The Jane Saga - Part 1


An Opening

**


Billions of years ago, when the world was in its infancy, there existed a quiet system of almost uninhabited planets whose appearances from a certain perspective could be considered comparable to various different geometric shapes. There was the triangular planet, closest to the sun. As it went through its orbit, its circular base was always facing the sun, so that its neck and tip were shrouded in eternal, life-preventing darkness. This planet was named Isosceles.

Then there was the second planet; a celestial body of quadrilateral shaping whose opposite sides ran parallel to one another. Life could have quite easily grown from its plentiful fields and budding springs, for it was a stable yet diverse world that showed no signs of hazardous conditioning. Alas, before the miracle of evolution could place its primordial steps onto this particular world, a catastrophe occurred. For amongst the system of planets, there was one that was conspicuous in its normality. A spherical planet in orbit along the outer rim of the system was projected into space by an immense yet unseen force like an intergalactic pinball. It careened into the fourth planet, whose density and shape was such that it acted less to obstruct the sphere-shaped planet than it did to redirect it straight into the second planet. Both planets were destroyed in a tremendous explosion that some fiery-eyed Hollywood director might have made infinitely more spectacular by adding sound to the equation.

And so it was that there remained only three planets in this system of stars. One of which couldn't have sustained life from the beginning, and another whose potential for producing life had been drastically cut short by the huge dent that had now been created on its surface. The only planet that remained completely intact and with the ability to flourish was the one shaped rather like an octagon.

Octagon was quite the picturesque little place in these early days, with deep blue oceans and clusters of grassy islands that had long, golden outlines. Bubbling streams passed across hills that sloped across steep meadows for centuries on end, and a great portion of the land was taken up by towering trees that filtered the warm sunlight through their bushy tops to give their roots a softly lit natural ambience in which to sleep. There was little proof to suggest that this world would become the gigantic, over-populated metropolis that we see today. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It was from the cold heart of the arctic climates which pumped through the northern oceans that they came; weakened and limbless, the Octid people deposited themselves on the icy tundra wastes and set about building their homes. Their squat bodies were green like the lime fruit, and their heads were bumpy and angular. On top of their heads grew a sharp head spike that jutted out above the rest of their body, pricking the air with an inquisitive liveliness. This was their sexual organ, and for the males it was the dominant part of their bodies, pointing ever upwards towards outer space like great big arrows of instinct. Over time they grew thin wiry arms and legs, which enabled them to craft tools and do other less constructive things like point rudely at one another when provoked.

But it was not without a price that they came to live in those frosty plains; for their Emperor, Tepid, had ordered the slaughter of thousands of female Octids in order to break through the ice-caps that shielded them from the surface. Wave after wave of female pride was sent hurtling upwards into the hard barrier that they tried so hard to penetrate, and for just one reason did they allow such suffering to continue; they loved their children.

Emperor Tepid had forced them into a bind. He put it to them that they could not survive forever beneath the surface, and that the fate of the world rested on the shoulders of every loving mother amongst their numbers. If they wanted their children to live long and happy lives, they were to sacrifice themselves by attempting one by one to swim as hard as possible into the ice above their heads. Eventually, after nearly three thousand had died, the ice cracked open... and the world was theirs for the taking.

Tepid was not as simplistically bigoted as one might think. He did not hate women, despite him having been responsible for the deaths of so many of their kind. He hated a single woman, his ex-wife, and it clouded his judgement. He became irrational and his decisions no longer held any real weight, especially as far as the long-term good of the Octid people went. When he finally started to go soft, his son took over and ruled with an iron fist for many years... while more and more women were forced to die. For such is the mind of a boy who had to grow up without a mother. Women seem far more distant, far more alien.

And for some, far more repulsive.

**


The world stung her eyes as she took her first glimpse, and her arms ached as she felt somebody lifting her up out of the bed and through the room. The heat inside was almost overwhelming, but it soon cooled down when the nurse wrapped some wet blankets around her naked body. She let out a small cry as she was turned to one side, for her view of the person who had been lying in the bed had now become obstructed by the body of the nurse holding her.

"Hold still," the Gorg nurse said, running cool tap water over the back of the child's neck. The mother of the new born baby watched breathlessly as her daughter was quickly treated before being brought right back to her. "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her,"

Anerch Z'darsk, now a proud mother of one, stared down at the faceless infant lying in her arms. Only vague traces of what once might have been a beautiful set of eyes and a cute upturned nose were left upon her head as if they were scars. The baby's mouth opened and closed as she spoke out with random noises.

"Only two minutes old and she's already trying to tell you something," the nurse smirked.

"I wonder how she sees me," Anerch thought aloud. "I wonder if I'm half as beautiful to her as she appears to me,"

As Anerch finished speaking, her daughter's face drifted to one side, as it seemed her attention had been drawn away from her mother. Cautiously, Anerch followed the little Gorg's gaze and couldn't quite make out what the child was trying to focus on. She just laughed and rocked the baby back and forth in her arms, whispering the name she had already chosen a long time ago.

"My little Jahn," Anerch cooed. "I'll never let you come to harm,"

But baby Jahn was too busy looking at the empty space beside her mother to hear.

**


A single electric bulb lit the cool interior of the room, the shadows of the two figures that stood within hovering over the blue wallpaper. A silence had been growing between them, stretching longer and longer like an empty desert road with no end in sight. Finally, the one standing placed her slim leg forward and took on a position of reverence. Her large head slid down to her armored chest as her lips began to move.

"Sir," the female Octid known as Heather spoke. Her emotions were betrayed by her inability to keep her voice steady; she was nervous. "I bring to you a message from our spies,"

Heather couldn't help but look up at the old man as she was kneeling and he was sitting there in careful watch. The light reflected away from the bumps of his lidless eyes, such dark tones giving the impression of a strange kind of blackened skull. He folded his stick-like arms and leaned back in his chair, taking in her words and dreading the next sentence as if he had already heard it many times over in his mind. The wisdom and pride dropped from his features and were replaced by a deep sense of trepidation.

"I suppose you lost the bet, then," said Fleihric, the great leader of the Rebellion against Octagon. The sound of his voice, so grave and so knowing, sent shivers up Heather's spine. Many times had she heard him speak to the troops, but never had he sounded so personal or open with his feelings. He usually only saved such things for those members higher up in rank than she.

"Bet?" she asked, almost forgetting why she had come.

"Heh," Fleihric chuckled, placing a hand on the desk in front of him and softly touching an age old photograph. It had become so brittle that it had cracked in places and lost its former glory. Fleihric pondered that for a moment before turning back to the young trooper. "I can't imagine anyone volunteering to tell me this news,"

"Then you already know?" Heather gasped, lifting her head up fully to face her respected leader. "I didn't think..."

Fleihric slowly rose from his chair, his spindly Gorg body slipping easily around the desk and turning to face the wall. His shadow seemed very unclear and out of focus, and shorter than him now that he had stepped away from the source of the light. He looked down at it as if it were another of his kind standing not two feet away, and he imagined touching its recognizable face with a lost affection. His thoughts were interrupted by his hand coming into contact with a cold, lifeless wall rather than the soft face he had pictured so vividly in his head.

"I have thought about this moment a lot," Fleihric said, his voice more distant now. He barely seemed to be able to get the words out of his throat. "Ever since the Octid Empire passed that law allowing their people to steal Gorg females from planets under their control and use them as they see fit, I knew that they would eventually..."

"Sir?" Heather got to her feet and took a few steps forward. Fleihric simply raised his arm to stop her in her tracks, his body quivering as he wept quite openly. Heather watched him for a while, not knowing what to say. Eventually he turned to face her again, and she tried to keep her attention away from the black smudges of tears that now dotted the floor at his heels.

"I will not grieve very long," he replied to a question she hadn't asked. "I know that she would rather die than serve an Octid. I only hope that death's embrace was as gentle as the many she and I shared together,"

"Um, sir?" said Heather, rubbing her right arm uncomfortably. "I think there's been a misunderstanding,"

"Hmm?" he asked, tilting his head to one side and regarding her as if she had just entered the room. All the sadness was now gone from his face, and she wondered if being a great leader such as Fleihric required the ability to have such sharp control of all emotions in such a way. "Tell me, young one, what have you to report?"

Heather cleared her throat and bowed her head once more. She addressed him with more confidence, because she knew that what she was about to tell him would easily have a much more positive effect than whatever he had been expecting to hear.

"She has arrived," said Heather.

**


"What a day," the rebel pilot yawned, reaching over and grabbing a can of Sodiplaz. After downing the soft drink, she leaned back in her seat and turned her head to one side. Her large, triangular eyes looked down on the little Gorg girl that was seated behind her in the cockpit. The safety straps tied around her impossibly thin waist seemed like a ridiculous measure, but she had wanted to be as safe as possible. "Are you ready to meet your father?"

Jahn grunted a little as she fiddled with the straps, loosening them to a point where she would be able to simply slither out from their tight grip. She got to her feet and nodded to Cammy, the pilot, who flicked a couple of switches on the controls in front of her before also rising to a standing position.

"Okay then," Cammy said, removing her helmet and exposing the wide purple capulona that glistened brilliantly on her green head spike. She winked at Jahn and motioned towards the now open doorway that led outside the shuttlecraft. "Ladies first,"

Walking between the bulkheads and through the doorway, Jahn admired the design of the ship. She rarely used atmospheric flight, as there was so much noise and turbulence that it became a nuisance when she wanted to sit and concentrate, but this shuttle had just purred through the air like a cat with wings. It had given her time to prepare in her mind what she would do when she met her father.

