21 September, 2115:
It doesn’t take Farouk long to either make good on his veiled threats or react to the loss of his “demon” (assuming he even knows she’s with us).
The remote batteries to the southeast catch a squad of Nomads sneaking up with improvised charges. Too bad for them we’d long-since tuned the sensors to sweep for the kind of stealth we’d expect from the Shinkyo—the Nomad cloaks make them invisible to infrared, and they use the terrain well to mask their movement, but they don’t move with absolute silence, and they couldn’t reach all of the batteries to neutralize them without being seen. It’s possible they just didn’t expect how swiftly our defenses would respond. Three Nomads are dead (one blown up by his own device) and the rest are running before we can even start warming up an ASV.
By the time we get airborne, we see that the group that made a run at our outer defenses was probably meant to make an opening for a much larger force. Perhaps a hundred cloaks are now fleeing south, apparently discouraged by the swift defeat of their advance party, and not willing to risk a repeat of their experiences with the PK (especially without Farouk’s Zauba’a to help them). I look for the telltale shape of a helmet-less H-A suit running with the other cloaks, but it doesn’t look like Farouk dared come to the fight in person.
Zauba’a (I’ve kept my word and not called her Sakina in front of anyone) walks with me to survey the scene. ASVs still circle above us, but there’s been no further sign of surface movement for an hour. She pulls the masks from the dead Nomads and casually confirms that they were indeed members of Farouk’s band.
I watch Rios watching her all the while. He’s a good soldier, and he keeps his discomfort with her presence as much to himself as anyone can, but I can still see his suspicions rise when he sees how easily she takes the deaths of former comrades. I walk away from Zauba’a, ostensibly to check on the condition of the batteries, and quietly chime Rios on my Link.
“What’s on your mind, Lieutenant?”
I see him turn away so that she won’t see him talking to me inside his helmet.
“Is she really that cold, sir, or did she expect this?”
“Didn’t you expect this?” I return evenly.
“Expect it as in planned it, sir,” he clarifies.
“It’s possible, Lieutenant,” I allow him. I turn back and look after Zauba’a, but she’s not there.
She’s not anywhere.
Abbas calls me on his Link by noon. Farouk is already spreading word through the tribes that we attacked a “peace delegation” that we’d invited to meet with us, “murdering” dozens of his people. I send him the video feed of Farouk’s men trying to take out our perimeter defenses and then running in panic, and encourage him to share it freely. He assures me that he will.
Kastl calls me in the middle of dinner—a meal that’s gotten significantly more palatable with the “native” foods Abbas has been trading for survival gear, including nutty breads made from “grain-grass” and “sweet-root” and heirloom yeasts carefully cultured from colony days—to tell me that Zauba’a has come back. This time she’s just walked up to our perimeter like it’s home, leapt the south battery wall with her usual ease, then waited for entry approval at the nearest airlock.
I don’t go down to meet her. I just tell Kastl to let her in, curious to see how she’ll respond if it appears I wasn’t concerned with her absence. She heads straight to “our” room. I take my time finishing my tea, then go back to my quarters.
What strikes me first when I let myself in is that her armor is laid out very neatly on my bed. She’d spent the last night with me (to the clearly communicated distress of my entire command team) sleeping on her bedroll on my narrow floor (after declining my offer of a contour-foam mattress). She kept her armor on at all times. Then I hear my shower running—a low trickle.
She hasn’t bothered to close the stall. Nor does she take particular notice of my coming in. She seems completely enthralled by the water as it falls over her back and shoulders. She dips her head under now and then, blowing water away from her nose and mouth as she does. Long, straight, dark hair runs halfway down her back.
Her body is lean like a runner’s, but well-toned like she’s been weight-training as well—I remember what Halley said about a gymnast’s body. But her proportions are unusual: her legs are long as compared to her torso, her shoulders and ribcage somewhat wider than normal. I’m imagining what growing up in thin air, breathing through a mask, would do over a lifetime. Then I find myself reminded of what and an old-style Barbie Doll looked like, but the degree of muscle definition she has quickly pushes that image back out of my head.
Now I’m looking her over for scars. I don’t see anything apparent. Her skin is clear, an even light tan. Her arms and legs are lightly furred with black hair—it strikes me as obvious that she wouldn’t concern herself with cosmetic grooming, even if “Martian” women had access to shaving or depilating treatments.
She has a natural beauty that makes me forget modesty and keeps me looking at her, even though I’m surprised to find that I’m not automatically thinking of her sexually. (I idly wonder if my drives have succumbed to age, or if her possible fixation on me as a replacement father figure has awoken some innate but long-suppressed parental instinct.)
She turns off the water, runs her hair back with her hands to get it out of her face, and turns to face me, letting me know that modesty doesn’t seem to be a concern.
“Bathing is a spiritual necessity for both the Shinkyo and the Nomads,” she tells me casually, like she hasn’t just disappeared for a day without explanation. “But a shower is still a luxury. I did not mean to transgress.”
I realize she’d been running the water sparingly as a habit of conservation. I give her an easy smile (trying not to look like I’m gawking at her) and get her a towel from the cabinet. I realize my hand is shaking very slightly as I do so. She smells clean, but very natural, not masked by perfumes or chemicals. I suddenly feel my drives coming back, and step away from her as gracefully as I can.
