Slow Burn (Updated Weekly)

Part 23

Part 23

The first time I lost hope. The bombs fell around me. I wasn't fast enough to get everyone underground. The three that followed me began to die slowly after as a result of the EMP blast that followed. Their augmented hearts and lungs stopped working as their mechanical parts shut down. Even my own implants shut down. For the first time in years I was more human then I had ever been. Cut off. Alone. My team had taken off and deserted me. Bastards knew I was down below but they dropped the bombs anyway. Reynolds. In the back of my mind I knew he had been watching. Somehow yet he had still made me commanding officer of Squad 13.

The rescue party came three days later. I could still smell the fire in the air. The smell of burnt corpses and copper. It was Kal that had convinced them to finally come back for me. He argued that I was an asset, worth more alive then down in the dust. When the chopper landed I was burying the last child. I didn't know any of their names nor did I know if there was any family to contact. I had no choice but to leave their graves unmarked. They were the forgotten. Forgotten by everyone but me.

___________________

"You know I love the sound of your silence," Miguel said. He was still talking. Why the hell was he still talking? What more could he say or want from me? He had a collar around my neck. I was his slave. He could have made me bark like a dog if he wanted. It made me cringe. No I would have rather had my head blown off. He knew he could push me one way but not the other. Nothing he was having me do was something I had never done before.

"Talk to me Elyse, pretty please," he said. For a moment there was a change in his tone. Rather then a snake he sounded like some less sinister and repulsive creature.

"Tell me a story Elyse, you know, only about five more minutes till your ship breaks orbit and you land," he was asking again.

Five minutes. Five minutes and I would be unhinged. Five minutes and Reynolds message would give me the answer I needed to be set free. Five minutes and I would be the one in control just as I should have always been. Miguel wants to hear a story. I could make something up on the spot. That would be easy. "Truth or fiction?" I asked. "I already know all I need to know about you, let us see how your imagination works. Tell me a fictitious tale. Something random, Something I might read to a child," he said.

"I could tell you about Captain Strider who served onboard the UNS Argyll, or King Neptune and his battle against the Horge to re-energivz the nano sphere.

"Those sound like really horrid holos," said Miguel, "be creative, tell me something from you, from the bottom of your mind. What kind of creatures can you create?" I thought for a moment. I didn't quite understand what kind of trickery Miguel was trying to pull. This had been the most random conversation I had had in years. The last person that talked to me in this way was Kal and that was in bed late at night and the two of us were usually half drunk, half asleep, and always naked. Perhaps that was his goal. To stir up some small talk and make me think about the way I use to be. The person I was when I wasn't holding a gun to someones head. He was breaking me down bit by bit.

I began, "Once upon a time in a time after leading the tiny planet Mars, a group of trolls fly toward a distant speck. The speck gradually resolved into tiny space abbey. The trolls begin sharing their martian secrets with the surrounding alien populations. Civil war strikes the galaxy which is ruled by Chad Zeus, an industrial alien capable of theft and assassination. Terrified the handsome zombie known as Chantel Chen flees the empire with her protector. They head for Liverpool in New New England on the planet Epsilon Eridani. When they finally arrive a fight breaks out and Chen uses a spoon to kill Chad Zues and make her escape when sudden;y her protector encounters a tribe of witches."

"Stop. Right there," said Miguel.

"Are you not enjoying the story?" I said in a sarcastic tone.

"Such bullshit," he said. For a moment I wondered if this was it. Miguel had decided to kill me on account of my horrid storytelling. (I may have said I was a good liar but I was not in fact good at telling fairy tales).

"You said she makes her escape with a spoon? Impossible. I call bullshit," he said.

"Yes a spoon," I said.

"I should kill you right now and save future generations from your imagination," said Miguel. I prepared myself. I was nearly holding my breath before I realized five minutes had passed. There was a delay in Miguel's voice. A small white noise was audible through my earpiece. The moment had come. Had Jake not told me I would have barely have noticed. We were dropping out of orbit and this was my chance. Escape.

"Ionize the hydrogen fuel tank or we are going to crash!" yelled the pilot from the front of the shuttle. Was he talking to me? I was the only one still standing.

"You, the chick with gun, your the closest to the back there is an electrical invariance in the conduits attached to the tank and if you don't ionize it with the thrust assembly the entire compressor could destabilize!"

"How the fuck do I do any of that?" I shouted back.

"Take out the boson microfilament inside your gun and plug it into the back flow regulators. Inside the assembly. You'll see the burnt out one inside. That will ionize the fuel tank and we'll stabilize. If not we're going to go into free fall soon as we hit break through the atmosphere.

No time now. I had to make a choice. Listen to Reynolds message and de-activate my collar and risk going into freefall or save the ship and the passengers onboard.