Women of War

by Alexander Potter

  I’ve been hit. Simultaneously she registered that she’d only wounded the rebel leader, lost her rifle, and now lay only feet from him and Kirsten Channing.

  Twisting her head, she looked around, seeing a pair of elegantly booted feet below the limo some thirty yards distant.

  A blast of energy hit the ground beside her. Instincts cut in and she tried to fling herself over onto her front—but nothing happened. Fear made a tight fist in the pit of her stomach as she scrabbled for the external controls on her right forearm, trying to find the flap to release her energy pistol.

  “You bitch!” Kirsten ran toward her, rifle raised. “You shot Chris!”

  The floor a foot from her face vaporized, surrounding her with a blast of noxious gasses. She could hear the suit’s filters working overtime, then her internal air supply cut in.

  “Get back here, Kirsten!” her companion yelled. “We can still make it if you help me!”

  Frantically Slade pushed herself again, this time to the other side, managing at last to roll over onto her front. Arms shaking with effort, she lifted her torso off the ground, looking to the limo.

  Kirsten turned back to Chris as he pulled himself into a standing position and aimed his weapon at her.

  Slade’s blood ran cold. It was one of the heavy rotation rifles that Brolin and Tyler used.

  She heard Tyler round the corner. Kirsten fired at him as his missile hit the rebel leader.

  Tyler grunted in pain as he fell. He landed beside her, his rifle falling from his hands. She grabbed it, forced herself up onto her good knee, and relying only on her tac grid, pulled the trigger, holding it down for several heartbeats. An arc of energy leaped toward the girl, felling her instantly. Beyond her, the limo, detonated by Tyler’s missile, exploded, surrounding both her and Tyler in a blast of heat and poisonous fumes.

  She turned to him. His tell-tale still showed green on her HUD. Fear lent her the strength to pull his unconscious form closer.

  “Tyler!” she yelled, pushing him onto his back and shaking him. “Tyler, wake up!”

  A secondary explosion shook the ground as the ammunition from the rebels’ rifles exploded.

  His eyes flickered open. “John,” he said, enunciating the word carefully as he tried to focus on her face. “It’s John, Emma.”

  “John, stay with me,” she shook him again as his eyes closed and he began to cough. “Medic! Hutton! He’s choking to death!” she screamed. Slowly, painfully, she began to inch them away from the inferno.

  “Let me have him, Captain,” said Hutton, dropping onto one knee beside her. “Lydecker, give me a hand! Brolin, help the captain.”

  “He’s choking on the fumes,” she said, barely noticing that Tyler was now lying limp and still as she surrendered him.

  Lydecker lifted Tyler up, carrying him toward the exit. As Brolin picked her up, she craned her head to watch Lydecker remove Tyler’s helmet.

  Brolin set her down beside them then hovered.

  Remembering her duties, she asked, “What about the rebels?”

  “Lost one, rest are sleeping the gas off,” said Brolin as Hutton reached for the small oxygen flask he carried.

  “You won’t be needing that,” said Lydecker quietly. “He’s gone.”

  “Use the oxygen,” Brolin said forcefully as Hutton bent over to examine Tyler.

  Hutton sat back and shook his head. “Too late.”

  Leaning forward, she snatched the oxygen from the medic. “I’ll use it if you won’t,” she said, fumbling with the flask, looking for the way to turn the gas flow on. Something precious inside her was dying with Tyler. The pain in her chest was returning and her vision was getting blurry again.

  “There’s no point, Captain,” he said, trying gently to take it back from her. “There’s already been too much tissue damage to his lungs.”

  “See to the captain, Hutton,” she heard Lydecker say. “Look at the hole in her chest armor. She’s hurt bad.”

  She let the flask go, giving in to her own pain and grief as she passed out.

  “Captain,” said Jones, catching up to her in the corridor. “Captain—Emma, wait!”

  She stopped, shocked at his use of her name.

  Jones gave a small smile. “Yeah, Tyler told me your name. He made it his business to find it out. There was nothing you could have done. He chose to bypass the warning light on his suit.”

