Match, point... game

Chapter sixteen:
Georgina Collins

Also known as Georgie girl all by herself and brooding horribly about a life that she’ll never get back, Hahaha. Oops, did I say that outloud. Again, sorry this is late, but if its any consulation, I have a job and a new HOT boyfriend. :D


Interspatial travel had its advantages when one really thought about it. If you didn’t have to go so far then you did not have to go under cryo, if it was merely a few weeks and nothing more then you could by all means stay awake and just wait out your destination. Cryo was too deep, too consuming, it ate you alive and kept you under until it saw fit to redeem your consciousness. It was heavy and icy, dulling the senses to nothingness when in flying in areas infested with mercs you needed all of your senses about you. So instead planet jumps, such as this, could just be taken as floating in space with your boosters on high and sitting and staring out into nothingness. Though that left a lot of time to pass by. A lot of time to just sit, and watch, and think… thinking could be dangerous.

Boredom was once again showing its unkind head towards Georgina. She ran her fingers over the controlling handles, the ones that handled the thrust of the drives and the turns of the rudders. She felt the grooves where the finger grips were indented and marveled at the softness of the leather used for the grips. Flexing her hands idly against them she turned her gaze down to watch the schematics and system charts, making sure everything was as it had been five seconds ago; green light in all areas, fuel good, and life supports at maximum capacity. The stiffness of the chair she sat in was the only thing that was causing her any kind of discomfort, though this aching in her back was something she had come used to. Piloting was second nature after all. When she was behind the wheel of a vessel such as this, a nice runner with a sleek body, nice head, and six pulsing booster engines under the four wings of the ship, then she was calm. Her mind slipped into another mode. A mode far more relaxed and ready to handle anything than when she was say on a job or just laying in her bed. Pressing a few buttons here and there to run a scan on the haul integrity just for the hell of it George found nothing suspicious and pursed her lips.

She was stalling. She knew that. But she would damn well waste time running check after check if it kept her mind off of the sudden resurgence of memories of a forgotten woman. George was no longer Georgina, no longer the artist of Artemis Prime, and no longer the older sibling of Noah Collins. She had died in that slam, on that desolate planet conquered by Necromongers… she had been shed off in pieces steadily since the nights she had first heard of their coming approach. She had foreseen it happening, the death and dying, had tried to prepare herself as best she could. She had failed.

George winced at the flashes of those nights, swatting at the air before her eyes in a vain attempt to make them stop. Of plasma shots, earth rupturing up in waves of spotted brown and thrown into the air mercilessly, of people fleeing for their lives while their backs were burst open and blood was strewn into the winds of Artemis, painting the night sky crimson with its continual flood. Then the helmets… those gothic, lined, horrible helmets and masks had haunted her dreams for longer than she could remember. Somber, grim, dealers of death and carnage, unflinching to those they slaughtered. Her fathers face as his entire body was cleaved in half from a dark matter rifle, his life force spilling around the hatch of the door and falling onto Georgina while she screamed and stared in absolute horror.

This solves nothing! she thought with a bitter growl at herself. She had learned long ago that brooding on the past did nothing but bring it up more. It was best to just pretend it never happened, to be someone else entirely. That way, you weren’t asking for pain.

Not like she was now.

George had been weak and feeble then. Merely running when she could have been fighting. The current woman she was could more than handle a few necromongers, take them out, save her family, and get the fuck off the planet before it died completely. Her father would still be alive and Noah would still be with them. Or would they? George sunk her head slightly, biting her lower lip in thought. Would they have approved of the new her? Or would they have hated it? Noah had said his piece about it all, about her killing to live, and he was so much like their mother…

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Laughter lifted from her chest as she ran down the street, her feet stirring up the pack dirt that made up the side roads of their home town. Her arms pumped effortlessly by her side, her brown eyes lighting up in joy as she glanced back, a large smile pulling at the sides of her aching lips, to stare at the dashing form of her little brother. The sun was shinning in through clear, crystal blue skies while the twin moons hung ever near the horizon, waiting to rise in the coming night. Spring was crisp and cool, bringing with it the greenery and the flowers that dominated the grassy and forested plains of the island they lived upon. Ducking around a corner and flattening herself against a wall, Georgina stood with baited breath.