"It really is an honor to have flown you here personally," said Cammy, who was walking alongside the inquisitive little Gorg. Octids aren't known for their size, but Jahn was a young girl and barely reached Cammy's shoulders. Nevertheless, Jahn was able to shoot Cammy a slight glance when she finished speaking. "Uh, I mean... ma'am,"

"Don't," Jahn murmured.

"I'm sorry?" Cammy asked, her eyes arching in concern. She'd never flown important personnel, and she was clearly quite anxious about how well she had done.

"Don't treat me like I'm my father," said Jahn, shaking her head to show her disapproval. "I don't want special treatment,"

Cammy nodded in thought, smiling to herself as she weighed up Jahn's attitude. She remembered how hard it had been for Fleihric when the Rebellion had first begun, the only man amongst such a large group of women who didn't quite know how to trust him. In time, he had earned their respect and admiration via his actions. He had even earned their love.

"Don't worry," Cammy said, placing a gloved hand on Jahn's shoulder. "Nobody's expecting you to immediately live up to your father,"

"That's... not what I mean," Jahn sighed, her smooth body almost wilting as she caught sight of the walkway that would surely lead to the outside of the ship... and then her future.

"It must have been hard," said Cammy, squeezing Jahn's shoulder ever so slightly. "Growing up without him, I mean. He's truly a great man. He probably would have been an even better father,"

"We'll see," Jahn nodded, emerging from the ship and onto the steel walkway.

She was now stood in a great hallway filled with ships of many different kinds. Some were clearly designed for stealth operations, while others were little more than mobile weapons. It made her dark skin crawl to see such large guns 'sleeping', as her mother used to say. The ships were held on makeshift platforms that looked as if they might topple over at any time. In fact, the entire hall had a homespun quality to it. The towering ice walls had been so crudely carved that it almost looked like a giant sandcastle that a child might make. Fortunately, it all looked stable enough thanks to the expertly positioned H.E.L.M.S. structural support beams that spanned the length of the ceiling like the ribcage of some large animal. With those in place, the entire iceberg could quite easily remain intact for any length of time.

There was a lot of "ooh"ing and "ahh"ing as Jahn walked down the ship's ramp and towards the gathered crowd of female Octids. She felt awkward with them staring at her, and a sensation came over her telling her to just run back into the ship and hide under a chair. But then she saw him.

"My daddy," she said to herself, seeing Fleihric for the first time in her life. He looked like every other Gorg she'd ever seen, yet standing in the crowd of green faces and white uniforms he stood out so much that he almost jumped from the pages of reality and was placed there before her looking like some kind of ethereal being. She rushed forward and, nearly tripping over herself more than once, leapt into his waiting arms.

"Hello there," Fleihric beamed proudly, letting all his followers see the child as he held her up in the air. "Everyone, this is my daughter... Jahn,"

"She has your... everything!" a soldier giggled, causing the entire group to laugh happily. Everyone except Jahn, who stared intently at her father.

"We've got a lot to catch up on," Fleihric admitted, pressing her delicate body to his chest so that he could feel her heartbeat. "Haven't we?"

"We do, father," Jahn replied, realizing his skin was far rougher than her mother's used to be. "And I'd like to start today,"

**


The vicious cycle was never-ending, and it left irremovable scars. For the Octid children, growing up without a mother created false impressions of the female mind... and the Octid Empire took advantage of it. Anti-female propaganda was dispensed by the barrel load and the women became slaves under the ruling of the Empire. They were told that it was for the betterment of the people, and that they would never see their children's lives prosper if they were to defy the law. Out of love, the females buckled and were driven beneath the surface of the planet. But the children weren't given the truth.

To the children, only excuses were left. Their mothers couldn't take care of them anymore, their hateful fathers said, for mother didn't care enough to stay. And so, the hatred in their hearts was fuelled, and the Octids became aggressive, even warlike. Their masculine pride became uncontrollable, and they set out into the galaxy to conquer it and make it theirs. The females toiled beneath the surface, making munitions and fabric and all sorts of useful devices, most of which were used against females in one way or another. It made absolutely no sense, and in the middle of all this anarchy sat the Emperor on a throne of female corpses and male confusion. Amidst all this tragedy, he alone had true power. The son of the great Tepid, nobody dared to disrespect or disregard a single thing he said.

Until one day, around three million years into his reign, when darkness had fallen there was a loud explosion. Citizens and officials turned their eyes to the night sky, and there they saw the Emperor's ice palace with a gaping hole in its side. The Octids were shocked to discover the Emperor missing, having been presumably the victim of a horrendous assassination attempt. Though mourned, no traces were found of the Emperor's body. It was as if he mysteriously vanished.

However, the troubles did not vanish alongside him. His son, Tugg, soon took over where the previous ruler had left off. While he was perhaps not as hateful of women as his father, even so he contained within him the same sort of bigotry simply from being so strongly influenced by the man. So it continued down through the generations. Female oppression on Octagon didn't and still doesn't seem likely to cease.

Enter the Rebellion...

**


"I really have a lot to do today, Jahn," Fleihric sighed, closing the door to his office after his daughter had scampered between his legs and into the room with a hearty, girlish laugh. "I didn't know you would be arriving today. I really would have set aside all my business if you'd had your mother call our spy network beforehand, but right now I have an important operation to plan,"

"Mom doesn't like talking to your spies," Jahn replied, giving Fleihric a mock salute and then snickering to herself. She certainly had a lot of energy, Fleihric noted as he sat down at his desk. A lot more than her mother, anyway. "She says they attract unwanted attention,"

"My spies don't attract attention!" Fleihric exclaimed, already exasperated by Anerch's incessant ability to demean his position as a leader even when not present. Fleihric removed a data-pad from beneath his desk and started typing. "Your mother needs to realize that I'm not playing toy soldiers. I know what I'm doing. The Octid Empire doesn't even know that this operation exists,"

"Why d'you keep calling her that?" asked Jahn, leaning over the desk and placing both elbows on the polished wood.

"You've become quite the tomboy," Fleihric said, pointing to her arms. In response, Jahn stood up straight and placed her hands behind her back. "Much better. Now, why do I keep calling her...?"

"You keep calling her my mother," she said.

"She is your mother," he said.

"Yeah, but..." Jahn said, frustrated with the constant tapping sound of Fleihric's fingers on the data-pad's keys. It seemed to go hand in hand with her father's indifference toward her arrival. "Daddy..."

"Please, Jahn," said Fleihric, finally looking up. Jahn smiled for a moment, believing she had finally gained his attention. "While you're with me, you should refrain from using such childish mannerisms. I'm not 'daddy', I'm your father,"

"In case you hadn't noticed," Jahn grumbled, folding her arms. "I am a child. Your child, in fact,"

Fleihric rubbed his brow and put down the data-pad. She stood there glaring at him with what seemed like anger, but Fleihric had seen that look before. It was something she had taken from her mother. For whenever Anerch had wanted his undivided attention, she would shoot him that look... just to let him know there was still a reason to give her such a thing. That was a look she hadn't given him in a long, long time... ever since...

"You are a child, yes," Fleihric said, getting out of his chair and walking over to her. He knelt down beside her, noticing little muscles already developing in her body as she tensed up. He smiled and thought about how she'd make a great soldier if she ever were to choose to become one. But if she had truly received so much of her mother's personality, it would have been wishful thinking. "A beautiful child,"

"Daddy," Jahn smiled. If her body had been given the gift of undamaged flesh, she would have been blushing. She wrapped her arms around her father's neck and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "I love you,"

"Your mother..." Fleihric began, but decided to change his words around in mid-sentence. "Anerch and I drifted apart a long time ago. I'm afraid that the time when I could still consider myself your true father has past,"

He got up from his position on the floor and walked back to the desk; slowly, he took from it an old photograph that had faded with age, and showed it to his daughter. Jahn peered at it as best she could, but couldn't make head nor tail of what it was supposed to be.

"Daddy, you should really throw this away," Jahn suggested, smirking at him. "A junk collection is hardly a productive way to spend your time. You should be focusing on your role as a brilliant leader, remember?"

"That is a picture of Anerch and I," said Fleihric, pointing out some of the jagged outlines that hid behind the scratches of time. "From a long time ago. That's how we used to be. It's exactly as I picture it in my head,"

"But dad," said Jahn. "I can't see a thing,"

"I know..." said Fleihric.

**


The sound of heavy machinery filled the room as vehicles and devices of different shapes and sizes strained with their workload. Mechanisms hissed and whirred as they were manually operated to create ammo and other sorts of armaments. Forklifts raised hefty crates filled with weaponry and tools onto platforms, where female Octids would be waiting to store them in their proper containment areas. The rhythmic flashes of electric equipment being put to use cast exaggerated shadows onto the walls, creating an image of a single living organism that bulged and breathed in a robotic fashion. There was no end to it.

"Not on my watch, anyway," said the Octid safety supervisor, Sean Litepark. She had been with the Rebellion since it had begun, and she had been given the role of senior Octid in charge of handling munitions and other safety precautions. It had been especially rewarding, since the majority of the Rebellion's work involved obtaining and manufacturing weaponry at such an early stage in its development. Though she did still long for a time when she would personally be allowed to use one of those many weapons on a male Octid. "You there, you're handling that crate of grenades all wrong! Get a partner to help you, on the double!"

"Yes, ma'am," said a nervous female called Penelope, before dropping the crate gingerly and rushing off into the seething mass of workers to find someone.

"Wonderful," Sean grinned, lifting up her safety helmet and wiping the sweat from her forehead. Her star-shaped capulona glowed as the persistent noise of straining machinery increased its speed, and the pipes that plunged from the ceiling into the ground beside her hummed as they struggled to contain such an incredible amount of power. She bit her bottom lip and surveyed it all with complete contentment.