  “I should have insisted on checking ...”

  “He needed to be on the mission for you, Emma,” Jones interrupted. “Tyler died trying to save you. You have to allow his death to count for that. Way you’re behaving, you’re taking his sacrifice away from him, making it worthless.”

  She nodded, finally listening to him. “He saved me twice that day.”

  “He did. You just got to hang in there. There’s only a month of this duty left. I spoke to the teacher, explained about it being a year since he died. She’s not going to make a complaint.”

  “But it matters, Jones. War isn’t a game. They killed all the rebels to cover up Channing’s daughter’s involvement.”

  He held his artificial hand out to her. “Hell, I know it isn’t a game! One day, so will they, and we’ll be here, as always. Why don’t you join us tonight? We keep asking you. Tyler would have liked it.”

  She and Tyler had lost what little they could have had because of the barriers between their ranks. Maybe now was the time for her to admit that even if she was a woman, she was entitled to close ties with her men.

  Taking a deep breath, she took hold of his hand. “I’ll come.”

  FIRE FROM THE SUN

  by Jane Lindskold

  Lindskold is well-known for her Firekeeper saga, which began with Through Wolf’s Eyes and has continued through four novels. Her most recent novel is The Buried Pyramid, in which she takes a break from feral women and wolves to write an archaeological adventure fantasy set in 1870s Egypt. Lindskold has published fourteen novels and over fifty short stories. She lives in New Mexico with her archaeologist husband, Jim Moore. See her Web site at www.janelindskold.com for more.

  ANDRASTA gripped her knees tightly into Flame’s sides, leaving her hands free to wield sword and shield. Her spear was long since broken, the time for archery long past. What had started out as a routine patrol had turned into a pitched battle, and she had no doubt that her side was losing.

  Two men erupted seemingly out of nowhere on her left side. She bashed one soundly across the face with her shield and he crumpled. His fellow dodged, grabbing for the shield’s rim, seeking to unhorse her with his weight.

  Andrasta cut awkwardly across. The man’s fingers and a chunk of her shield went flying. He fell back, screaming in rage and shock, but though he would never know it, his purpose had been served. Andrasta was unbalanced. When Flame danced to sidestep some hazard on her near side, Andrasta lost her seat and pitched from the saddle.

  Her head hit the ground. All she knew was a flash of white light that felt like pain, then darkness.

  The darkness was full of voices calling to each other in almost singsong tones.

  “Dead.”

  “Dead here, too.”

  “Dead.”

  “All dead.”

  “Wait! This one’s breathing. What a lot of blood.”

  “Let me look. Yes. She’s breathing.”

  “Shall we?”

  “Help me move her. Better see how bad it is before ...”

  The darkness took on a ruddy hue that didn’t make anything clear. There was a sensation of something being manipulated. Her. Her limbs. They felt very odd and heavy, distant from her, but a thin scream beneath the heaviness made Andrasta think that the sensation would not last.

  The voices went on talking as if she wasn’t there.

  “Bloodied nose, maybe broken. Bad cut over one eye. She’s been shaken up badly. Get that arm out from under her. Is it broken?”

  “No. I don’t think ... Mother, look!”

  “Blessed Sprin
gtime preserve us! The griffin marks! I didn’t know her for all the blood. It’s our little hazelnut.”

  “We can’t leave her, then. Mother, we can’t!”

  “No. We can’t. We’ll be taking a terrible risk, but we’d better take her back with us.”

  “Can’t we just give her to her people?”

  “There are none here. None alive.”

  When she came up again from darkness, Andrasta knew herself, but she had no idea where she was. She was lying on her back in a smoky, rather strong-smelling tent. The heaviness was gone, and every part of her hurt.

  “She’s awake, I think,” said a voice.

  “Don’t let her sit up, Dmaalyn,” came a second voice. “I’ll be there in a moment.”

  After a moment of laborious thought, Andrasta placed the voice as one of the two she had heard speaking earlier. Through the fog that still padded portions of her mind, she felt vaguely triumphant. The small effort of memory exhausted her, and the warrior felt no desire to sit up or even turn her head, contenting herself with staring up at the roof of the tent and wondering vaguely where she was.

