(Untitled)
If the recon holds up, Urik said yesterday, this whole mess should be over by 15:00 hours.
Thanks, Uri, Alex thinks bitterly, huddling behind a flaming krawl at 15:30, in a break between shouting at her comm. She's starting to get hoarse -- from bellowing orders over gunfire and over the goddamned screaming 'Gorkas, and from yelling at this ( Read more... )
Thanks, Uri, Alex thinks bitterly, huddling behind a flaming krawl at 15:30, in a break between shouting at her comm. She's starting to get hoarse -- from bellowing orders over gunfire and over the goddamned screaming 'Gorkas, and from yelling at this ( Read more... )
And by now, Maya Antares is shouting at the top of her lungs, vision blurring with burning tears; and by now, the entire warroom has gone silent and ominously still, the more discreet warkasters dully watching their workstations, the younger ones staring at the wild major. Kyuzo, immovable and silent in the doorway, isn't trying to pretend he isn't listening.
Maya's heart beats in time: Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.
"ALEXANDR--"
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Alex's comm is off -- don't you DARE grieve for me for years on end, you sentimental hag, she thinks briefly -- and she's firing at the oncoming infanty, because if it's them or her she's going to take as many of them with her as she damn well can.
"Looks like this is it, Renko."
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Renko's a tall woman, rangy; brown-blonde hair in her face -- in her face, always in her goddamn face -- as she fires. "Yeah," she shouts over the gunfire, and spent shells go flying as another 'Gorka hits the snow. "I heard."
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Somebody up there has a hell of a shitty sense of humor.
"I never should have come back to this rat-hole."
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"Ahh," she shouts over the renewed roar of weaponry, "you're not missing anything from what I heard. They say it's damn hot all year round."
Good old Renko. Alex would never say it, but if she has to go out, there are worse ways than fighting at this clown's side.
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Goddamn Nokgorka.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Goddamn Nokgorka. Sons of bitches. Renko lets them have it, laying down fire in a deadly line with Goncharova.
"And cold all year is better?!" Renko shouts. A hot shell flies back and burns her cheek; she hisses between her teeth.
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Inevitability of her own death, huh? Sons of bitches can come and get it if they're hard enough. Alexandra Goncharova intends to keep firing till they blast the gun out of her hands, and make it damn hard for them to do that.
Her shoulder aches from recoil, and the frigid air is full of the stink of burning oil, hot metal, and scorched meat.
"I've always hated Westerners for that. Know what I mean?"
Another lull -- they've killed this wave. No more gunfire coming from around them.
...No more gunfire from beside her, either.
"Renko?"
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Her face is half hidden by her collar and her hair, but her eyes are wide open and staring, her chin pressed to her red chest.
Renko's blood paints the krawl behind her.
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(She can smell the gun barrel burning Renko's leg.)
"Renko," she murmurs, as her friend's form blurs before her eyes.
She'd pretend it was smoke, not tears, but what's the goddamn point of pretending right now? There's no one to put on a smartass face for. Not even a damned 'Gorka.
"You clown."
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Soon there will be two Reds painting their krawls with their blood.
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On a goddamned battlefield, in an icy godforsaken wasteland, with enemies all around, and she'll be damned if she doesn't send as many of them to the Reaper as she can before they take her down.
She plants her feet and grabs upward, fingers latching onto a skinny arm in a ragged coat. Her whole body rotates with the throw -- like throwing an axe or one of those giant Hooks, but this 'Gorka's no Hook, this 'Gorka's light as a child -- and she sends the kid tumbling head over heels, and her gun slams into position pointed right at the girl's face as the 'Gorka thuds into a snowdrift, sickle a yard out of reach.
Never met a soldier who wasn't somebody's child--
She's so young. So damned young, such a stupid waste she thinks with savage despair, staring through her sights at those bright green eyes in a child's pointed face.
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Funny... they seem so much larger from this angle.
They know the goddamned price--
Makita refuses to beg. She's too proud. And it wouldn't do much good anyway. But if she is about to draw her last breath, then it will be as clean a breath as she can manage. She reaches up and pulls her scarf down, exposing her entire face and taking a deep breath. Her eyes never leave the woman in front of her who, she knows, is about to take her away from Proto.
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"You're a stupid little girl to be out here!"
If Alex's voice cracks it's just all the shouting, at her comm and at her troops that are food for the dogs and rats, just like she's going to be in a few minutes.
This little green-eyed girl's what, thirteen? Fourteen? Fifteen at the most, and small and skinny for it. But then so was Alex at that age, and she wasn't underfed like everbody living in Bahamut these days.
When do we decide to stop being controlled?
That was a rhetorical question just yesterday.
When exactly? At what moment?
"Who the hell would send a--" Her voice twists up, and falters for an instant, even if her gun never wavers. "Goddamned child into..."
Never met a soldier who wasn't somebody's child, she said, but never before has it been this hard to forget those far-off parents, that childhood that's supposed to be just as far off.
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The cloud forming in front of her face signals Makita's eventual exhalation. The Red stands there, eyes shifting rapidly in ways too complex to understand. But the gun doesn't so much as tremble in her hand. There may be time for one last breath.
Makita inhales deeply, once again.
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That's what this city is, and Alexandra knows it in her bones.
Every child here born a warrior, huh? Every child born here is born into a slaughterhouse, and not a goddamned person except those children is innocent in that. Alexandra sure as hell isn't.
Alex closes her eyes. There's another 'Gorka kid -- another stupid kid, another brave wonderful child -- lurking around somewhere, and maybe this moment will be her last, but she can't give a good goddamn any more.
"No more," she says, low and rough, and opens her eyes. Meets this little girl's again, those fierce scared green eyes that tug at forgotten pieces of her heart. "No more."
Her gun drops to her side; the motion's smooth, but her arm feels as heavy as if the G-forces of a krawl drop were tugging that gun barrel down. "Go on, damn you."
"Go on and live."
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