"Hello!" a little voice blurted out from behind her, taking her off-guard. Sean span around to see a small Gorg girl standing next to one of the steel pipes, a yellow helmet that appeared to be a few sizes too large for her was placed on her head.

"Children aren't allowed in here!" Sean snapped, waving a finger at the girl. "Who on Octagon gave you permission to..."

"It's all right, Sean," said a familiar voice. Fleihric stepped out from behind a large manufacturing machine; the conveyor belt that expanded from its spark-filled mouth pouring forth piles upon piles of guns. Numerous female collectors impulsively saluted Fleihric before going back to their business. He placed his hands on the Gorg girl's shoulders. "Jahn, you shouldn't go running off like that,"

"But I knew where we were going," Jahn shrugged.

"Nevertheless, it's dangerous in here," said Fleihric. He looked to Sean for support. "As Sean will no doubt tell you,"

"Yeah," replied Sean, rolling her eyes at the infant. "Sorry, sir, I didn't know you had family over,"

"This is my daughter, Jahn," Fleihric told her, giving Jahn a little push so that she would be encouraged to introduce herself.

"How do you do?" said Jahn, offering her right hand to Sean.

"A pleasure to meet you," Sean said, taking her hand and shaking it. Suddenly from behind them came a loud clatter and a couple of frightened squeals. Turning around quickly, Sean clutched the metal guard-rail angrily as she caught sight of the nervous female from before having dropped the crate of grenades onto her partner's foot out of sheer clumsiness. "Argh! Somebody help those two! I can't deal with these distractions..."

"She's sure angry," Jahn whispered into Fleihric's ear.

"It's a stressful job," he explained. He turned to Sean and spoke over the background noise. "Sean, I'd like you to take a break and look after my daughter for the duration of the day. I can't be with her, I've got things to do,"

"What...?" Sean asked, looking to the little girl. Taking care of children hadn't been in her job description. Perhaps, she thought to herself, this was a test to see how well she would behave when given a much more personal and in your face task to accomplish. She nodded, giving Jahn a little wink. "Oh, I'd love to. I'm sure we'll get along just fine,"

"Thank you, Sean," Fleihric said, turning and walking away. "You had best get your second in command to take over, for I'd prefer it if you two didn't spend too much time in a hazardous area like this. Why not take her to the map room, instead?"

"Affirmative," Sean replied.

As she watched him leave, a loud spluttering sound came from the manufacturing machine and it slowly wound to a halt. The collectors stared at it in bewilderment, but Sean knew exactly what had happened. She looked over at the crouching figure of Jahn, who was busy pressing buttons on a control panel as rapidly as possible. A screen on the control panel was blinking, and a message on its reflective surface read 'Power Off' in red lettering. Seething, Sean rushed forward and snatched her away from the control panel, being sure to switch everything back on before starting to lecture the child.

"What do you think you're doing?!" Sean shouted. "This is an important piece of machinery, not a toy! Do you understand that?"

"I just wanted to stop the guns from coming out," Jahn whimpered. "My mother said..."

"Honestly, I never understood children!" Sean sighed, beckoning forward the assistant supervisor.

**


It is a common truth in the universe that good things come in small packages. Well, except in the case of the fourteenth chancellor of planet Bokuwa, who was blown to smithereens just ten minutes after coming to power when he received a package he assumed was a present to congratulate his good fortune. Instead, it turned out that the package contained an explosive device intended to kill the thirteenth chancellor, but the assassin had been just a little too late. This all turned out all right, for most people agreed that the fourteenth chancellor was a bit of a bore anyway, and cleaning up his room after his untimely demise proved to be only half as difficult as cleaning up the committee hall after the victory party.

Nevertheless, lady luck breathed a sigh of relief when an Octid patrol ship ignored the remote planet of Gorgo in favor of scouting out the gargantuan, three-mooned planetoid named Jigantto. They had been in search of new life to enslave, but had only enough fuel in their tank to visit and scan a single planet. Jigantto, bereft of nearly all forms of sentient life, could only serve as a place to colonize in the name of the Octid Empire. It was with a heavy heart that the patrol ship reported back to Octagon that they had been unable to locate new slaves. Even after a long-range scan of Gorgo, no life signs were detected. Until, that is, a passing Motto transport happened to crash land onto Gorgo's surface less than a week later.

Gorgo itself is a very small planet, and to the unsuspecting space traveller it would appear to be nothing more than a large asteroid. However, its funnel-like shape reveals itself to be a strange floating volcano of sorts; magma flows down its rocky surface and its upper regions are surrounded by dense smoke. When the Motto transport crashed onto Gorgo, the impact caused the ground surrounding the ship to cave in, revealing a hollow system of caverns that populated the nether regions of the planet. Confused, the crew of the transport signalled for help and a rescue party was dispatched. Fortunately, this situation warded off any Octid interference as per the rules of the peace treaty between the two peoples.

When the rescue team arrived at Gorgo, they found the transport and the crewmembers had already been discovered by a race of humanoids that had been living beneath the surface of Gorgo. Their skin brittle and blackened and their physical form permanently affected by the tremendous burns their race had suffered over the many thousands of years, they were however quite intelligent and agreed to share their planet with the Mottos. In return, the Mottos kept them safe from the reaches of the Octid Empire.

But the Octids are a very persistent people.

**


"Boooring," Jahn yawned, staring up through the foggy glass casing at the maps of all known Octid-occupied systems. She had counted them all twice, a task which had taken nearly half an hour, and was already growing tired of reading maps while Sean sat in the corner of the room reading. The lemon colored wallpaper looked as if it was supposed to make the room more exciting; Jahn didn't think it was very good at its job. "Who would want to just read maps all day anyway?"

"Well," Sean frowned, watching the child as she impatiently hopped from one foot to the other. At least when she had been reading the maps it meant there would be peace and quiet, she thought to herself crossly. "Maps tell people where they are and where they're going. Something a child wouldn't understand,"

"I know where I'm going," Jahn said, placing her hands on her hips. "I'm going to help my father put a stop to all the hurting,"

"Yeah, join the club," said Sean, putting down her copy of the minutes for previous week's grand meeting. That was a glorious time for her, for it was when they decided to place her in charge of an additional twenty percent of the base's production areas. "Listen, kid, every girl here thinks she's going to be instrumental in stopping the males and their cruelty. But only a select few are actually going to get to do it, and you're certainly not gonna be one of them,"

"Why do you say that?" asked Jahn.

"Firstly, because you're a child," Sean scoffed. "And secondly, because you've already done more to hinder our cause than to help it. You cancelled production of those munitions for ten whole seconds. That reeks of inefficiency, and I can't have it on my watch,"

"Guns won't stop the hurt," Jahn said. "If everyone just stopped making weapons, there'd be no fighting,"

"Right," Sean groaned. "Great idea, let's just drop our defences and let the males wipe us out. Good call, oh brilliant strategist,"

"Then the males would have to stop making them too," Jahn concluded.

"And what are you going to do?" Sean asked. "Just walk into the Emperor's ice palace, slide on up to his throne and say 'Excuse me, sir, could you stop producing guns?'...?"

"I dunno," Jahn smirked impishly. "Maybe I'd get you to do it,"

"Hey!" Sean sat up with a jolt.

"After all, I do kinda outrank you," Jahn giggled.

"... You!" Sean's mind boiled over with rage. Even though this had all been a hypothetical situation anyway, Sean knew that the final statement could still easily be correct. Placing her oversized head in her arms, she stroked her head spike and sighed. "I can't believe I'm even talking to a child,"

Jahn was confused. Sean didn't seem at all like any of the other women in the Rebellion. She seemed quite high in rank, yet she hadn't been present when her father and the others came to greet her in the docking bay area of the great hall. Plus she didn't seem to be fighting for the same reasons as the others. Whenever she spoke of the female oppression, she blamed the 'males' and not the Octids alone. It was almost as if she was just fighting due to her own personal prejudices, and not for justice. But Jahn didn't want to judge, so she turned back to the maps.

"That's weird," she said.

"What is?" Sean asked, not really caring.

"I didn't know Gorgo's twin moons were owned and controlled by Octagon," Jahn observed, pointing to the map. "I never would've thought when I looked up into the night sky at the moons on my home world that I was looking at enemy territory,"

"Yeah, the Octids found a loophole in their peace treaty with the Mottos and managed to get their hands on both Zuki and Zira," Sean said, referring to the two moons by name. "That was before the Gorgs had declared their independence, and the Octids dictated that fifty percent of Gorgo be handed over to them. Instead, the Mottos let them have the moons just so that the Octids would still be a safe distance away and would be kept from infringing on the Gorgs. Unfortunately, now that the Mottos have pulled out of that system, the Gorgs are left to try and retrieve what had been rightfully theirs all along,"

"Why don't the Octids just leave?" asked Jahn. "What good can two moons possibly be? I mean, they're so small,"

"The moons give them a tremendous advantage over your people," Sean explained. "You're a very primitive race in comparison, no offence intended. The Octids can spy on you and, more recently, steal from your numbers,"

"Steal?" Jahn gasped.

"Yes," replied Sean. "Some female Gorgs have been taken from Gorgo itself to be used as slaves on Octid controlled planets. It should be classified a crime, but a new law has been passed allowing Octids to enslave any female belonging to any race as long as they're on a world under their control. It's still under debate whether Gorgo falls into this category, so they're not letting up as easily as they should,"

"That's crazy," said Jahn. "Why would anyone allow something like that to happen?"

"Fear, mostly," Sean said, leaning back in her chair. It felt so good to be more informed than somebody else. "Other races may look down on the Octids for their treatment towards women and other criminal activities, but everyone respects them. Even I respect them, as warriors,"

"The ability to wage war doesn't deserve respect," Jahn butted in.