  An increase in the amount of light and a face peering into her own roused Andrasta. The face belonged to a woman with a lined, weathered face. Her black hair was slightly silver-shot. Her dark eyes were thoughtful and assessing as she gazed down at Andrasta.

  “Why?” Andrasta managed to whisper.

  The older woman smiled, showing worn and missing teeth. “Hear that, Dmaalyn? Not who, not where, but ‘why’?”

  The older woman then turned her attention to Andrasta.

  “I am Narjin, clan mother here. Time for questions and answers later, Mistress Andrasta. First we must make sure you are strong enough to take what we must tell you.”

  Mistress? And how do you know my name? Andrasta was too fogged to shape the words. Narjin spoke as slave to free. That would fit the squalor of the surroundings, but what was going on? Why was she here? Why was she still alive? It had been slaves who had risen up, slaves who had attacked and killed Andrasta’s patrol, who had tried to kill Andrasta herself.

  “Why?” she tried to ask again, but the fog had wrapped her tongue and again her mind was flooded by darkness.

  When she awoke the second time, Andrasta found her head blessedly clear. Narjin sat beside her, and the older woman smiled when she saw Andrasta assessing her.

  “Your mind is your own again, I take it? Good. Your helmet probably saved you a broken skull, though the rim gave you a nasty cut above one eye. We’ve stitched the cut, but you’ll likely have a new scar to go with the others.”

  Andrasta raised her hand, forcing it not to shake. She touched the wound, felt the rough tug of the stitches there. Her nose was very tender, and she looked at Narjin inquiringly as she fingered the swelling.

  “Not broken, or if so just a hairline crack. The swelling should go down in a few days, and you won’t sound so stuffed when you talk. I’m the healer here.”

  “What ...” Andrasta began and stopped. It did sound like she had a bad cold.

  She smiled weakly, and Narjin smiled back.

  “ ‘What?’ this time, not ‘why’? I’ll answer both your questions, mistress, but first you must do something very unusual. You must give me your promise not to raise a fuss. We’re taking a great risk hiding you here. Only the fact that I’m clan-mother has let me get away with it. Do you understand?”

  “Slaves,” Andrasta said, her voice still sounding stuffy. “Uprising.”

  “Yes. It was a slave uprising that killed your patrol, but even that’s not completely true. My daughter and I went out to the battlefield after, not expecting to find any alive—and we found you.”

  “And saved me.”

  “And you want to know why.”

  “Yes.”

  Andrasta’s head was beginning to ache again. Narjin must indeed be a healer, because she saw the signs.

  “I’ll brew you a cup of swamp-tree tea, and we’ll prop you against pillows so you can drink it—unless you’d rather sleep again.”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. I knew your mother, you see, and she was a tough one, too.”

  With these astonishing words, the slave woman moved purposefully about the tent, setting water to boil, spilling leaves for tea from a folded bit of cloth into a squat pot. Then Andrasta let Narjin assist her into something more like an upright position.

  As Andrasta sipped tea from the fat pottery cup Narjin now handed her, making a face against the bitterness, she didn’t ask any questions. Had she thought Narjin was taunting her with the delay, she would have had no patience, but she saw nothing cruel in the slave woman’s manner, only an understandable tension.

  “Your patrol is all dead,” Narjin began, “at least as far as we could tell, and we went out and examined the bodies. That’s how we found you. The slaves who did the killing aren’t here—now—but they may come back. That’s why you have to lie low. We buried the bodies. I’m sorry, but we didn’t have the fuel to fire a warrior pyre.”

  “My horse, a blood bay mare, ten years old.”

  Gharebi prized their horses above all else, and Narjin did not seem surprised at the question.

  “A bay mare was near you and followed us back to camp. She has been cared for. I myself treated her cuts. Most of the other horses fled. The ones that were killed—well—fresh meat is not to be wasted.”

  “Yes. Good. Thank you. Now, tell on.”