Sure enough, her brother came darting around the same corner, none but a few strides behind her. The fifteen year old towered over her younger brother before sweeping him up in a nearly crushing hug, swinging him from side to side and attacking his neck with growling mocking noises that she knew he hated. He kicked and yelped to get put down but mirthful giggles were making his chest hiccup in her embrace. It was perfect, it was life as it had always been and always would be. There was nothing that could change this! She wouldn’t let that happen.

“Sis! Put me down!” Noah cried out while laughing hysterically, tears forming at the edges of his amber eyes.

Finally the older of the two siblings relented and let him down gracelessly, plopping him onto the dirt while putting her hands on her small hips. Garbed in the traditional light blue robes of her people she cocked her head to the side and let her freed and wild rusty red curls shift around her face in a calming breeze. The grin never left her face as her brother swore and glared at her from the ground, patting himself over from the flying dust and sullying his sapphire tunic and light brown shorts. She shrugged while chuckling:

“You said to put you down, you never specified how gently if at all with carefulness…”

“You’re mean!” Noah said with a pout as he stood, though humor was thick in his young voice. George made a flapping motion with her hand, rolling her eyes jovially, and turned to glance down the alleyway they had ducked into. They were merely ten minutes from home, perfect walking distance for her tastes, but knowing her brother he would ask for a either a piggy back ride halfway through because he was ‘tired’, more like lazy, or ask for them to take a cycling carriage. Her back could handle the strain her purse could not.

“Not so mean as to make you walk all the way home. Keep acting how you are though and I will have to rethink my kindness, Noah,” Georgina commented and wrinkled her nose at him, a sardonic smirk on her features. Her brother stared at her like she was the antichrist before nodding and making his way over the street and through the alleyway that was lit with bright sun rays.

The second to main island on Artemis was the artistic capital of the system and it showed painfully. God was in the details they said, and if this were the case then the obsessive compulsive perfectionists that lived in this town had created god on earth. Buildings rose up into the sky modestly, not daring to scrape the sky with their humble fingers and allowing the sky to the gods of their religion. The walls were a sun bleached white wash, glimmering with accumulated sea salt on their surface while in their surfaces were carved frescos of ancient battles, deities, and art of all kinds of caliber. Paintings were scattered here and there, murals made with oil paints that were as detailed as they were random, but yet all of these elements formed a cohesive vision that was the throbbing metropolis. Government buildings had large pillars that rose up the highest and were capped off with domes of glittering gold and sapphire tiles, where democracy ran high in the senate. Georgina had once been told that their planets looks and thought pattern had been much related to that of the Greeks and Romans of the home land of Earth and that hadn’t surprised her.

Georgina crossed her arms under her chest, the gold bands on her arms glittering faintly in the resilient single sun. She made her way down the alleyway after her brother, nodding to those that they knew as they passed who had come out of the backs of their homes to see the commotion. As she meandered a sudden thrill ran up her back and made her slow her pace, watching her siblings back warily. The air was thick with of all things anxiety, a powerful sensation that was making her chest clench and the world seem to spin on its axis in a disturbing way. Whispering was abound, even as they passed the others of her town, and though she did not strain to hear the conversations a few words were standing out through the ever present murmur of the city. War, death, destruction, and run…

War? War had yet to visit their system in over two hundred years. The peace treaty signed with Artemis minor and the other four planets of the solar were iron clad and every planet was in agreement that fighting amongst themselves was useless and only wasted precious resources. There was no way that battle was on their door step. And yet… why did her heart flutter at the mere thought that she might be wrong?

“Dad!” Georgina realized that during her thought process that they had come into the market of their district. Clearing the alleyway she nearly stumbled when she recognized the large, open road filled with huts and stands with vendors yelling their wares and haggling with their customers over the prices. Fruits of all colors scattered her sight, blending in with the bright colors of her peoples robes and dress starkly. Spices, strong and pungent, lifted into the air and seemed to hang in a visible red haze around her, attacking her nose and making her mouth water at the mere thought of food cooked with such seasoning. Laughter, buzzing chatter, and the sound of a sea of feet were all that greeted her ears as she stopped and stared after her brother, eyebrows knitting in concentration. Was she merely hearing things…?