"If a race needs to be defended from another, they come to the Octids," Sean continued without paying any heed to Jahn's comments. "People are afraid to lose that privilege. The Octids make people feel safe while simultaneously scaring the pants off of them,"

"It's madness," said Jahn. "They're nothing but big bullies,"

"What about you?" Sean said, her interest in the girl suddenly perked. At least they shared similar contempt for the Octid Empire, she thought to herself. "I didn't consider Fleihric to be the child-wanting type. I can't think where he'd find the time to spawn you,"

"What makes you say that?" Jahn asked, sitting down beside Sean.

"Uh," said Sean, her large pupils moving from side to side as she fidgeted uncomfortably. "Your father just didn't seem like he would want a... well, don't get me wrong, he's a romantic through and through. Even I sense it when he gives us those rousing speeches. His heart and soul go into everything he does, and he cares about us all. But that's just it, I can't see where, how, or why he'd find the time to go off and have a child. It would just hamper his long-term plans. He wouldn't take such a risk,"

"Having me was a risk, eh?" Jahn cocked her head to one side at the flustered Octid. Then, she took a stubby finger and poked Sean on her bloated chin. "My father didn't always plan on leading this Rebellion,"

"You're kidding, surely," Sean frowned, batting away the girl's hand. "He's always telling us that this was his grand vision since he was knee-high to a Mangle,"

"Well, either way," said Jahn. "When he met my mother it was love at first sight. He told her he would marry her, and he told her that he'd always be there, and that he'd always take care of..."

Her words trailed into the air and gradually dissipated, sending waves of disjointed feelings through them both. Sean folded her arms and closed her eyes, knowing how Jahn must have been feeling; she didn't want to have to help her out. However, with a reluctant sigh she began to do her best to cheer the child up.

"You know," she said. "Sometimes men just don't tell women what they're really feeling. They just let them know what they want to hear, or what they think they should hear, so they get to have what they want. I'm sure in a way your dad did love your mother, and I'm sure he did want to do all those things for her. But he had other goals. Good ones, too! Ones that prevented him from staying true to his word,"

"That doesn't sound right," Jahn said, her voice softened and weak. "I mean... what could he possibly choose over taking care of his family? Over being with his daughter..."

"We're his family now," Sean answered, bluntly. She threw her arms open wide at the room, bringing Jahn's attention to its very essence, to what had caused it to be constructed in the first place. "We are his vision. We are his hopes and dreams. In a way, the Rebellion is his child. One with great potential,"

"And I never had any potential?!" Jahn cried, getting out of her chair and throwing her arms up in frustration. Sean had never seen such passion in a child before. "I'm his real daughter! I'm just as much a product of his love and devotion as this band of freedom fighters is. But he was never there for me! Why not?!"

"Children aren't supposed to ask such questions," Sean stood up, her size overbearing Jahn's inner fury and causing the girl to fall silent. "Your father's choices are his own to make. You may not like them, but they are for the greater good. He actually cares for women, a rare quality in a male. I suggest you respect him for that,"

"If he cared so much," hissed Jahn. "He would never have left my mother in the first place,"

"Children are so selfish," Sean spat, her face barely an inch away from Jahn's now. Her eyes bulged and her cheeks puffed out as she belted forth with her stark scrutiny. "Would you prefer he stay at home while countless women suffer? You said yourself that you want to help him with his goal. Everything takes a back seat to the furthering of our cause!"

"I came here to make up for lost time," Jahn said, turning her back on Sean. "It was my choice to spend time with my dad. My mother didn't approve, but she allowed it anyway because she understood that a child needs a father's guidance and wisdom to go along with a mother's love and affection. I need to know who I am,"

Sean stared at the back of Jahn's head for a few minutes, wondering how Gorg's were able to tell the difference between one side of their bodies and another. Jahn's chest rose and fell as she gathered her wits about her and at last turned back to look Sean in the eyes. There was a moment when Jahn almost believed that Sean understood what she was trying to get across. But then, Sean had to go ahead and open her mouth.

"Kids," said Sean, sitting back and lifting up her papers once more. "All they want is to be handed the answers. Trust me, little girl, it doesn't work that way once you get older,"

"No," Jahn whispered, turning back to the map on the wall. The twin moons that had once seemed so peaceful when she was younger now appeared to her as a great threat, hovering ominously overhead and waiting for the sky to fall. "I don't even know the questions yet,"

**


"There's only one question you must ask yourselves," boomed General Fillup, leader of the Octid military's Female Extermination division. "Am I just too afraid?"

There was a slight murmur in the throng of Octid soldiers and officials that sat in almost total darkness before him. The only light came from the enormous screen positioned directly behind the General; the convoluted designs and intricately positioned shapes that flashed by upon it causing flickers of white light to dance about on their mesmerized faces. The information displayed on the screen was far too immense and in depth to be understood, especially at the speed at which it was appearing and in succession disappearing, but the majority of it held no real meaning or significance to this particular congregation. It was just stuffed into the program at the last minute to make it appear as if their division had been hard at work utilizing the funding which they had been issued by the Empire.

"I know all of you are as filled with male blood as I am," the General spoke into the microphone, one hand on the podium and the other placed on the vague location of his heart. A few green head spikes within the crowd bobbed up and down in approval. "I can look at each of you and see it in your eyes, you have that same instinct as I do. Females are scum!"

There was a roar of assent, and Fillup turned to his guards and smiled. He waited until the cheers had abated before continuing.

"Why, there isn't a woman alive who has stood up and tried to serve our cause of her own free will!" he bellowed. He glared at some unseen point on the ceiling and clenched his fists tighter and tighter as the crowd supported his rising temper. "When was the last time a woman set foot onto a battle field and died for Octagon? Were there females fighting alongside our comrades during the Hexagon Wars?"

"No!" was the general response.

"Well, uh," a tiny voice squeaked from somewhere in the middle of the huge mass of faces when the room had fallen silent once more. "Isn't that because we made it illegal for any females to join the army?"

"Ahahaha," Fillup chuckled, his face contorting beneath a mixture of bemusement and sheer lunacy. As quick as a bullet, he became serious once more. He placed his arms behind his back and made three distinct hand-signals to his guards. "As I was saying..."

The guards left their positions and marched down the centre aisle of the audience section of the building. Not before long, they were dragging out a petrified uniformed Octid soldier and leaving with him through one of the back doors. Such a spectacle would have garnered more attention, had General Fillup not pressed a red button on the podium in front of him which caused the screen behind him to light up with a new, more concise image.

"But you must ask yourselves," Fillup recommenced his speech. "Am I holding back my hatred? Is there a line somewhere that I am unable to cross? My friends, are we really able to go that last length and destroy the female contingent of our society once and for all?"

There was a slight dissent in the crowd upon hearing these words. Fortunately, their muttering and mumbling managed to cover up the sound of blunt objects hitting flesh and the accompanied screams that came from outside.

"Fellow Octids, behold!" General Fillup proclaimed, pointing towards the screen above his head. "What I present to you now are the blueprints for a special type of decoy slave-camp. The females will think that they are being herded into yet another simplistic hovel in which they will spend their lives working for the common good, when they will really be falling into a trap,"

As the screen zoomed in on the computer generated blueprints to reveal the various deadly devices positioned within the decoy slave-camp, the two guards that Fillup had ordered outside returned through the double doors at rear of the building. They resumed their watch over the General as he described what the numerous officials and soldiers were currently looking at. The outspoken Octid soldier that had so foolishly interrupted the presentation earlier was nowhere to be seen.

"These are the means by which we shall more than half the female population," General Fillup explained, tapping his head spike and grinning. "With our ingenuity and smarts, we shall fool the females into willingly destroying themselves. Then, while keeping a sufficient amount of females alive for recreational purposes, their numbers will slip and we shall be dominant once more. Male superiority... the way it was meant to be,"

A brief amount of applause echoed through the grand chamber before forests of hands started to grow in different places amongst the crowd. One by one, the senior officials began to smile as General Fillup quelled their doubts and fuelled their interest with tales of promising figures and vigorous appraisal.

"All our female test subjects were completely duped by our designs," Fillup boasted. "Well, up until the last minute when the wall-mounted laser cannons lowered and blew them to smithereens... but it's that final moment of realization that makes the entire process so much more satisfying. This way we eradicate a great amount of females all at once without any protest whatsoever,"

An eager Octid official stuck his hand in the air.

"Yes, you, the one in the front," said Fillup.

"General Fillup," the official said, getting to his feet. "Aren't you worried that once you start actually implementing these methods that the females will figure it all out and revolt? I mean, sooner or later I'm sure they'd find out one way or another,"

"I don't think there's any worry of that happening," Fillup shook his head. "You look like a smart man, so you should know that females are a completely ignorant people. There's no accumulated logic between their ears; they only do what we tell them. That's all they're good for,"

"Interesting," the official replied. "So you're not at all afraid that females might, say, get their hands on those blueprints?"

"The blueprints are to be kept right here," General Fillup stated. He regarded the official with disdain and spoke with a cold edge. "Or perhaps you believe our systems to be so flawed that even a female could outsmart them?"

"No, no, not at all!" the official laughed, nervously.

"Because I can assure you," General Fillup said, turning to his guards. "There won't be a female within miles of here when these blueprints are put to use,"

"I beg to differ," said the official, leaping onto his chair and pointing up at General Fillup. With just a slip of the wrist, the official tore away a green portion of flesh from his head spike... revealing a bright purple marking that glowed throughout the darkened chamber. The other officials cried in horror, recoiling instinctively from the threat of female contact, while the soldiers got to their feet and looked around for weapons with which to slay her.