She towels off roughly, then slides past me to start putting her armor back on. (I now realize that it’s been built with a light environment suit as its under-layer, which she slips on first.)
“You are welcome here, Sakina,” I remind her as she dresses.
“I know that you welcome me,” she tells me without looking up from re-fastening her leg plates. “But I know that the others are not so comfortable with my presence.” Her head nods in the direction of the room’s sentry array—she’s certainly assumed that Rios has his men monitoring her closely at all times, especially so when she’s in my quarters. I wonder if she left the shower stall open to unsettle them.
She gets her boots on, then shimmies into her breast-plating. After a moment, she adds like it’s an unimportant afterthought:
“You will not be having any more trouble with Farouk.”
I wait for her to elaborate, but she only finishes “dressing”—pulling her arm guards and gloves back on, and strapping on her knives and torpedoes. She does not move to put on her cloak or her cowl. She just stands, facing the wall, as if waiting for something.
Kastl chimes in on my personal Link.
“I’ve got Abbas on the line, sir.”
“Put it through to my desk,” I tell him.
“You may want to take this in… in private, sir,” he tries to warn. I tell him to put it on my desk screen anyway. Sakina sidesteps so that she won’t be seen by the desk camera.
“Strange news from the south,” Abbas tells me when he comes on. “Word is spreading: Farouk was found dead in his shelter this afternoon. In the version that reached me, it is said that his genitals had been removed from his body, either before or after he had been gutted and almost decapitated.”
I glance at Sakina, but she’s still staring at the wall, not making eye contact.
“Not unexpected,” I say levelly as a way of addressing them both. “But a mixed blessing. While I’m s
ure there are many that will celebrate his demise, I can only wonder who will take his place, and what that struggle will cost.”
“Whoever takes power will have to prove himself,” Abbas agrees. “I expect they will exceed Farouk’s distain for life as much as they fall short of his intelligence.”
I nod in solemn agreement. “Keep me informed. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I thought we had agreed that you would not get involved in our tribal conflicts?” he questions with some surprise.
“Farouk was a mutual enemy,” I tell him, knowing I may be making a very dangerous policy decision. “In this, we stand together.”
“Thank you, my friend,” he says with honest warmth. “I know what lines you dare cross by saying that. I will send you news as it comes.”
I turn to Sakina after Abbas signs off. She’s still unwilling to look at me.
“The Nomad males are obsessed with their masculinity,” she tells me after a few moments, her voice quiet, small. “Some are not above mutilating enemy dead as psychological warfare. I adopted the technique for the same purpose. It is effective. It is expected.”
“Ghaddar…” I say her other name softly.
“The Castrating Bitch,” she hisses after another moment, visibly trying to contain herself. “It serves me.”
I take a calculated risk, put my hand on her shoulder, turn her to face me. I’m surprised she allows me to do so. But she won’t look at me.
“I’ve done worse things,” I tell her heavily, “for similar reasons. But part of me has lived to regret not doing better things instead. I’m not one to advocate giving foolhardy mercy to a deadly foe, just to say I’m somehow better for it than they are. But I have also killed when a modicum of mercy may have served better, just because the killing was easy and, I admit, satisfying. That is one of the places my path has led me.”
I can see her jaw clenching, hear her breathing shudder as it comes in and out of her. I take my hand off of her, but stand close facing her. She doesn’t back away.
“If you know my history, you may know that I studied the old martial arts long before I became a soldier,” I keep talking. “That taught me strategy, helped me train the first generation of UNACT Tacticals—the armored soldiers coordinated by the new AI. But in becoming a Tactical myself, I forgot certain lessons I had learned from my teachers.
“I was once told a story—I can’t say if it’s authentic, but it’s true in essence: It’s about the warrior monks who cultivated the fighting arts. A student asks his teacher why, if the monks revere all life, do they practice violence. The teacher answers: First you must learn to protect yourself, because if you simply throw your own life away refusing to resist violence, then you cannot revere life. Second, reverence of life will drive you to protect others from violence, and you cannot do that unless you excel at defending yourself. But third, if you can cultivate a level of skill so that you can easily defend yourself and others from attack, then you may also be able to spare the life of your attacker. If you can reach that point, then you can truly revere all life, because you will never have to take it or allow it to be taken. Taking life is easy. Perfect yourself so that you will never need to.”
I put my hands on her armored shoulders again. Her body feels coiled to the point of shaking, even through her plate and mail.
“Look at me, Sakina,” I gently but firmly insist. She takes several deep breaths before she can do so. I know this: Coming down from rage, from killing—especially when it’s personal and up-close brutal. (When Matthew said she reminded him of me, he may have been more right than he realized.)
“I have not let any man touch me since my father left,” she lets me know, but it doesn’t sound like a threat.
“Stay,” I tell her.
She takes my hand from her armor, presses it to the side of her face, closing her eyes. She holds the contact between us for several moments before she lets go. She gives me a silent nod.
She keeps her armor on, but she sleeps soundly that night on her roll next to my bed.