Noah ran down the street with reckless abandon, throwing his arms open childishly and giggling up a storm. Brown eyes lifted from watching the others to the figure of her father, smiling broadly and kneeling down to sweep his son up into his steadily weakening once powerful form. Engulfing Noah in his embrace, his brown hair falling over one stark amber eye, Georgina took in the scene with a numbed feeling going throughout her body with burning fingers. Watching her fathers beaming face as he picked up her brother and swung him around, holding him under with one arm and a thick briefcase in the other they looked the world like the happy family they were. But now…

“Did you hear? They say their coming here next…” Georgina froze in spot just as she was about to walk over to her family and rejoin the safety of their ranks. Her eyes narrowed and she shot a quick look over to where the conversation was coming from. Straining her hearing she listened intently to what was being uttered just yards away by two very scared looking middle aged women.

The other nodded, clutching at her chest, looking horribly ashen white and grey. “Yes. I pray it is not true! What would they want here? We have nothing to offer them…”

“To think that they would come here, to such a peaceful system,” the first one whispered with a despairing look on her face. She bit the side of her thumb in thought and George’s interest was piqued then and there if it had not been before hand. Realizing she had not been just hearing things she slid closer.

The second ran a hand through her loosed, bright blond hair, swearing in her peoples native language under her breath. “Aye, I never thought that I would see war in my lifetime. They say they come with a comet first, that their ships are hidden within its tails, and when they land they kill all around them and leaving nothing behind! We’re doomed…”

“Don’t say that! We have an excellent reserve military! We can more than defend ourselves,” the first stated with an indignant look to her slightly wrinkled face.

The second scoffed and put her hands on her hips, regarding the other with a scathing glare. “Against the Necromongers we stand no chance! They’ve already taken fourteen systems, what is Artemis Prime and its planets to them?”

Georgina’s eyes widened and a small gasp lifted from her chest. Necromongers? Here? She… she had always been told they were a mere myth, not to worry, that there was no cause for them to come here. They posed no threat to the Necromongers, they were a peaceful people who didn’t believe in violence to solve their problems, and yet, if what they were saying was true… then her home system was destined for ashes and fire of one sided war. She glanced out of the corner of her eye towards her father who was trying vainly to fix her brothers unruly blond hair, shaking his head in displeasure of the constant wilderness associated with it. But now, over that happy picture, was a dark shade of uncertainty that was beginning to engulf the whole planet.

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Bullets rained from the sky in streams of whizzing molten metal, plummeting to the ground and into the dirt that was drenched red with the dying and dead scattered. Flood lights fell onto the battle fields from the ships doing war in the skies, flying full speed at one another and opening their plasma and antimatter ports, readying for full scale assault. Motor skiffs zipped around the field, their riders holding onto them for either dear life or skilled reassurance, while brandishing weapons to take down the enemy combatants. It was the front lines, where bodies were burning on the ground beneath, heaps of metal and twisted lives lost abandoned and forgotten, to be reported missing in action at a later time. All that mattered was the smoke in the air, the blood burning at ones nostrils, the ringing in your ears from the engine behind you as you turned on the skiff, holding onto the hand rails while doing barrel rolls to lose your chasers. All that mattered was victory.

One Motor pulled out of a steep roll just before they would have hit the littered ground, above the smoldering wreckage of a fellow from their side. Those that had been following pulled up as well, still firing at full blast with their automatics, having difficulty keeping the zipping little thing in their sights. Turning on their skiff until they steered with a painfully twisted hand and wrist the followed held up a plasma gun, full charged and emitting sparks of anticipatory energy. Pulling the small trigger the blast ripped from the barrel like a demon, shooting out in a beam of blue and green light, hurtling towards those it would take down should they not move. Pursers scattered, most in time, one unfortunate soul not in time enough to have his machine ripped apart from the connecting blast, metal and bolts flying from the carnage while yet more burning flesh filled the hazy air.

Sitting back down onto the skiff fully and lowering her body down the one that had fired revved up her machine and made it shoot straight up into the air, into the dog fighting and ship battle above. Air whipped at the tightly tied back shoulder length rusted red hair while brown eyes scanned the blasts above for a hole. Bullets and bolts of energy shot by her as George guided the Skiff through sharp turns and dips in the process of hiking higher and higher, her jaw clenched firmly. Goggles protected her eyes, deepest within the hard dark brown helmet and body armor that shielded her form from grazing attacks, and gloves covering her hands all she had to worry about was the bullets that could hit her right in the armors weak spots.