  “I told you that what happened was a slave uprising and not, and that’s true. None of my clan took part, though I won’t hide that some were tempted to do so. What stopped them was no great nobility of spirit or desire to remain slaves, but the same thing I still fear. When retribution comes, we’re going to be held to blame.”

  “Is that why you saved me?” Andrasta asked. “So I can testify to your goodness?”

  “Yes.

  “I can, at least in how you have treated me. I don’t know if that will matter.”

  Andrasta’s head was beginning to swim again, but she struggled to listen to Narjin’s reply.

  “Your words will make great Cescu listen, at least, maybe pause long enough to look at the evidence. It may save us.”

  “Cescu? You know ...”

  “That you are warlord Cescu’s granddaughter? Yes. You are Andrasta, the Dawn Rider. We knew you by the griffin marks on your arm.”

  “They’re just tattoos,” Andrasta said, hearing her voice thick and distant, “made to look like blood and claw marks.”

  “We know the story. We knew you by those marks, and seeing that you of all people were the lone survivor gave us hope.”

  “Hope?”

  Andrasta passed into darkness before she could hear the reply.

  When Andrasta awoke again, the woman seated beside her was a stranger, older than herself, but not as old as Narjin. There was a similarity to Narjin in the woman’s features, and Andrasta thought this must be Dmaalyn, the daughter of whom Narjin had spoken. This proved correct.

  Dmaalyn looked to be in her thirties. She was less worn than her mother, but showed the same evidence of the hardness of a slave’s life. While the Gharebi, Andrasta’s people, wandered with their herds, their conquered peoples attended to the less dignified aspects of existence.

  Some slaves worked as servants, traveling with the Gharebi. Others labored in agriculture, doing the undignified labor to which no Gharebi—quite literally—would stoop. Narjin’s clan looked to be Ootoi. The Ootoi had been among the more difficult Gharebi conquests, but they had been broken just the same. For generations they had grown crops, forbidden on pain of death to mount the horses that were the Gharebi’s pride.

  Still, apparently, at least some Ootoi had managed to maintain a few warrior traditions. Andrasta felt her jaw lock as she thought of how the patrol of which she had been a member had been slaughtered. Narjin hoped Andrasta would preserve Narjin’s clan, but right now Andrasta would be glad to see every drop of Ootoi blood
spilled to feed the grass.

  Narjin came in response to Dmaalyn’s summons. With a respectful inclination of her head, she squatted by Andrasta’s pallet to check her patient over.

  “Stronger again still,” the slave woman said, satisfied. “Good. We’re running low on time, and there is much you should know.”

  “Time?”

  “Your patrol will be missed. It would be best if you heard what I must tell you before then—so you can make some decisions.”

  Andrasta found she could sit up on her own this time, but she accepted the cup of bitter tea Narjin offered her.

  “You said something about hope,” Andrasta prompted.

  “You remember that? Ah. I got a little carried away. First you must know about the slave uprising. It wasn’t us, you see—or not wholly us. In a sense, it’s you.”

  “Speak sense, woman,” Andrasta said sternly. Then she recalled the kindnesses she had been shown and decided good manners would not be out of line. “Please. My head is better, but my ribs ache, my right arm is very sore, and I am heartsick over the deaths of my companions.”

  Narjin nodded. “You probably have some cracked ribs. Your shoulder was dislocated. I put it back, but no wonder it hurts. I apologize for my circumlocutious manner of speech. Perhaps Dmaalyn would explain this next part. She is the one who first learned of it.”

  Dmaalyn moved closer, lowering her voice. “Now, to understand this you must first know that our clan is large, and these last ten years has been largely settled in one place. My husband, Beru, is a physically powerful man. Our son—who is a few years younger than you—is already as strong as a grown man. Like many big men, they are often taken as slow-witted, and so when some strangers came looking to stir up trouble, Beru and Utberu were sounded out. Beru would have nothing of it, but he cautioned Utberu to remain silent, feeling it was best that we have an ear near the hornet’s nest.”

  Andrasta frowned. “Some strangers came?”