* * *
The soaking rain sounded like a myriad of tiny waterfalls as it splashed onto sodden leaves and thick undergrowth. One huge drop fell from an overhanging branch and plopped to the ground directly in front of Alba’s eyes, hurling tiny missiles of muddy filth into them. She cursed under her breath, squeezing her eyelids tight in an attempt to regain sight.
For hours the lieutenant had been crawling through a swampy field filled with high grasses, wild brush, and scattered forest monarchs surrounded by smatterings of saplings and young trees. Crashing thunders were moving into the distance along with the storms’ lightning, ghostly pale flashes producing the only illumination across the no-man’s-land of battle.
Just a few yards separated her from the outer perimeter of the enemy’s batteries that had been constantly hammering away at the mountain off to the south. The battery’s two huge guns were well hidden and camouflaged, making it difficult to take out with air strikes. This was the second night of its incessant attacks on the invaders attempting to gain the heights of North Mountain, the furthest named point of their conquest. Alba and her team, ‘Mongrel Company’, as the group now called themselves, were determined to silence it.
A sudden lightning bolt exploded off to Alba’s right, instantly followed by an ear-splitting roll of thunder. The woman hugged the ground, spreading arms out flat while turning her face to the left to avoid drowning in the mud. A second flash of lightning ripped the blackness just as the lieutenant opened an eye. She froze! Less than six paces away she spied an enemy sentinel all but his painted face hidden from view.
The sentry sat neck deep in a brush-covered shell-hole, eyes searching. How he had missed seeing Alba was much of a surprise to her, there being scant cover where the woman lay. Any movement now and she would certainly be discovered. His warning would send a hail of iron and shot out from the enemy camp, killing and wounding many of her company.
Lightning from the renewed tempest began its wild dance in the storming sky. The sentry looked in the lieutenant’s direction. Alba paled, her heart pounding with anxiety. Two shocked faces froze in a staring gaze. The sentry’s mouth opened to shout a warning.
Thoughts of capture, torture, and death flashed through Alba’s mind as she lay there paralyzed with fear, followed by a surreal scene unfolding. Suddenly, a look of bewilderment flashed across the sentry’s face, and then an expressionless stare. The man’s eyes rolled back in their sockets. Alba watched in disbelief as the sentry’s head tilted forward and tumbled off his shoulders, landing with a ‘plop!’ in the thick goo.
A hand popped out of the brush behind the bleeding corpse, then a smiling face. A silent ‘thumbs up’ and a nod from the corporal indicated the ‘all clear’. Alba let out a sigh and sank into the mud, letting go her pent-up emotions. ‘That was the closest yet.’ she thought, and then frowned with displeasure. ‘I wet myself…’
The lightning’s fury paused, returning a protective cloak of darkness to the attackers. It was now or never. Alba jumped to her feet and ran toward the defensive perimeter, pulling the pin on a canister she held in her right hand. Her arm went back and then swooped up in a wide arch. As the canister parted her fingers, the lieutenant dove for the ground.
There was a ‘pop!’ and then the hiss from a blue-green, florescent signal flare as it lit up the night. ‘Ka-foosh! Ka-foosh! Ka-foosh!’ Instantly, three phosphorus bombs streaked high into the sky, turning darkness into blinding-white daylight. Then, as one eyewitness later described it, “All damnation broke loose!”
Alba was back on her feet and over the short perimeter wall, clearing it in a diving jump. Tucking her head under her body, she came down on her shoulder and tumbled to the left, stopping in a prone position, gun up and at the ready. The lieutenant watched in amazement, seeing several of the enemy combatants crumple over as blue, green, and red tracers converged on them from every direction. The enemy had been taken by total surprise and dozens were killed before any real defense could be mounted.
The flares died away and two more shot into the sky. On the other side of a log bunker, Alba saw three figures silhouetted against the light. Two went down, but the third got close enough to toss a knapsack-like package through a tiny window.
‘Ka-vroom!’ ‘Whoosh…!’ The entire roof of the bunker rose into the air and then disintegrated into thousands of pieces, propelling a deadly shower of stone, logs, and debris in every direction. One tree trunk about twelve feet long and two-and-a-half feet thick smashed into the muddy gravel only inches away from Alba, pummeling her with a barrage of stinging bark and rocks. The lieutenant rolled over onto her knees, and plunged under a parked gunn truck to avoid more missiles.
Huge broken chunks of cement and granite came crashing all around, hammering the truck. She feared it might be crushed flat, pinning her beneath it. “How can anyone survive this?!” Alba moaned, her heart pounding, burying her head in her arms.
After what felt like an eternity, the torrent of stone, wood, and iron ceased. Alba looked out through ash-filled rain. Fires were burning out of control all across the compound, but the ‘rat-tat-tat’ or ‘crack, crack’ of guns was still to be heard. She pulled herself out from under the gun truck, now little more than a pile of crumpled metal and saw a wide crater where the bunker had been. The remainder of the magazine/fuel dump lit up the sky, a relentless, driving downpour unable to quench the scorching flames.
Alba did not hear the defiant howls of an enemy warrior charging her right. His shadow alerted her to the danger. Spinning around with her weapon held high, she managed to ward off the blow of his artillery pike...an iron bar used to help in positioning the huge Howitzer-type cannons. The man’s momentum was not checked by her defense. He piled into the lieutenant, sending her tumbling backward over the crashed tree.