Higher and higher until they were up in the atmosphere along with the other, much larger vessels she listened to the whine of the others engines and that of her own. George turned her vessel with a deft motion, pulling it sharply and listening to it complain at the sharpness. She switched a button on the main consol before her and listened with a kind of demented joy as the blades connected to her Motor shot out from the smoothed sides.

“Here we go,” she whispered to herself and shot down from the sky at a free fall, controlled by the rudders on the back of her small, one person ship. The others reacted too slowly, glancing up at her through air masks and heavy armor, trying desperately to turn their machines before it happened. But it did. Her blades, heated with the inner coil from the main thruster engine, sliced through their Motor’s like butter, slicing through the metal with a grating, high pitched screaming noise. Halfway through the fall through the others, cutting off legs and limbs in the process while keeping her air mask firmly locked in place, fire erupted from the dying vessels. Two explosions on either side of the Thundercraker caused her arms to scream in pain as they were jostled around, still keeping their iron hold on the steering, and her first three layers of armor were singed or burned off horribly.

White spots filled her vision even from within her goggles and her head began to go light. She could feel the blood, droplet after agonizing droplet, fly off of her arms as she plummeted past the now falling debris. Scrap metal was buried deep into her forearms, the blast having torn off all protective measures hopelessly, and she still continued downward, trying to right her mind from the barely there fuzz it was in. The ground was coming up fast, too fast, and while she panted and shook her head furiously to get it to think again, her vision starting to blur from the pain and rapid blood loss, she heard her radars and scanners on her machine start to go off in warning.

Finally, she managed to scrounge up the strength it took to bring her ship righted, using her bottom thrusters and pulling the machine from the head dive by using the sharp blades as make shift wings, it pulled out just as she was a few feet from the ground. Grass and fallen parts scattered in the skiffs under draft, harsh and hot as it was, and George shot off towards the mother ship of her battalion. A quick look around the field was all it took to tell her just who had made it out of the Thundercraker division of this squad of the Alliance. Four, besides herself, were remaining… guess they weren’t kidding when they said that the life span of someone in her line of work was not long at all. With the main battle under way her job was done.

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George tore the sheets from her body, gasping loudly while sitting up in a bolt, her eyes wide. Sweat streamed down her form, sticking to it with slick, grotesque, unrelenting fingers that caused her clothing to cling to her like a second skin. She sat there, staring at the opposite wall, while her chest heaved and her mind raced with memory after fucking memory. She brought a shaking, unsure, verging on terrified hand to brush her loosed mane from her face, growling when it slid through her eye and mouth.
The darkness of her ship around her was impregnable, having found that the blackness of space and the nonexistence of light helped her sleep when she was troubled. She stared out with slowly steadying breath, the sweat on her skin once hot and uncomfortable become chill and clammy, her head swimming from the rushing sensation. Her stare became harsh, her mouth into a firm line. It had been a long time since she had thought about the Wailing Wars… what the hell had set that shit off? She hadn’t thought about her service in years. And why the hell had it played that one scene, the most mild of any of the stints she had done in her short lived career as a thundercraker in the fading years of the Wars? It didn’t make sense.

Could it be regret? That was always a possibility in instances such as this. However, there was little to regret on her part. She had done what she had to survive at that time, she had been sentenced to death row and would have been put to an injection within days of them pulling her out of that Slam. She was alive thanks to the Wailing Wars. So what if she had killed a few people, had witnessed others die, had tortured to get information for her captors, and had done horrible things just to keep living. She winced unintentionally at the thought of working for the Alliance, since, after all, it was their fault that she was wanted as much as she was. Wrinkling her nose George ran a hand down her face and tried to suppress the nausea that was burning at the pit of her stomach and churning the acids living within.

This would get her no where but another migraine, yet another one in the space of three days, and that was the last thing she needed. Kicking off her sheets and realizing with the alertness of her mind and form that there would be no more slumber in her future for another day if not two she stood with a stiff roll of her shoulders. Sweeping her hair from her neck with an irate hand she padded from her room in little more than her cargo’s and a black sports bra, stretching out her marked body of what sluggishness had been placed there with the small amount of nights sleep. Making her way from the small bunking room towards the main haul where guns hung off of racks and different weapons glittered threateningly against the dark green of the darkness around her. Putting a hand on the wall she muttered a quick, ‘lights on’, before proceeding down the length of the haul and towards the head and the galley that hung just off to its right.