"Guards!" General Fillup shrieked, shaking his fist at the intruder furiously. "Seize that vermin! I want her executed! Killed! Destroyed!"

The guards stood their ground and reached for their weapons. Pulling out their blasters, they nodded to one another and took a step forward.

"What are you waiting for?!" asked General Fillup. "Use those blasters!"

Instead of taking his orders, the guards simply threw their blasters to one side. Then, after reaching into their red plated armor, they withdrew a pair of sleek looking, long barrelled repeater rifles. With wide grins on their faces, they winked at one another and saluted General Fillup.

"Wow, I didn't know they started issuing you guys with such heavy artillery," Fillup gasped. "Very impressive! I'll have to thank the Emperor personally,"

But rather than use the rifles on the female, who was now terrorizing the other officials in the background by threatening to touch them, the two guards simply reached up to their faces and similarly revealed two almost identical purple capulonas. General Fillup's jaw nearly fell a dozen feet as he reacted in utter shock and amazement. The incredulity of a single female infiltrating his grand announcement ceremony had been bad enough, but this was ridiculous.

"Hi there General," said Trixie, one of the fake guards. "Care to make a bet as to how long it'll be before Octagon pulls their funding from your little project?"

"Is your head spike rigid," the other guard, Sally, giggled. "Or are you just happy to see us?"

"Confound you loathsome wenches!" said General Fillup, anxiously looking around for some kind of defence. Fortunately, the some twenty odd high-ranking soldiers that had been watching his presentation were now returning, having rapidly equipped themselves. Gleefully, General Fillup sprang from the podium and dove in front of his rescue party on the main floor area. "I'm saved! Thank goodness!"

The three female rebels formed up on top of the podium, looking down on the assembling squadron of Octid troops. Lola, the third rebel who had posed as an official, reached into her phoney uniform and pulled out a pair of golden laser pistols that were about the size her slender hands. She turned to the other girls and smiled, confidently.

"Glad you two could make it," she said, holding one pistol in each hand.

"It's not my fault we were late!" explained Sally. "Trixie here got the directions wrong, and we ended up in a real fix until I got us back on track,"

"We're just lucky that some moron in the audience couldn't keep his mouth shut," said Trixie, lifting her rifle to her chest and checking it over. "Otherwise those guards would have never left the building, and we'd have never been able to get the jump on them,"

"Why aren't they cowering at our feet?" General Fillup asked, turning to the highest-ranking soldier in the squad. "Surely they know that the odds are undeniably stacked against them?!"

"Duhh? Odds?" Trixie called out, making her voice sound dopey. "What're you talkin' about? We don't know what odds are, we're females! We're too stupid to understand stuff like that!"

"Curse you!" General Fillup glowered. He turned back to the soldiers. "Shoot them down! I don't want any survivors! Nobody must know of our plans!"

"Shouldn't we call for reinforcements?" the soldier asked, hesitantly.

"Reinforcements?!" laughed General Fillup. "For what? They're women, you cretin! They don't even know how to hold a gun properly, let alone fire-..."

A loud shot reverberated through the room, and a smell that resembled burning rubber tires drifted through General Fillup's nostrils. Confused, he tried to turn around to see what had caused such a strange reaction. Instead, he fell to his knees and realized that something was amiss. More specifically, most of his chest was amiss. The wound sent pain to every corner of his body, and he collapsed in a heap at the feet of the soldiers.

"Sorry about that, girls," said Sally, lowering her rifle. "But that guy was just real annoying,"

"Coward!" the leading Octid soldier shouted up at them. "You shot him in the back! A true warrior would do no such thing!"

"That was his back?" Sally said, placing her hand to her cheek in mock surprise. "Well gosh, he was just so darn ugly it was too hard to tell which was which!"

"Rrrgh! Accursed females!" the soldier snarled, lifting his blaster. "Fire at will, men!"

A red barrage of laser fire tore through the air and slammed into the podium, causing it to collapse. The three girls, however, had already leapt through the air and landed at individual points in the chamber. Quick to react, the soldiers split into three groups and charged at the girls. The Octid officials, however, were too busy hiding beneath their chairs to enter the fray.

"These guys certainly are a pain," Lola pointed out while she back-flipped over a row of chairs and aimed her dual-pistols at the oncoming soldiers. "I mean, it's not like we came here to kill anyone,"

Skipping sideways across the chairs, Lola fired round after round of blazing firepower towards the soldiers. Despite their puny appearance, the dual-pistols packed an awesome punch and at least three soldiers were sent flying into the wall behind them. Not to be subdued, the remaining soldiers in the group returned fire and drove Lola further back into the sea of chairs. Dashing nimbly from one seat to another, Lola took a look over at the other two members of her team.

"Hurry up and recover that data, Sally!" Trixie urged as she held off two groups of Octid soldiers. Her repeater rifle jolted back and forth in her arms as she fired whilst ducking and dodging in an attempt to evade the deadly blasts intended for her.

"I'm trying to," Sally responded, her fingers working diligently away at the console behind the now destroyed podium. Her aim was to download the blueprints onto a single disk. "But these guys have one heckuva weird system. Everythin' has a subdirectory and it's almost impossible to find my way around..."

"Don't give me that mumbo jumbo," said Trixie, taking down yet another Octid soldier. She smiled as she realized they'd managed to halve their numbers. But her joy was short-lived, as her rifle slowly came to a halt and it struck her that she had run out of ammo. "Aww crud,"

"Almost got it!" Sally exclaimed proudly, as she pressed a few buttons and the disk drive lit up.

"Great... just great, Sally," Trixie grunted.

She eyed the soldiers who now approached her with their guns raised. They looked a great deal more confident now that she seemed to be defenceless; but she had one more trick up her sleeve. She lifted the rifle out in front of her and, after a couple of twists to the mid-section, slid the barrel and the handle away from the core of the gun. The soldiers stopped and looked at what she was now holding; it appeared to just be a small hunk of metal. She gave it a little squeeze, and from one end shot a long, sharp blade that curved to one side at its tip. It appeared to be a well-sharpened scimitar made out of some of the finest metals the Rebellion could have produced.

"Bring it on, boys," she purred, twirling the blade behind her head and then hurtling forwards. She shot between each of the soldiers, and before each of them knew it their blasters had been sliced in two. She stopped as she reached the final Octid and smiled into his eyes. Then, with the sword's blade resting on his chin, she knocked the blaster out of his hands with a tap of the scimitar's metal hilt. The terrified soldiers ran out as fast as they could through the rear entrance. Trixie slid the blade back into position. "That was easier than I thought it would be,"

"Think again," a voice hissed.

Trixie felt something slide against her throat and lightly pierce her neck. Surely enough, a soldier had crept up behind her and had some sort of weapon placed against her exposed skin. She must have misjudged exactly how many Octids had been left standing. Trixie closed her eyes and braced herself for the impending sound of the soldier's blaster, but instead heard a loud slamming noise as if someone had just punched a wet cabbage. She turned around and saw the soldier lying unconscious on the floor.

"You know, you're such a showboat, Trixie," Lola pointed out, disapprovingly. She shook her head at the unconscious soldier at her feet and snapped her fingers. "Poor guy needs his beauty sleep anyway,"

"C'mon girls," Sally urged, jumping down from the stage and landing on her feet beside them. She flashed a shiny disk at the pair of them. "I got our data, now let's scram!"

The three companions scurried past the bodies of several soldiers and made their way towards the exit. Donning their disguises once more, they paused for a moment at the doors to take a look back at the mess they'd left. A couple of the Octid officials lifted their heads up to see if the carnage had ended. They were dismayed with what they saw, as all three girls blew them bittersweet kisses before dashing outside.

**


"Women, you say?" Emperor P'twaaang peered over his reading spectacles at the trembling Octid squadron leader that now stood before him. The young officer had never been called to meet the Emperor face to face, and fear oozed from every pore of his quivering face. P'twaaang removed his spectacles and scooted forward on his throne. "Are you quite certain?"

The Emperor's throne room had always been the largest room in the ice palace. Positioned on the very top floor, it took up around ten percent of the palace's structural volume and was lavishly furnished. The central piece, of course, was the Emperor's throne, which resembled a three-pronged stalagmite made up of gorgeous crystals. The central prong, which was the largest, stretched up towards the ceiling above the Emperor's head spike to add emphasis to the fact that he alone held the greatest power among all Octids. Through a magnificently molded window, the sunlight poured across the throne and cascaded in all vibrant colors of the rainbow onto the floor below, reflecting off the icy surfaces of the walls and giving the room a mystical feel. The window itself had golden framework with runes etched into its shimmering surface in immortal ribbons of glowing text. The Emperor's lineage was forever represented on the wall facing his throne, above the mechanical doors that opened only to those with verified admittance. He watched all day the portraits of his father, and his father's father, and on down the line as his family looked back at him from the afterlife. Each Emperor had feared not living up to his predecessor, and looking back on each of the previous heirs it was hard to spot a single one who failed to live up to his father's standards. P'twaaang, however, had so far proved to be an exception.

"Women," he sighed, massaging his head spike and ignoring the officer waiting on his response. "My father would never have allowed such insubordination. What did they sabotage, exactly?"

"G-General Fillup was holding a meeting for the new Decoy Slave Camp model, your highness," the officer explained. "The females somehow infiltrated the assembly and stole the blueprints... after killing General Fillup and several of our men,"

"Murderers! This is treason, they must be captured and..." Emperor P'twaaang began. Then he stopped in mid-sentence, touched his youthful complexion softly with his right hand, and frowned. "Decoy Slave Camp model?"

