena to lean against.
Moments like this steer Domina's thoughts to Huascar. He's probably even stronger, and scarred too, yet...we've lost him.
Yet, Gorsifar's gentleness with Treena reminds her how Huascar doled out his strength, so as not to hurt her, when they wrestled as children. Sometimes, in response to her desperate fury at their uneven match, he would let her win. Damn him!
Just then, Gorsifar meets Domina's gaze and nods. She's a little sister to him.
That's two unavailable brothers.
Scowling, Domina looks away, but not before catching Treena's questioning expression.
And Ronin saw it all. His lips, still inviting after thirteen years of not kissing them, tug downward.
It's not that, Ronin. It's the other, worse thing.
To conserve resources after the Zentoril Fever, Emperor Octivan had reinstated the One Child rule sixty years ago. Twins are the only exception – making them “lucky.” But, growing up, Domina and Huascar's relationship was a vibrant entity to itself. Maddeningly, those heart-bonds remain, despite her attempts to sever them and the damage that his choices wrought – always, the keening for the other.
It was Domina's “obsession” with Huascar's well-being, while he was undergoing secret and extreme military training, that had fashioned the wedge that drove her and Ronin apart. They were in their twenties then.
And here I am. Thirty-seven – still obsessed. Damn him!