Ships were equipped with more amazing things than George could even dream of. Sometimes, when she was exceptionally bored, she would often wonder just how space travel was possible with straight provisions rather than the generating artificial technology that existed now. It must have taken up so much room in the holds… not to mention how quickly it would go bad if you weren’t careful at what degree you kept it frozen at or de-thawed it at. Then there was the fact that they could travel millions upon billions of miles and arrive not a day older thanks to cryo… it was insane. Mankind was truly the most inventive creature that she had run across. To come up with such things merely to ensure its survival was astounding. George didn’t even know how half of this shit worked, just knew how to work it, and how to fly it. Her knowledge by no means stretched on beyond that.

Rubbing her left arm in absentminded memory, the tiny scars crisscrossing it a sore reminder of just that scene, and pursed her lips in thought. She had forgotten how much getting those had hurt… her career as a thundercraker, had she been any closer to either of those ships, could have been over with in that instant. The joys of ignorant youth. She knew better now. She had been trying to be a hero, unheeding of her own life and only caring about taking those that had pursued her so wholeheartedly. She wouldn’t make that mistake again; selfishness was the best kind of self preservation there was. When one was selfish, thinking only of oneself, then you saw things more clearly than others did and how it would effect you dramatically or barely. Each action was governed by only one thing, where would this take me? Planning and calculating was key. At the ripe old age of twenty eight she had her priorities where they should be for someone in her position; herself.

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George surged against her restraints upon the operating table, her eyes squeezing tightly shut. The searing pain that was going through her arms and down her spine from the dive incident was nothing compared to this, to the actual removal of the shrapnel and stitching. Her eyes were burning from under the continued pressure of squeezing them shut, threatening to leak out angry, burning tears down her already bruised and dirty face. She ground her teeth sharply against the horse bit in her mouth, making them cry out against the harsh metal that was placed securely there so she wouldn’t scream too loudly or try to injure the doctor next to her.

Doctor, more like butcher! She opened her eyes when the tweezers, hot with cauterizing coils around its tip, emerged with yet another shard of twisted metal from deep within her arm. The stench of her own burnt flesh invaded and burned at her already abused nose, making her cringe. She tried to move her arms and legs but they were strapped down tight, until finally she sank back down against the table and panted hard. Sweat streamed down her neck and face, she felt it pooling under her down her spine, and she wondered if it was safe that she was perspiring this much during a procedure. A procedure that by all means she should have been knocked under for. Her brown eyes, seething and rippling with hatred and loathing, swung on the demon that was clad in light blue scrubs and holding the wired tweezers, regarding her arms like they were something uncouth. So what if she was a damn thundercraker, she still had feelings, there was no reason to do this without anesthesia!

“You did a real number on your arms young woman,” she winced when he spoke to her. When their gazes locked she did not hide the want to kill from their brown hue, her nose wrinkling and a snarl forming pathetically on her drooling mouth. With the inability to focus on anything but the throbbing and piercing torture that was going through her arms her body wasn’t even paying attention to the simple act of swallowing her own saliva, how wonderful…

“Hrueck guew,” she growled against the metal that was strapped into her mouth.

He merely shook his head from under that damnable cap, mask, and shinning glasses, before kneeling down to her wounds. His fingers dug into the skin, moving it aside gruffly from one deep one that she could feel against the bone. The sizzle of the tweezers informed her, with a grunt and her back arching despite herself, that he was starting again. Once more her eyes watered from the surge of pain going through her and her mind dimmed with the haze of shock once more. Why wasn’t she passing out? This was hell! Her eyes shifted open, digging her teeth into the metal as much as possible without cracking them open, and stared fuzzily at the stark metal ceiling above her.

She knew why she wasn’t passing out. Her mind wasn’t letting her body drift off. The man next to her was afraid of her, that was the only thing keeping him from doing the things he did to the other female inmates to George, but she couldn’t chance passing out. If she did then he would have free reign, he would be able to do whatever he wanted without her burning stare and bloodlust shifting every present. She may have been chained up but she was far from tamed and broken…

“Got it!” George nearly cried out when the shard that was pressed intimately against one of her arm bones moved and scrapped at the surface, cutting more of the tissue around it, while the burn of those fucking instruments was sealing the blood off from the surface. She shut her eyes tightly, refusing to open them this time, as she pictured the Slam she had come from and telling herself this was a thousand times better. Here she was alive and had an actual chance rather than having a needle stuck into her arm and put to death in some frozen waste land where the massive wolves of the Furya system would rip her to shreds.

