"Do you see them," Kristen asked. It was the fifth time in as many minutes. Dressed in a ragged cotton flower print dress, the front drenched in blood courtesy of its former owner, she was like thousands of others. A pillow stuffed up by her stomach filled some of the loose fabric giving her the almost comical appearance of a child attempting to mimic a pregnant woman if the blood hadn't been so disturbing.
She carried a one-armed doll, also covered in sticky crimson. There was much of it to be found since the Authority had begun shelling the outer neighborhoods. Entire city blocks had been demolished and building were broken and shattered by the constant mortar fire back and forth. Sometimes there was nothing left of the people who had lived inside them but a stain on the wall. Sometimes there was more, and that was worse. The rotten hot stink of a person's insides filled even the most shattered room. There was no shortage of gore to use for props.
"So...," Kristen said. "Do you see them?"
Meifen sighed. Dressed from head to toe in black with her dark hair tied into a tight ponytail, she peeked out around the corner and shook her head.
"I can hear them but I can't see them yet."
"So why don't we move closer?"
"And if they see both of us?"
Kristen shrugged.
"Exactly," Meifen said. "Just be patient."
"It'd better work."
"It will. If you do your part."
A minute later, the crunch of tank tracks eating up pavement got closer, accompanied by the high pitched whine of the turbine motor. Meifen poked her head around the corner and saw an armored personnel carrier turning onto the street surrounded by Earth soldiers. Their helmets were sky blue, the color of the Universal United Human Authority, over gray urban camouflage. Each carried a standard UUHA-issue plasma pulse rifle, marching with wary precision, glancing up at the hollow windows above for any sign of enemy weapons.
Meifen pulled herself back and watched Kristen take deep breaths, the excitement brightening her blue eyes. A wide grin spread across her face and her posture was such that she seemed ready to sprint out and meet them right then.
"Ten seconds," Meifen said. There was no need to whisper, the engine was deafening. "Get your game face on."
Kristen huffed in two gulps of air and her eyes began to water, lips trembling. As Meifen peeled herself away from the wall, Kristen swallowed a deep sob. By the time she circled around behind, Meifen was certain Kristen would be in a full blown fit of crying.
Moving through the building was easier than going around and Meifen stalked over the rubble from the collapsed upper floors with the grace of a cat, still keeping low to ensure she wasn't seen. Right on cue, a shriek cut through the night air and Kristen came running up the street, cradling the doll in her arms like a terrified mother.
The Earth soldiers formed a quick line in front of the vehicle, going down on their knees and taking aim, calling out in several languages for her to stop. The shouts and were chaotic and Meifen couldn't understand a word they said but their posture told her everything she needed to know. Still, they were sloppy, leaving no one to guard the rear.
While Kristen held their attention forward with her desperate cries, Meifen inched around behind, the Desert Eagle supported by both hands. Eight soldiers plus whoever was inside the APC. She had seven rounds loaded and two spare clips. Almost a fair fight.
Meifen lingered in the shadows, taking care to aim her first shot. All of the soldiers were men and though their skin varied in shade, their builds and height were almost identical. One had an extra stripe on the back of his helmet and she assumed he was an officer or some kind of squad leader. Leveling her weapon, it glinted in the dim moonlight and caught Kristen's eye, knowing she was visible.
Kristen unleashed another wail but the officer must have caught the pause in her performance and began to turn. Meifen squeezed the trigger and the gun popped in her hand. The large bullet traveled across the short distance between them in less than a second and smashed into the side of the officer's face, exiting the other side and carrying his helmet, skull, and a large amount of gray matter with it.
For half a second, the time it took for the officer to drop like a sack to the street, everything froze. The soldiers studied dead man's sudden fall and missing features, trying to analyze why it had happened. They turned to look behind them and found Meifen already taking aim at the next target. The next one of them.
When the spell broke, some of the soldiers remained still as if unable to comprehend the information that had to process while others fell onto their stomachs and others began to pivot toward her. Meifen targeted on of the later, firing two shots in sequence and putting him down forever.