"Yes, y-your highness," the officer nodded frantically. "The new designs which you had approved just two months ago. General Fillup was in charge of the project. He was really quite indebted to you for..."

"I was not aware that any such model had been designed," said Emperor P'twaaang, sitting back in his throne and staring aghast at the confused officer. Then he simply chuckled and, taking a sip of wine from the glass he had placed beside him on the arm of the throne, waved the matter aside. "It's no cause for alarm. Just keep the authorities on the look out for females of that description. They can't hide forever,"

"V-very well, your highness," the officer bowed before leaving through the exit. The metallic squelch of metal against ice echoed through the throne room as P'twaaang turned the events over in his mind.

"I suppose you knew all about this," he said, glaring through one eye at the figure stood directly in front of the window. The figure's shadow broke through the light and cast a foreboding stream of darkness upon the throne. "Don't just stand there, tell me what's going on!"

The figure arose from his position overlooking the surface of Octagon, a knowing smile on his face. His eyes represented the only light colors of his body as he stepped away from the window, the grey cloak that wrapped around his body and covered his feet making it appear as if he were floating across the ground. His shadow slowly shrank into nothingness as he slithered away from the sun, and he never turned back as his eyes pierced the very fears and doubts of the Emperor with great precision. The purple, spiked collar that curled around his neck lovingly like a part of his anatomy flanked the figure's darkened features. His face was the result of a million years of cosmetics and evolution. He was not just a male; he was the ultimate male, both beautiful and sickening at the same time.

"I really don't know what you're talking about," Ellis spoke in low, seductive, almost British articulations. His face curled up as he let loose one of his malevolent grins, and his eyes sparkled with a flare P'twaaang could not comprehend, nor did he very much want to. He turned around and looked back at the window.

"You're lying," Emperor P'twaang accused him.

"So?" said Ellis, looking over his shoulder at the inexperienced Emperor. "The truth would merely frighten you so much you'd be out that door in an instant,"

"You have no faith in my capabilities," P'twaaang growled, his hands tightening around the arms of the throne. "You are supposed to be my advisor yet all you do is behave condescending towards me. You hide things, you never let me know what's going on!"

"My," Ellis sneered. "You certainly turned out a lot different from your father. He trusted my judgement,"

"My father is the only reason you're still around," said P'twaaang, pointing a finger at the well-tended Octid. "It was his last will and testament that commanded your place to remain as my chief advisor. Had this not been the case, I would have found a far better replacement for you. Now, I'm not against going back and tampering with that sacred parchment, so why don't you tell me just what you have going on behind my back this very instant?"

Ellis looked the Emperor over for a second, wondering if he really had it in him to go against his father's demands. P'twaaang didn't back down and instead looked Ellis square in the eye, before boldly taking another sip of his wine in defiance of Ellis' threatening appearance. Ellis decided it was best not to take such a risk, and began to spill the proverbial beans.

"I approved the Decoy Slave Camp designs," Ellis admitted, noticing the look of disdain on the Emperor's face. "They were to be, in essence, a procedure by which we would lead the females into the decoy camps and destroy large numbers all at once. But don't worry, I knew you would never have allowed such a creation to be put into effect, so my intentions were never to hurt your image. Even I believe that females have their... various uses,"

"Then why?" Emperor P'twaaang asked.

"I have reason to believe," Ellis began to walk over to the window once more. "That there is a major threat on the horizon for us both. General Fillup's demonstration was only a lure; there was no real intent to go ahead with the blueprints he had designed. But I had to make sure that everyone believed it to be a reality, that we were going to slaughter the majority of the female gender..."

"General Fillup died today, Ellis," said Emperor P'twaaang. "Does that not weigh heavy on your conscience? That he died for one of your little mind-games?"

"Better him than us," Ellis said, coldly.

"What do you mean, better him than us...?" Emperor P'twaaang gasped. "Are you suggesting that someone is trying to end my reign as ruler of this empire?"

"Accept it," said Ellis. He took a long look out of the window at their capital, savoring the power and drinking in the worship. "The people are on the verge of revolt. Today's sabotage only proves it,"

"That's preposterous!" laughed P'twaaang, a thick desperation inherent in his voice. "That sabotage might have been perpetrated by pirates or bounty hunters. Your sources aren't always trustworthy, Ellis. Though I doubt they're as disloyal as you can be, sometimes,"

"You heard the description," replied Ellis. "Female Octids, three of them. They were clearly well trained in the art of combat, since they took on an entire squadron of troops and a General with little difficulty at all. Somebody must be stealing our female slaves and teaching them how to fight against us. These are not pirates, and their goals aren't as short-term as they appear to be. They plan to overthrow you, your highness,"

"... How could this be?" Emperor P'twaaang hissed. He turned to the long line of portraits that dotted the wall in front of him. "I have decreed nothing that my predecessors would have thought twice about. Am I truly that poor of a ruler?"

"There is only one solution," Ellis smiled, sensing weakness in P'twaaang's judgement. "You must allow me to train a select group of mercenaries to act as your personal guard. Then, you must enforce harsher laws on the treatment of females. The harder you punish them with every rebel outburst, the less likely they will be to rebel. Do as I say, and you will not lose your position, your highness,"

Emperor P'twaaang mulled these thoughts over, examining their pros and cons. What Ellis had said did make a slight bit of sense, he conceded. Still, he did not want to allow his rulings to become overshadowed by the corrupted urges of a man like Ellis. After all, what kind of a position would it be to lose if he really had no say in the order of things whatsoever?

"You are right, Ellis," Emperor P'twaang nodded, drawing a smile from his devious associate. "We do have reason to fear a rebellion. You have my permission to train a select group of Octid personnel to act as my guardians,"

"Excellent, your highness!" Ellis clasped his hands together enthusiastically. "I will gather an elite force of our greatest fighters and begin a rigorous training schedule right away!"

"But Ellis," P'twaaang said, rising from his throne and striding towards his bedroom. "Do not think for an instant that I will change my laws as you see fit. If there are to be any changes, they will indeed be made to douse the flames of an uprising. But they will be to appease the people, not to crush them,"

"I..." said Ellis, watching his master leave. His smile faded and his face became loose and disjointed, searching for an adequate expression to captivate the disappointment and loathing he was experiencing. "Your father would have listened to me!"

"Yes, he would have," P'twaaang said, stopping by the doorway to his bedroom which seemed tiny in comparison to his glamorous throne. He spoke a final time before turning the handle and leaving the room. "But I am not my father,"

Ellis stood alone in the throne room. Criminal thoughts flooded his mind and he struggled to hold on to his sanity. In a daze, he fell forward and almost collapsed. He steadied himself on the crystal arm of the throne, his cloak spread out beneath him like ever decreasing circles of cloth. He could hardly breathe.

"How dare you defy me," he snarled.

His sight dwindled on the glass that Emperor P'twaaang had left behind on the arm of the throne. Empty except for a thin film of wine and a pair of ice cubes, it was foggy and indistinct. An island of frozen water blocks amidst a sea of alcohol, it enticed his senses and he reached out and held onto it carefully. He then downed the final drops of wine and swallowed the ice cubes whole. It slipped down his throat like a relaxing slug, slow and inebriating. Then, with a malicious grin, he threw the glass as hard as he could into the window at the far end of the room, causing it to shatter. The fragments of glass sliced through the air, and glances of the world outside twinkled in their broken faces. The imagery was so very compelling.

"I believe it's time you cut down on the drink," Ellis cackled.

**


Jahn sat in the corner and kept her feelings to herself. The other female soldiers went about their business in the great hall, presumably preparing for the arrival of another ship. Occasionally, one of their numbers would stop on by and ask Jahn how she was doing, and she'd shrug and give them the same line she'd given so many people in her life.

"I'm just waiting for my dad to come by," she'd say.

The sound of over a hundred girls chattering together was starting to get on her nerves. She'd heard such voices before; she wanted to be able to hear that one voice that meant everything to her right now. She wanted to become familiar with her father's voice. She'd never even heard him tell her that he loves her. She started to wonder if Sean had been right, that he had really just lost sight of his true goals when he came together with her mother to create a life form. It sounded so cold, but it was all she could think about. She just wanted to know her daddy... but he didn't seem to want to know her.

"There you are," Fleihric's voice cut through her depression. She instantly brightened up and stood on tiptoes as the leader of the Rebellion finally reached her side.

"You were looking for me?" Jahn asked, smiling.

"Of course," Fleihric nodded, patting her on the head. "Though you'll have to excuse me if I seem a bit distracted. We have a couple of our operatives in the field, and they still haven't returned from duty..."

"I wanna talk to you about mom," said Jahn, to his surprise.

"Well, uh," Fleihric stammered, rather flustered. Jahn could see what was coming before he even said it. "Gee, honey... I'm a little busy right now, you know. I thought we went over this before, anyway... I've got too much on my plate to..."

Jahn said nothing, but instead she slid her hand into his and smiled up at him. A sensation of total calmness washed over Fleihric as he looked into her sockets; the darkness of her face was overcome with the warmth from her heart. He didn't feel any pressure whatsoever, and it was as if the entire army of Rebel troops behind him just slowly faded into silence. With just a look, his little daughter had erased all the work time from his immediate schedule and replaced it with something far more attractive. A power like that could only come from a loved one.

"Maybe I can spare some time to talk about her," Fleihric said, picking Jahn up by the waist and placing her down on the other side of him. He pointed to a corridor that sloped upwards away from the great hall and up to a higher level of the base. "C'mon, let's talk a walk together,"

The interior of the base was made up of mostly greys and blues. It was a pretty dismal color tablet, but then they weren't exactly there to have fun and games. The carpeted floors of the corridor were a combination of the two; stripes of blue and grey zigzagging their way across from wall to wall like unenthusiastic lightning, while up above globes of captured light emitted rays of white incandescence at regular intervals. It was a well put together little base of operations, to be sure. In her youthful innocence, Jahn wondered how long it would take to run from one end to the other. Giggling, she wrapped her arms around her father's leg and growled playfully.