It had been four hours since the operation to remove all of the metal and debris from her arms and even still she could feel them in there, a reminder of just what had happened mere moments ago. George, as the other Thundercraker’s from her decent, was being holed up within her cell in the brig of the ship, and staring out of the bars sourly. Her arms were bounded up in thick, already blood stained, gauze that ran from the very starts of her shoulders down to spin around her fingers, making her look comical in all aspects. Her power of intimidation were greatly reduced when looking like she was turning into a fucking mummy. Rubbing her arms through the course, lower grade military material she winced when she passed over the holes that riddled her forearms the worst. She was lucky to have gotten away with her life.

Her back hunched over and she took in a deep, resounding, measured breath to catch her body back up to speed. It had taken two hours to make her body come out of the throws of icy cold shock and now she was struggling to get her fingers to move without a twinge of pain that rained down to her very toes. Glancing at the damage she scowled deeply, it would be just her luck if it was decided that she was useless now and needed to be put out of her misery.

It had been part of the deal when she had been brought to this ships commander, and this fleet for that matter. She would work for them, as a kind of bait and warrior demon to scare and kill the enemy as much as possible until the main fleet came in, and they would let her live. That is, if she didn’t die on the battle field from a bullet, laser, plasma shot, or any other variety of deaths. So far she had lasted long enough to be twenty and nearly about to turn twenty one within the month. Never had she thought this would be her life, to fight against the fragmented Alliance, an insurgence of lower ranking planets and systems that had been seething and waiting for their time to strike for centuries. Her life as an Artemisian was over, now she was just a giant shit faced hypocrite.

Better a hypocrite then dead… a small voice jeered in her ear.

George narrowed her eyes bitterly but agreed nonetheless. At this point she was all about survival, her every thought, every breath, was about living to the next day, for as long as she possibly could. Nothing would get in her way.

“Where’d they get you from again, Red?” George turned stiffly, trying not to bump her arms into anything. She focused her stare out of her laser bars and into the cell across from her where the form of an emaciated seventeen year old boy stood with his head cocked to the side. His name was William, but she called him Bob, Mason. He was around five foot nine with short cropped messy brown hair, dark grey eyes that when sparked with anger looked like they could cut through anything, and skin that was so freckled that she often liked to say he looked like he had a tan with them instead of being as obscenely pale as he was.

William had been the first to talk to her when she had been brought to the ship and forced to go through the hazing of joining the Thundercraker squad of the fleet. When she had been standing naked in her cell with her arms tied up to the corners and a continuous trail of freezing cold water trickling over her head, back, and body, he had been the one to assure her when it was almost over or not. She owed Bob a lot in regards to still being here. She turned fully and tried to cross her arms under her chest only to wince and glare at her weakened exterminates. If it was one thing that Bob liked to hear about it was her stint in a Slam, considering that he had only spent a few days in his single max before being ‘rescued’ by the fragmented Alliance. Which was good since Georgina didn’t think he had it in him to stay longer than that by any means, he was too… isolated in his own little world to even survive in another as harsh as the prisons.

Considering the poor boy for a few seconds the red head finally responded, “Furya Lunar Correctional Triple Max Center,” she recited with a slight snarl on her lips, hating to remember that place. If it was possible then she would like to believe that she had been placed in such a place with criminals farther gone than she was so that she would become what she was now. Everything happened for a reason… even if it was something horrible.
Bob’s eyes widened and a look of awe, that same awe, came across his face as he regarded the convict. No matter how many times she told him she’d seen the inside of a Triple and lived to tell the tale it still shocked him and caused an odd sense of respect to come over him. How the boy was a Thundercraker at first had been beyond her. Then she had learned that he was intelligent, extremely intelligent, to the point where it made her own head hurt just when he started on a rant about something. Too bad the boy had no common sense. Probably how he ended up accidentally killing his assistant in one lab experiment gone awry and how he had ended up in a Slam in the first place.

“How was it? I’ve heard Triple’s are holes in the ground, hot, barely any food, that you have to fight for water…” he began but finished staring off into space as he pulled up all of the information on the stories he had heard within his head.