As the enemy’s upper body carried Alba across the log, she kicked up with her knees, driving them into his groin. Letting go the broken rifle, her left hand instinctively flew to the dagger-like survival knife strapped to her thigh, while her right hand clutched the soldier’s waist-belt as the two flipped over the log. The man came down on his back, shoulders first, losing his grip on the pike when he hit. Alba fell on top of him, her folded knees driving deep into his stomach on impact.
The soldier let out a groan as he searched for air to fill his lungs. Panic filled his eyes at seeing Alba’s hands with raised dagger. She let out a wild screech as she drove the weapon down toward the man’s face, lifting her body to add to the killing force, grunting while making the final thrust. The blade entered his skull between the eyes, the power behind it sending the point through the back of his head and into the ground. The man’s body went limp.
Alba sat there, legs spread, knees in the mud, staring in disbelief at the first person she had ever killed, but she had no time to ponder her feelings. Another moving shadow alerted the woman to more danger. With blinding speed, she whisked the lanner from its holster on her waist and, twisting to her right, sent a fireball of molten energy into the attacker’s face. A momentary scream of agony rent the night sky as plasmatic heat ate away the charging man’s flesh before consuming his brain. The shimmering firelight reflected off the dead man’s charred skull as he piled into Alba, knocking her flat, his body mass driving the lieutenant into the mud.
With one arm pinned behind her back and her legs still twisted around her first opponent, all of Alba’s struggles to extricate herself were to no avail. She helplessly watched shadows dance across the firelight and listened to the shouting and gun blasts, all the while wondering how the battle swayed. It seemed hours before the confusing noise of war quieted, and hours more before she heard the sound of others approaching.
Alba listened intently to the muffled talking of two soldiers as they cautiously approached the heap of tangled bodies. One motioned the other to halt and then stepped in closer to make examination. She could feel the body atop her being prodded
and then saw the dark shape of a gun barrel being shoved into her face. A blinding flash from a pocket light made her blink and squint. The lieutenant squirmed to avoid the painful brightness burning her retinas.
The person with the light shouted over his shoulder, “I found her! She’s alive!”
It was Corporal Kfir. Soon, he and his companion were busy pushing the dead man away and assisting the lieutenant. She let out a cry of pain as they helped her sit, the contorted position she had been so long trapped in refusing to surrender without a fight.
Corporal Kfir pressed his face close to Alba’s. “Are you hurt, Commander? Are you gonna make it?” He sat down next to her, gently wrapping his hand around her forearm.
Alba blinked and looked blankly at the corporal, then turned to stare at the corpse lying on its back. The bejeweled dagger, picked up from a fallen comrade two days earlier, was buried to the hilt in the corpse’s head.
Guilt and remorse filled her face as her eyes darted back and forth between the corporal and the corpse. Over and over, the woman tried to form words, but nothing came. With one last gasp, Alba wailed, “Forgive me, Father!” She clutched hold of Kfir’s arm and buried her face in his shirt, weeping in grief. The corporal wrapped his other arm around the lieutenant and began to softly sing the woman a gentle lullaby.
Alba recalled little else until she heard the resounding reports of the two cannons her company had fought so hard to capture. While she was being tended, others had worked the big guns around and were now lobbing missiles onto enemy targets. A distant artillery unit had been taken by surprise. Its cannons were silenced before they could return a shot. After that, attention was turned toward the eastern river and the road that ran along its southern side. This engagement continued until near dawn, when the last of the missiles were exhausted.
The din and smoke helped Alba focus her attention on the task at hand. With corporal Kfir’s help, she managed to hobble into the medical bivouac. The medic left off her other duties and helped dress Alba’s leg, which had reopened in the firefight.
The woman attempted friendly conversation while hurriedly cleaning and rewrapping the wound. “Found some good medical supplies…enough to last until meeting up with the main body. Got hold of some fresh food, too. Chef’s cooking up a stew as I speak. Want me to get you some when it’s ready?”
“No, thank you.” Alba shook her head while swallowing down the bile in her throat, her queasy stomach churning in disgust at the thought of food.
The medic finished with the lieutenant and asked her leave to attend others. A moment later, corporal Kfir approached. “Commander, there’s someone needs to see you.”
He helped Alba up and the two trudged back across the compound to where the lieutenant entered the enemy camp. In the darkness, the lieutenant could make out the shapes of two people crouched on the ground, tending a wounded soldier.
Kfir stopped Alba and whispered in her good ear, “Stepped on a mine coming over the wall. Lost a leg and her innards are all tore up.” He shook his head. “Not gonna make it, Lieutenant. I’m sorry.”
Alba hurried forward, dropping to the ground beside the dying soldier. “Hold on! Hold on!” she cried in desperation, lifting the woman’s head and cradling it in her lap. “Help’s coming! Help’s coming soon!”
Someone held a glow stick near the woman’s face. Alba looked down into beautiful green eyes no longer able to identify who was speaking.
A smile grew on woman’s ashen face at hearing her lieutenant’s voice. With faltering breath, she wheezed, “I stayed close just like you told me. Never left your side…never did.” She shut her eyes. “Tired…need some rest…need some res…” The woman released a long sigh and her body relaxed.
Alba cried, “Private! Your name? What’s your name?!”
The soldier holding the glow stick shook her head. “Gone, Lieutenant. She’s gone.”
Alba sank forward, shaking her head in grief. While stroking the woman’s wavy hair, she sobbed over and over, “What’s your name, honey? Tell me…please! What’s your name...?”