"Hey now," Fleihric said, unable to hide his smile. "What did you want to know about your mother, Jahn? I mean, surely you've become more familiar with her than I ever was. You've been close to her for so long. She's been there for you ever since you were born. What could I possibly know that you don't already?"

"Why does she cry every time I mention you?" Jahn asked, letting go and looking sideways at the wall.

"That's... a good question," said Fleihric. "Anerch and I weren't on good terms when I left her, that's the truth. She and I... we had differing opinions on how we wanted to change the world,"

"What were your opinions?" Jahn asked. "The Rebellion, right?"

"In a sense," he replied. "I was originally going to become a spokesperson on female rights for the Gorg kingdom, which would give me some sort of voice against the way the Octid Empire was treating women. I had to let my voice be heard in some way, no matter what that way was. I needed to make an impact. That was what Anerch loved in me, I wanted to speak out. But the problem was, nobody was listening to me,"

"Nobody?" said Jahn.

"Well, people listened," Fleihric shrugged. "But nobody of any real influence or importance. I even got my own time slot on Gorg public television, but the Octid Empire got the television company shut down saying that our product was distasteful and vulgar,"

"How the heck did they pull that off?" Jahn frowned, though she understood that the Octids could pull off pretty much whatever they wanted. "What messed up reasoning did they use this time?"

"We had full frontal nudity on the show," he said.

"Dad!" Jahn gasped.

"No, not like that," said Fleihric, wagging a finger at her. "Gorgs don't wear clothes, remember. I mean, sure, we've nothing to cover up... but the Octids managed to twist the facts around. Plus, they threw in some made-up figures about ratings and said we were inciting revolts. Soon enough, the show just kicked the bucket. So, when I had no way of changing the world peacefully..."

"You decided to start the Rebellion," Jahn finished his sentence for him.

"Well, first I had a sandwich, but yeah it was around that time," he joked. "Anerch's opinion was that brute force wasn't the way to go about changing things. But when you're confronted with something as evil and set in its ways as the Octid Empire, anything else would be like trying to teach a Temp to talk,"

"Mom always hated guns," Jahn nodded in recollection. "Once she caught me watching a movie about some guy who took the law into his own hands with guns and explosions and stuff, and she made me promise that I'd never watch another movie like that again,"

"Anerch was so hateful of conflict," said Fleihric. "Ironic that it should be that part of her personality which caused us to fight so much towards the end. I'm surprised she allowed you to come and visit me,"

"It wasn't easy," she said. "And that's a huge understatement,"

"How did you do it, anyway?" he asked, looking down at her. "I mean, you're not THAT persuasive. Well, maybe a little,"

"Hey," Jahn giggled, punching his leg softly.

"Anerch is just as stubborn as you are smart," said Fleihric. "That's all I'm saying. Come on, Jahn, tell me what you did to cause her to let you come visit me,"

Fleihric looked at his child, and momentarily he thought he saw tears welling in her eye sockets. It was always a strange phenomenon when a Gorg cried. They would look as if their faces were just starting to melt, and if it weren't for their sad expressions you wouldn't quite know what was going on if you had never seen such a bizarre occurrence before. Jahn's lower lip trembled, and she spoke very carefully as if she were trying not to disturb a sleeping dragon.

"I told her I would get you to come home," she said.

"Come home?" Fleihric echoed. "But I'm too busy here, Jahn. You know that,"

"Daddy," Jahn said, stopping in the corridor and turning away from a couple of female soldiers that were coming the other way. When they had passed, Fleihric squatted down and took her hand. He listened intently, and could hear a sound that resembled that of a tiny insect trying to make a nest in a box of tissue paper. Jahn was sniffling, trying to hold back the tears. "You have to come home with me. Mom wants you to, I want you to,"

"You can't be serious," he said, not quite sure of what to think. "Jahn, I'm their leader. If I left they'd have nobody to listen to,"

"You're also my father!" said Jahn, the black smudges now dripping from her face and splashing onto the carpet. "I don't know what to do without you. You're like an empty page of my life, and I know something important should go there. I need your guidance as much as those ladies, if not more,"

"Listen, you don't know what you're talking about here," said Fleihric, getting rather snippy with the child. Did she really expect him to drop everything and come back to a miserable life with a woman who hated him? "This Rebellion is my life. I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings, but it means more to me than Anerch does these days. I won't go back to her... and you know full well that she wouldn't receive me if I still wanted to fight the good fight,"

"Then stop fighting," Jahn said, her hands quivering at her sides. "Mom'll love you again if you just stop the violence,"

"Stop it?" Fleihric frowned. "What do you expect me to do, go out there and tell all those women that I'm postponing the Rebellion until I've given my daughter a father she can look up to?"

"Don't just postpone it!" Jahn screamed. "End it!"

"And let the suffering continue?" Fleihric asked, getting very cross. His daughter seemed to have absolutely no logic to her thoughts, just blind love. Though he accepted that, he would not support it. "If this Rebellion ceased to be, do you know what would happen to those women? They would be enslaved. They would be tortured. Then, they would die. They mean far too much to me for..."

"They can't mean more than me!" Jahn cried. "They just can't! I'm your daughter, I'm..."

"Worth the lives of thousands?" Fleihric asked, disgusted by her impertinence. "Honestly, that's exactly the attitude your mother had that drove me away,"

"You don't love me," said Jahn, her voice suddenly very quiet. "Do you?"

"You know I do!" Fleihric sighed. "You mean so much to me. But Jahn, you're not in any danger. You can have a wonderful life. You're smart, beautiful, and free. But these women... they're not free. Don't you understand that they deserve to have the same opportunities as you? I love them as my own family,"

"They're not your real family!" she whimpered, taking a step away from the old man and pointing at him accusingly. "Mom and I, we're your family! And you rejected us!"

"It couldn't be helped," Fleihric said, looking at her hopelessly. "Jahn... the Rebellion is my family now. You can't tear me away from them. I love them as much as I do you,"

"It's not true!" Jahn cried. "I won't believe it!"

Before Fleihric could do anything to try and calm her nerves, Jahn span around and began to run in the other direction. She could hear him calling out to her as she headed on down the corridor, but rather than listen she decided to run even faster. Then, she turned down another corridor that led even further up into the higher levels of the base. Her feet were now scorching as her heels scuffed the carpet at an incredible pace, but the sadness in her heart outweighed the pain she was feeling down there. The rejection was too much, and she carried on down several other corridors until she found herself in a large round tube-like passage. Apart from the flat, oblong floor, the surfaces of this passage were made up of some kind of reflective metal that created multiple shifting images of her own body hurtling awkwardly down the central path. The reflections closed in on her like invading enemies as she increased her speed at a hectic rate. It was like staring down a kaleidoscope of possibilities, each one as awful as the next. Much like her tears, she could not stop running.

**


She sat there beneath the window, breathless. Her chest rose and fell in time with the constant pounding of her head, like an emergency siren that warned her of danger. Slowly, the world around her started to gather its senses, and her vision came together in an electric blue haze. After wiping her eyes, she got to her feet.

"At least now I know how long it takes to get from one end to the other," Jahn muttered.

She leaned back against the wall and let the cold glass that belonged to the window soothe her aching head. She had indeed dashed her way from one side of the Rebellion's base to the other, and had now found herself in a compartment overlooking the great hall. The window looked out onto one of the platforms, and just below that she could quite easily make out a large crowd of female soldiers that had gathered for one reason or another. The noise they made annoyed her tremendously, as it was a happy thing and not dismal in the least. How she wished they would just...

The sound of the ship's arrival interrupted whatever she had been about to think. Intrigued, she glanced out of the window for an instant. She was surprised to see an ovular Imperial Octid shuttle descending from the H.E.L.M.S. structural support beams that populated the ceiling. It shone in the artificial light that those beams created; its white, almost egg-like hull looking like nothing more than a ball of silver hovering in the air. Above the ship, she could make out the crackling tendrils of electricity that symbolized the outer portal being operated in order for safe passage between locations to be achieved. Teleportation was the most efficient means of transportation between the base and the outside world, and fortunately the Gorgs had it down to a fine art. This was one of the benefits of having a Gorg leader.

"I wonder what's going on," Jahn said to herself, examining the Imperial ship. "The Empire couldn't have found the base, could they?"

Her questions were soon answered, as the ship made a perfect landing on the great hall's platform around which were gathered the female soldiers. Then, with a loud hissing noise and a large amount of steam emissions, the ship's walkway was lowered and out stepped a couple of female Octids in military uniform. Behind them walked another female in a high-ranking Octid official's uniform. It was quite a spectacle, and Jahn felt rather concerned until her father came onto the scene and they bowed before him. They began to exchange speech and, afraid that she might miss something, Jahn decided to clamber down the steps that led up to her compartment and get closer to the grouping.

"This would have indeed been a terrible blow to the female population of Octagon," she heard Fleihric's voice resonating through the air, as she crawled behind some crates which had been positioned by the opening to the great hall and sat there listening attentively. She drew her knees up to her chin and bit her bottom lip as she hoped nobody had spotted her. "Why the Empire was planning to put these blueprints into affect I will never know,"

"They're just totally cruel," Sally responded. "You should know that by now, sir,"

"Sally!" scalded Lola. "Don't talk to your leader that way,"

"But I called him sir!" said Sally.

"That's not what I meant," Lola sighed. "Sorry, sir. She's just..."