George raised her eyebrows at him when he yet again zoned out. She wondered if he had a case of untreated Autism but didn’t feel like asking and having awkwardness between her and the one person she respected enough to talk to. Bob was the only smart conversationalist in this entire place besides the captain and he was a dick. Leaning against a cold metal wall she pursed her lips before saying, “it was hell. That’s all someone like you needs to know, Bob.”

William stopped his mental reliving and glanced at her with a sad and pathetic pout. “Why do you keep calling me that? My name is William!”

“You seem like a Bob to me,” she explained with a smirk spreading on her lips. They had this conversation just about every day and yet it never got old because soon he would huff at her and start storming around his cell and listing off the reasons that he should not be called Bob. Even in a place such as this there was a small ray of entertainment and a twisted friendship. Suddenly, something occurred to her, something that had never happened with anyone but Noah before, and her expression sobered quickly. “I’m gonna get you outta this mess, Bob. You and I are gonna be partners, I’m gonna protect you because someone like you shouldn’t be in a situation such as this.”

So what if some of her humanity was not as dead as she would prefer it to be? Bob stared at her with an awed look again, his eyes misting over at someone actually caring for the first time in a long time. Then he smiled brightly, like a five year old would, and nodded enthusiastically, making the harder of the two laugh out right. He reminded her so much of Noah… small, helpless, needing her protection.

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“Report on status of target,” George breathed into her hidden mic, keeping her head down and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Static greeted her on the other side of her ear piece, making her skin prickle in annoyance while her teeth ground together.
She glanced up at the crowd just beyond her small outcropping in the side of a building, her form shrouded mostly in shadows but should anyone look too hard it wasn’t difficult to see her. The hustle and bustle of afternoon time made this kind of hit all the worse, it was the kind that she would have never accepted if it were not for one thing. Her brother’s name had been located on the recent contacts that her hit had been calling in the last four months. Had been on that list several times, forming a patter, that had abruptly stopped just shy of three weeks ago, and this alone left George very curious as to what was going on. Not to mention the mere idea that her brother, the bastard, was somehow tied up in something worthy of a hit man having to clean up after him made her brain freeze up. She had accepted without thinking. She had said yes without wondering why the kill had to take place at three in the afternoon, where people could catch her, see her, and put her ass back into the Slam. And had accepted without seeing who it was that she was going after.

Now that she was clear of mind she was having very vicious second thoughts. She had rushed in, again, and had let her emotions control her. Something strange had stirred when her brothers name had shown on that list, something she did not know how to classify in her awkwardness with such emotive responses. It was dark, deep, it reached into her very soul and chilled it before searing it all the way to the edges, until her stomach churned and her eyes were dry and tongue swollen with ill want to talk. She could not form thoughts, she could not speak, she could not sleep that night, all that had consumed her was that mysterious yearning for something she did not know. It could not be that she was missing him. He had made sure that bridge was burned when he had ratted her out so heartlessly. Noah had earned her undying hatred and contempt.

The target was a drug runner, strictly small time narcotics with a few large shipments here and there that suggested possible ties to the local mafia. He had come into contact with the wrong Necro’s when he had gone off world, namely Noah, and she was assuming his silence on the coming death of this planet was threatened by conversion. However, such scare tactics only worked when you stayed in almost continual contact with the victim. If you stopped for more than a day then they started to feel safe, then it wore off, then it failed; it was something you just did not do. You kept your target fearful, always. Noah had probably fucked up.

Taking up a flask from her back pocket she took a large swig of burning straight, pure, organic vodka. She winced when it burned violently down her throat, ripping at the muscle cording while at the same time filling her body with abrupt lubrication of clear mindedness. George wiped her mouth before placing it back, feeling how empty it was quickly becoming, and reminded herself not to drink anymore until she was done with this attack. She had to be completely lucid in order for this one to go down. According to his information he carried a piece, a highly illegal one, but one all the same.

“Target active. Transmission coming in loud and clear, Leader,” a voice broke through her thoughts and finally the ear bud came to life. She glanced around then once more lowered her gaze to the floor, crossing her arms over her chest. She hated the Ichon system.

“ETA,” she demanded in a hushed, simple tone.

“To your location in five, to the Black in ten, suggested course of action to take the back route along the market place, down the piers, then through the alleyway of the Seaside Pub, and wait for him in one of the doorways where it is darkest. Savvy?”

