(John 2) another snippet.

Dust obscured the green eyed hawk vision of John’s range-finder, he blew on the lens to try to clear it, returning to his cautious watch. It was hot, humid, and stinking of fried noodles in his perch on the roof of a noodle shop in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei. John was miserable, and when he wasn’t blowing dust or stone grit from his finder, he was wiping away the dripping sweat. At the particular moment, John was considering his options and what actions he may once have committed in a past life that left him watching a deserted city street in the middle of the night, in enemy territory when he could be back in the USAP drinking a cold beer.

Below on the street, the occasional late night drunk was heading home and of little consequence to John; everything was quiet and that was how he liked it. His official briefing details told him where to be, how long to be there, and what his target was. This night was the onset of a several day mission entitled Last Incursion. Within one week, an embarking party of some 60,000 soldiers would occupy the island of Taiwan in hopes of locating a factory that produced the RA-46 nanovirus now ravaging the children and aluminum siding of the ‘States proper. By the time John reached his roof, youthful stealth machines wired to the gills with experimental nanotechnology were already in place all over the island. They had arrived for several weeks, children of every race and creed between the ages of 9 and 16. Each one with a beautiful and unmarred face, untouched by age and voiced with a softness uncommon for puberty. The Orphans still unnerved John, but he had already seen them tested.

On the ship over from the ‘States, he had watched a fairly large Marine mouth off at one of the younger ones, cracking ageist jokes and making remarks about the Orphans needing their mommies. It had been a terrible mistake. That day a Marine was sent to the infirmary with 82 broken bones, administered in less than 5 seconds by an 8 year old girl. John was stunned; he was shocked enough by the memory that he almost missed someone moving at street level below him.

Edging his rifle past the line of the roof, John peered down through his starlight scope and tried to avoid going blind from the gaudy neon store signs. He searched for a shadow, vision moving across the buildings and coming to rest on an alley. He squinted and propped the gun against his shoulder and tried to get a better look at his prey. The form was not terribly tall, perhaps no older than a teenage boy, and built like an athlete. It wore all black up to the neck, parts of its body wet with viscous dripping substances and shaking despite the night’s unpleasant temperature. Despite his view, he couldn’t get a clear shot. John ran through his orders in his head, he was to look for deserting Orphans and to make sure they didn’t get a chance to flee in face of conflict. His superiors, and their superiors, were very worried about the effect the heavy nanotechnological tinkering would have on their minds and it was his responsibility none of the ones in his sector turned on the regular soldiers. And yet? He could not verify that this one was doing anything wrong. The kid might even be in trouble.

Shouldering his rifle, John hopped from his building to the next, headed toward the alley down the road. He had not made it more than two roofs before he came face to face with the Orphan, waiting like it had taken him all night to get over there. It could not have been more than twenty seconds since he had begun moving, and the clearly wounded Orphan still made it up the side of the building fast enough to take a seat at it’s edge on an air conditioner vent. He had been wrong, the teenager was definitely not a boy. The girl was around 16 years of age, and as curvaceous as any young adult with pouty thick lips and dusky skin tone. This could barely soften the scowl on those same lips when she regarded him. Suddenly John realized his nearly grievous error, her small chest pin denoted her being more than three ranks above he himself.

John eyed her up, “Do you need assistance?” and she apparently found what he said funny, clutching at her left thigh after a short quiet laugh. “No, I need a fucking bullet in my head, soldier. Only way either of us are getting off this island in time.”

With a startled change of posture, John regarded her suddenly differently. Her voice spoke like a 5 year veteran (and John had only been in 3 himself), and definitely secured the rank pin upon her chest with a battle hardening he hardly expected.

“You, Soldier, have 1 hour to make it to the beach. Consider it my gift for not shooting me as a deserter back there.” And the girl thumbed back over her shoulder toward the alleyway, “I’m probably not going to make it out, but you are still fresh. I’ve been running all night. Take this drive back for me.”

The girl tossed a pocketdrive at John, which he caught a bare second before it would have shot off of the roof. Her coordination was suffering horribly, and John could see the fatigue in her eyes. Her long brown curls were pulled up tight about her head, face unmarred by makeup, but she wore a type of reactive contact he had only ever seen infiltrators wear. The black sclera covered the whites of her eyes completely, tiny red circles of light moving around on them from the inside. The combination range finder, body heat sensor, and camera lens was a piece of hardware on the short life expectancy list. Only given to operatives undertaking the sorts of missions they aren’t allowed to admit to later. Probably make her blind for life if she kept them in for a few days.

John considered the situation, looking at the drive and then back at the girl now slumping down on the AC box. His lips twitched and he took in her beauty, her youthful face and muscular body. It would be a waste to destroy something so prepared for warfare, like burying a completely fine rifle in the wet sand of a beach at low tide. He cleared his throat some, “Sir, I think you will have to come with me.” and before she could react, he had already pulled her up to his shoulder, tugging her right arm up around his neck.

The girl began to protest, muttering something about court martial but giving in after a minute of being dragged across the roof. “You need to get out of here, soldier. Take the drive and leave me be. I’m content to die here.”

John stared down at his superior’s wound, it wouldn’t be enough to kill her. He grew confused, but only long enough to lift her from the ground and jump to the next rooftop. “What do you mean by ‘I’m content to die here’? You’re not going to die, that’s barely bleeding. I can feel you’re not cold, you’re not in shock and you aren’t broken enough. And what is this about us having an hour… sir?”

“Stop calling me sir… Call me Lourdes, that’s my code. Lourdes.”

“Ok.. Lourdes, what is up with the hour?”

Lourdes looked up at John, “In an hour the nuclear bomb rigged in the nanovirus factory goes off. It has sufficient payload to glass Kentucky, and give everyone in Hawaii a tan.”

John nearly stumbled off of the roof at the news, having been prepared for a lot but not that. “Have you told anyone? Warned anyone? What about everyone on the island?”

The young girl looked down, “We’re all on forced silence, every one of us, we can only passively receive right now. I tried to radio in, but all I could get is static.”

“Well then, sir-… Lourdes. Lets get back to the boats and raise some noise. I intend to toast you on your 21st.”

Looking up at John, Lourdes screwed up her face with indecision — should she smile or shoot the soldier in front of her? An enigmatic smile crept onto her lips, beginning to hobble forward next to him.

The last thing John remembered as he woke from the memory was the fact that she had smelled like blood, cordite, and peppermint. He rolled over onto his side, arm surrounding the small but firm body next to his on the flea-bait bed. She stirred, rolling over to face him. Lyria planted a kiss on his cheek, timidly, an almost practiced affection. Quietly, under her breath she whispered to him, “Again?”

John nodded, “Again.” and hurriedly kicked off the cheap plastic-coated motel covers.

This entry was posted on May 26, 2007 at 4:46 am and is filed under Short Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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