No one had noticed Kristen falling to her knees, still clutching her baby but reaching inside its plastic belly. A second later, she emerged with a pistol, black and dull in the dim light, almost appearing to be a toy.
She aimed and fired at a soldier on the ground, the air around her crackling with static electricity before exploding with a bright purple flash striking him between the shoulder blades. Where there had once been a spine was now a smoldering cauterized hole the size of a softball. The noise of the pulse pistol firing was like a metal chair slamming against a concrete table and it drew the attention back to Kristen and they found an evil grin across her face.
The soldiers managed to pop off a shot here, there, but it was panicked and aimed at shadows not targets. One by one, they died by Meifen or Kristen's calm, orderly massacre until, less than half a minute after it started, it was over.
Meifen made for the armored personnel carrier as its turbine rumbled to life, grabbing for the hatch before the driver could lock it and swinging it wide. Dropping her empty clip from the butt of her pistol, she slammed in a fresh one and pulled the trigger, loading a new round into the chamber. The driver scrambled for his sidearm but Meifen pushed her gun inside and blindly pulled the trigger, again, and again.
The steel insides and cramped space did her work for her as the bullets rattled around inside, shredding through anything and everything they came into contact with. Once the clinking inside the vehicle stopped, Meifen peered inside the hatch and found the results of her handiwork.
The driver was dead, torn apart but the bouncing bullets and slumped over the steering wheel. Blood spattered over the windshield, instrument panel, and most of the compartment. She climbed inside and looked into the back. No one else inside but plenty of equipment: meals ready to eat, radios, spare power packs for the rifles. A small goldmine.
Meifen reached around the driver to open the hatch on his side and kicked his corpse onto the pavement below, cringing at the wet thump and crunch of bones as it landed at an odd angle. Looking for something to clean the windshield with, as she wiped away the blood she saw Kristen collecting weapons and looting the bodies of the soldiers. She got out to help and they loaded their collection into the back.
"See," Meifen said. "I told you it would work."
"Fine," said Kristen. "But next time you can be the diversion."
"I don't think so. My acting skills aren't nearly as good as yours."
#
The central command for the New Chicago resistance was an elevated train station in the center of the city. All of the activity was concealed beneath the low concrete overhangs but collapsible tables lined the entire length of the track with different stacks of paper littering each and runners taking what they needed from one and dropping them on another.
The hub of the activity was in the center, around a former gambling table covered in a thin sheet of plywood, atop which sat a miniature, and not altogether accurate, model of they city with known friendly units in red blocks and sighted enemies in blue.
Christian Kim sat at the next table over, studying the latest supply reports for the fifth time, uncertain as to if what he was seeing was true. His black eyebrows knit over dark brown eyes and he ran a hand over his shorn scalp, trying to make sense of it. Grabbing a stack of the papers, he trudged over to the command center and dropped them over the model of where the invasion stood.
"Something you have to say, Major," Jennifer Filatov said.
Ranked a major in the Fourth Fleet, she was the nominal commander of the resistance forces of New Chicago. Standing a full head shorter than Kim, she bore similar Asian features but her mixed ancestry had lightened her skin and given a disconcerting shape to her eyes, neither almond or round but somewhere in between. It rattled Kim's sense of how things were supposed to be. On Yong Nam, people were either Korean or from elsewhere. There was no blend.
They both wore the black overcoats and crimson uniform of the Republican Fleet but the shoulder insignia of Kim's was different than Filatov's. He wore the Roman numeral Five and shield of the Fifth Fleet while she wore the Arabic number four over the planet stabbing sword of the Fourth. A small difference numerically but large in terms of responsibility.
"Yes," Kim said. "Explain to me how we have a dozen militia units reporting in that they have APCs and pulse weaponry. Last I checked, no one in the city had these things."
"Oh, that," Flitatov said. "They're being supplied by freelancers, citizens working on their own and giving over the spoils to the militia."