George felt a quirk of a sneer come to her lips. She really did like her new third party. It was missions like this that she even had someone else on her side, even if she did have to divide the winnings of her kills. A second pair of eyes could be invaluable and a second opinion priceless. She shifted to where she could feel her gun against her back and her favorite weapons upon her hips. Good, all accounted for… “Aye. Keep a close eye out for the guard, I don’t want anyone sneaking up on me, got it?” she snapped firmly before pushing off the wall and staring off into the throng.

“Read you loud and clear. Satellite is in position for well passed your estimated time of completion, even with a little bit of wiggle room in case ya get shot.”
George felt like snarling at him not to say something that stupid, that saying something like that ensured her getting hit by a bullet, that it was bad luck and could jinx the whole thing. However, given that she was in the midst of a large crowd doing so would draw undue attention that would spoil her mark and make her have to plan this out all over again. Biting her tongue she continued down, making a mental note to ‘talk’ with her carrier about this matter when she returned to see him.

It took only three minutes to get to the Kill Spot as she liked to call it. Pushing passed crowds while keeping her face down and trying not to be noticed was harder than she would ever like it to be, but she had made it through the throng and into the back alleyways where she ruled. Slinking into her hiding spot, leaning against a deep set door that was hidden with stark shadows draping from its corners, she took out her gun and set to placing the silencer upon it and wiping it down in advance for finger prints like she would do after. One could never be too careful in this profession. Not that it was possible to completely hide who killed someone; they were coming up with more and more crime fighting tech lately that was making it easier to find the murderer. Or rather, find out who it was. She had yet to be caught since leaving that Slam three years ago. Close calls, by all means, but had yet to see the inside of a prison yet again.

Waiting in the confines of the doorway wasn’t new to Georgina Collins, but that didn’t make it any less nerve wracking. Thoughts always flittered through her head in the moments before her prey came around its corner. What if they could see her? Should she just step out now? What will happen if someone sees the crime? What Slam would she be taken off to this time when she was caught? Who was this guy and why did he have such a high hit on his head? Just who had solicited this guys death? Frantic, uneven, and desperate thoughts would race in and out of her consciousness, making her second doubt her ability as an assassin. When she had committed her first hit it had unnerved her to no end, she had almost ended it then and there and gone home. But now, with many heads under her belt, she now knew how to control them to the point where she didn’t go running away.

It had gone down without a hitch, this particular guy. He had come around the corner, stumbling as drug dealers often did, and had been counting up what had to be pick pocketed cash from the market. He had been loud, blaringly so, to where George could tell he was coming down the back road without so much as straining, and she had readied her gun and waited.

He had not been expecting a thing. She had stepped out with her gun pointed right at his head, coming in front of him to within an inch. The trigger pulled and the silencer keeping the blast of the powerful hand gun to a bare minimal pop his head fractured open at the forehead and he was slumping backwards with a gurgling noise. Red dripped from his mouth and the back of his defiled head and when George had put away her weapon, collecting whatever she needed to in order to prove her kill, she reflected upon this poor man. He was a grubby man with a bubals nose, sharp cheek bones that protruded oddly for his thin face, and deep set once hazel eyes. Why would someone so obviously low run and ranking be of such a threat? It made no sense.

“Target down, information on local area, did anyone hear?”

“Give me a second, satellites trying to push me out… odd since I used a maximum strength encryption key with fire wall penetrating spider bots.”

George froze on the spot and her fingers flexed against her gun. Turning back and forth down the alleyway she strained her hearing while inwardly swearing up a storm. Letting out a frustrated shout she turned and started running down towards where there would be the most people, just as six mercs came barreling around the corner with their weapons drawn.

“Fuck that shit, Kid, Protocol Seven, abandon post. See you when I see you,” she stated firmly into her ear piece as she rounded a corner, skidding up dust behind her, before bolting down the middle of the market through the pulsing crowd of murmuring people. The shouts of mercs behind made her heart hammer harder and a sudden, blinding rage filled her body. Who the hell would post a bounty on her head? Who the fuck would know that she would be here?? Slamming into one unsuspecting man she ditched her weapon on him before barreling passed and forcing her way towards a place where she would have better footing for a fight. Somewhere empty where there were plenty of places to hide…