"Who's doing this?"
Flitatov shrugged, waving it away.
"It's all rumors and speculation," she said. "But the reports I keep hearing are of a pair of girls out there personally taking down You-ha units one by one."
"Interesting..."
"Bullshit, if you ask me," Filtatov said. "No way two people could do as much damage as they've been credited with."
"Then where'd these vehicles come from?"
"Who knows," she replied. "Anywhere. For all we know, they grabbed a couple of trucks and have taken to calling them armored personnel carriers. That's why we're not basing any of our strategy on them."
"But look at your own map," Kim said. "Every unit that's done the most damage and held their ground has reported having one."
"Maybe You-ha's pushing from the north and south more than from the west," Filatov said. "I don't know. But what I'm not willing to do is take the locals' word for what they have. It's like they intend to rush into suicide situations to prove they're tougher than the Fleet. But, hey, if you want to go out there and scout what they have yourself, so be it."
Kim nodded and fetched his reports from the table, glancing over them one more time. His few years with the Fifth had taught him that things weren't always what they seemed. And the short history of the Fifth itself had shown that good soldiers didn't always come from where they were expected.
#
The vantage point was almost perfect. Hidden behind the collapsed wall of a former apartment building on the fourth floor, Kim had a birds eye view across several decimated blocks. The occasional pop of mortar rounds being fired were miles away and only the heart pounding sound of ion-plasma weapons fire was anywhere nearby. The major had ditched his field uniform in favor of black from head to toe, starting with a knit wool skull cap to heavy booted feet. Armed with a pistol, it was strapped to a thigh as he peered through night vision binoculars.
It had taken two days to pin down an accurate description of his quarry and had, at long last, laid eyes on the women supposedly doing more damage than some entire militia units. Neither were much older than twenty-five and made an odd pair, one tall and dark with a grim determination her only expression, the other shorter and blond with a fire in her blue eyes that caused a shiver to run down Kim's spine.
Given the number of odd characters hanging around militia encampments near the front, Kim had been able to go unnoticed the entire day, leaning against rubble, pretending to smoke as he observed them behind a pair of sunglasses. The dark one, the same kind of strange mix of Asian and European ancestry as Major Flitatov, spent her time crouched on a dusty rock polishing a pulse pistol and Desert Eagle, not saying a word to anyone. Her partner, the blond, bounced between clusters of militia hawking goods and taking orders, drinking what appeared to be an entire bottle of whiskey over the course of the day.
It wasn't until nightfall that the dark one showed any sign of life. A small group of other non-militia citizens joined her, forming a small circle and taking orders with solemn nods. The blond joined toward the end and argued for a minute until giving in. Then the group was off.
Kim trailed them from two blocks behind, impressed with the stealth the untrained civilians moved through the city with. Leaving the safe confines of the inner-city, they traveled into warzone. The inner blocks remained much as they had been, tall tenements with street front retail now closed for business and emptied of residents, but those along the major avenues were little more than shells where they hadn't been reduced to rubble entirely.
On the central east-west artery of the city, the group spread out, half on each side with members peeling off and climbing into the empty shells. Kim followed their lead and settled into his nest.
Two kilometers to the east the avenue was road blocked by a combined militia-Fourth Fleet unit, the western end controlled by regular patrols of Authority soldiers. Where Rassmussen had placed her people was in the exact center of the area under dispute, at risk of shelling from both sides but also certain to encounter at least one enemy patrol over the course of the night.
Given the heat of the day, Kim always found himself surprised by the chill the night air could take on. Within an hour of settling in, he began hugging himself against the cruel bite. Another hour and a half later, he had to reorient his posture to allow blood flow back through his numb legs. Fighting boredom but gaining respect for them, he marveled at their discipline.
By the time a sound pricked up his ears, Kim was on the verge of sleep. He checked his watch. It was very late or very early. Taking up the binoculars, he peered out and saw the dark outlines of an Authority combat unit, sneaking up the avenue pressed against the ruined buildings. The sound was a can that rattling across the street and the soldiers were frozen in place until it stopped. After two minutes they continued their slow crawl forward.
They entered the kill zone Meifen had established but still nothing happened. A sudden flash of motion to the rear drew his attention. A hand shot out, covering a straggling soldier's mouth and hauling him into the deep darkness of the ruins. What happened after, he could only imagine but where the soldier had once been, a new one took his place. The uniform was sloppy but, before the unit had left the area, half was made up of Meifen's group. Then the street lit up like a fireworks show.
The soldiers in front were pummeled with a two dozen balls of lightening each as loud as a thunder strike and the air was charged with static electricity. What was left of the invader's bodies collapsed to the cracked pavement, holes big enough to put a fist through burned into their chests, legs, and head. Even from his perch, Kim could smell the acrid scent of singed flesh.
Kim fell back into the shadows, checking his watch a second time. Minutes.
Very impressive.
Very interesting.
This would have to be reported.
#
Meifen sat atop their latest prize, sipping whiskey from a flask she'd received a day or so ago and filled with some of Kristen's premium stock. Another militia unit was being given the gift of modern weaponry and armament and celebrating in the appropriate way--drinking until they were blind under the cover of darkness while hoping their new toys might make the next day a little less bloody for their side.
Kristen mingled down among them, welcoming the gratitude with open arms while recounting their latest score as if she had pulled it off personally. Meifen envied that within Kristen which allowed her such freedom. She had no illusions of glory. They'd killed two or three dozen men--all Authority soldiers were men, they'd discovered--but none of them weighed easy on her conscious. That they'd died in war made it better but Meifen never thought of herself as a killer, despite the half-dozen that fell by her hand before she was locked up. But those deaths, even with the things they had brought, were still no reason for celebration.
She nursed her thoughts over another swig of whiskey and a long pull on a cigarette, watching the party below. Thus far, her plan was working perfectly. She'd been able to release her aggression on people who more or less deserved it while Kristen collected the "donations" by the various militia units they brought supplies to. Win-win, she supposed. But an void remained, the feeling she left the camp with, that she stilled owed time and it wasn't yet paid.
Killing every Earth soldier she encountered wouldn't fill it. She'd done that thus far and the hole was still present. Bringing back the equipment and vehicles helped a bit, the idea of having contributed something to a greater cause but what would happen tomorrow or next week when the Earth soldiers were finally driven off? What then?
Meifen supposed she could always return to Chen. Regardless of how legitimate he was selling himself these days, she was certain there would always be a place in his organization for someone with her skills. But it wouldn't be as his number two. Someone else had no doubt filled that role, someone with two years of loyalty and service and without a friend always in trouble.
Just as she began to fall into existential despair from which she saw no bottom, a voice broke her away from the dark thoughts.
"This your vehicle," a man asked.
She glanced him over from her vantage on top. He was Asian, full blooded by the look of him unlike her. Tall with broad shoulders under the black overcoat she'd come to know as the uniform for Republican Fleet officers. His black hair was buzzed tight but his face was less severe, almost handsome. His voice carried a slight accent indicating that Colonial English wasn't his first language.
"No," she said, waving to the celebrating militia unit. "Not any more. Just gave it to them."
"No wonder they're celebrating. A nice piece of machinery."
"I guess," Meifen said. "Didn't do You-ha a whole lot of good."
"It's tough to get the word out when no one's left alive to report it."
Meifen's head bobbed from shoulder to shoulder, uncommitted to the sentiment.
"So what is this for you, an even dozen?"
"Something like that," she said. Squinting, she took a second look at the Fleet officer. He met her eyes and held them, unblinking, and she glanced away first. "Something I can do for you?"
"Actually," the officer said. "I was hoping there was. All this is going to be over in a week or less. And the Fleet has a need for people like you."
"Killers?"
"Thinkers."