"Nevertheless," Fleihric chuckled at Sally's behavior. "Both the Rebellion and myself are indebted to you three girls. We shall take these designs and show them to the governing bodies of numerous other races, and they will see what the Octids were planning to do,"

"Aww, they'll just say they ain't never seen those designs before," Sally grumbled. "That's what they always do,"

"Even so," said Fleihric. "This will certainly prevent the Octids from putting these plans into action, at least in the foreseeable future. Trixie... are you feeling all right?"

"I'm okay..." Trixie replied, her voice sounded rather queasy.

"She's just a little air-sick," said Lola. "Started on the flight back ever since we took off. Weird. Guess those Imperial shuttles aren't all they're all cracked up to be,"

"Really, I'm okay..." Trixie insisted.

"Okay, but report to sick bay immediately afterwards," Fleihric said. "For now, though, I would like to present you three girls with congratulatory medals of honor. You have all risked your lives in the past, but today's mission took an incredible amount of courage and valor. For that, you deserve these,"

Jahn heard the applause swelling in her ears, and she turned to look out from behind the crates. Standing on the platform was her father and the three female soldiers, and they were being handed silver medals with attached red and blue ribbons from which hung attractive golden stars. The looks on their faces were one of utter rapture... except for the one on the far right, who didn't look very pleased at all. Her face was pale as if she had come upon a horrible illness, and she wobbled back and forth with an unnerving lack of balance. She took the medal in her hand and stared at it with a frightened expression, almost as if she had been handed a knife. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, she stumbled forward and grabbed Fleihric by the arm. The applause halted as if the crowd had been shot by an unseen bullet, and the soft croaking of Trixie's breath took its hold on the silence.

"Trixie!" Fleihric said, looking down into her fading eyes. "Somebody get a medic,"

"It's... too late," she said, her hand sliding down his arm as her strength faded.

"Trixie, what is it?" Lola came forward, dropping her medal and placing a hand on her weakened partner's back.

Trixie tried to respond, but her lungs were quickly failing her. All she could do was point to her throat, and make a strange symbol in the air with her fingers.

"What's going on?" Jahn whispered to herself whilst watching the events unfold. Suddenly, she found herself stirred by a group of Octid soldiers who ran past her carrying a stretcher. They had gone by so fast that they mustn't have seen her, for their eyes were fixed solely on the now collapsed figure of Trixie.

"Oh my gosh," Sally gasped, as Trixie was now convulsing on the platform.

"Don't panic!" Fleihric commanded the onlookers, as the stretcher was brought forward and placed by Trixie's body. He knelt down beside her. "Trixie, it's going to be okay. Just hang on..."

"Uggghhhh!" Trixie's body was now turning a pale shade of blue as Lola and Sally tried their utmost to get her to move onto the stretcher. Trixie suddenly took her hands and placed them around Sally's throat, moving her fingers around on the shiny texture of Sally's skin. Sally squealed and backed away from Trixie.

"Sally, it's okay," Fleihric said, preparing the stretcher. "She doesn't look like she has the strength to try and attack you,"

"No, it's not that!" Sally said, her voice so high that she might have been sending a warning signal to any dogs in the vicinity. "I know what's wrong with her!"

"What is it, Sally?" Lola asked, urgently.

"It's a Larixite!" Sally hollered. "She must have been hit by one in the battle!"

The words echoed through the room as the entire crowd of onlookers became paralysed with fear, and even Fleihric himself looked terrified of such a thing being possible. Only Jahn looked totally nonplussed, as she had never heard of a Larixite, so she was quite confused when the majority of the soldiers turned around and looked the other way as Trixie lay there suffering. Jahn could see the ones that had now turned to face her beginning to cry, while the ones who looked on in horror were either too afraid to emote or torn between trying to help and just breaking down. Fleihric stood his ground above the poor girl, watching as she shook violently at his feet.

"Can't you do something?" Lola asked, turning to her almighty leader. Sally had fallen to the ground in a panic, so Lola was the only member of their little trio with her wits still in one piece. "Please, sir, you must know what to do!"

"I..." Fleihric said, unable to think.

"Daddy..." said Jahn, taking it all in.

Trixie's throat began to slowly inflate like a rubbery balloon as veins bulged in her neck and started to swallow her skin in their violent rage. In her face, blood vessels popped almost audibly as her visage was slowly turned away from its youthful complexion and she was given a mask of burning red pain. Her eyeballs swelled and her head spike lost its solidity as it drooped lifelessly behind her skull, it appeared as if someone were just pumping her full of air and her body was unable to take it. Jahn found it all so revolting, yet she simply couldn't take her eyes away.

"P... p... pl... p..." Trixie choked, saliva dripping from her shrivelled lips.

"I'm sorry," Fleihric said. He sighed and took out a blaster, aimed it at Trixie's head and...

"No!" Jahn cried as the shot rang out.

Fleihric's incoherent anger filled the room as he cried for Trixie. Jahn removed her hands from her face as she finally found the courage to look, and there she saw Trixie's corpse in the arms of her father. He was shaking all over, as Trixie had been before. Only he wasn't shaking out of any kind of pain that Trixie had been feeling. His agony was greater, for he had had to take away her life rather than see her go on suffering. His black tears splashed down onto her back, creating a collage of darkness on the vibrant pink texture of her uniform. As he shook, her body seemed to shake in response... and it was like her suffering continued, as it always would in his mind.

"No... no..." he wept. "Trixie... this can't be happening... How could I let you go..."

Jahn stood alert, not caring if she was seen. She took it all in, the emotions of the watchers and the pain of Trixie. Most of all, she absorbed the sadness of her father. She had never seen him so sad. She had never had the chance to...

But she knew the others had. They quickly clustered around him and cried right along with him, the ones that were nearest wrapped their arms around him and felt the raw regret in its purest form. He had not been able to save her, and it ate away at his conscience for he had lost so much. He had lost a member of his fold. He had lost a member of his family. He had lost...

A daughter.

"Daddy..." Jahn said, starting to cry as she shuffled forward and climbed the platform to join the others. She ducked underneath their suits of armor and slid between their legs until she reached Fleihric himself. She knew that he wouldn't be able to feel the difference between her arms and the arms of the other soldiers, because to him they were all the same. But she embraced him anyway. She wanted to be a part of that fold. She wanted to make up for the loss that he had suffered.

She wanted to join the Rebellion.

**


The energetic thumping continued to reverberate from out of the open steel doorway and into the corridor. A couple of rebel soldiers, their sister capulonas a close match for one another, passed by the open quarters without paying the noise much notice. They were busy chatting away about the current state of things, their assignments for the week, and how Susie from sector #25 had noticeably bad taste in weaponry. Chard let them pass by the corridor, only turning his head to give them a friendly nod in greeting. They giggled like schoolchildren after receiving his passive attention, their conversation quickly changing direction towards the blooming friendship between him and Jahn.

Chard was one of the very few male members of the Rebellion. He had joined up only two years ago, but had quickly become familiar with the workings of things. His skills as a combat specialist on Gorgo had drawn the attention of Fleihric himself, and soon enough this Gorg warrior had been handed admittance to the ranks of the Rebellion. The concept had intrigued him, for he admired Fleihric as a visionary and as a gutsy tactician, but he had never quite expected the man's daughter to be even more fascinating.

As a result of Chard's obvious manhood, many of the female soldiers had been quick to shun him or outright avoid him. He had expected no less, but really he did not feel any personal bitterness or harsh feelings between himself and the rest of the force as a whole. They were acting on instinct; they fought against the males, so a sudden adjustment towards a sympathetic male was not to be counted upon. Over time, his actions in the field had lent him their trust and respect, but alas their friendship was a much harder prize to attain.

He listened a while longer, his back placed against the opposing wall to the open doorway. The occasional feminine grunt and lots of heavy breathing were the only other sounds to come from within that room. After a few minutes, he took it upon himself to walk across and look inside.

Jahn had grown a great deal since joining the Rebellion as a child. Over ten years in the service had passed, and she now had the physical attributes of a soldier. Her body was slim even for a Gorg, and her muscular patterns had become far more defined around her chest and thighs. Though her strength and size would suggest that of a male, her proportions were very much so a give away as to her actual gender. She stood with her back to him, lunging out with a foot at a spherical, leather-wrapped punching bag that hung down from the arced ceiling above her head.

Chard leaned to one side of the doorway and surveyed the room. Her lack of cleanliness certainly pointed to the fact that she was indeed a teenager. Scraps of old mission logs and informative brochures lay strewn about the floor, and a rather ragged map of the planets Octagon and Gorgo was pinned rather lopsidedly to the dark purple wallpaper. An inviting looking bed with peach colored pillows and a quilted covering was positioned beneath the twin rectangular light emitters that spread their tender highlights across every surface. It bounced from Jahn's slender figure and made her look as if she were shining, as she pounded away on the rubbery orb with all her might.

"You know," Chard said, folding his arms and smirking as his distracting voice caused her to miss the punching bag and slam her foot into the wall. "These doors are sound-proof. If you don't want people to think you're fighting a war in here, you'd do well to shut it,"

"I'm always fighting a war," replied Jahn, masking the pain as best she could as she attempted to make hopping on one foot look as natural as possible. "Some day, I might win it and then I won't have to deal with you anymore,"

"Come on," Chard said, laughing. He stepped into her room and noticed the look of frustration on her face as she pondered telling him to keep to his boundaries. "We both know that the only reason you wanna beat the Octid Empire is so you and I can shack up together on some nice little Octid controlled planet without fear of them snooping in on us!"

"I wasn't talking about the war against the Octids," Jahn said, her lips curling up in amusement. "I meant our little vendetta,"

"What vendetta would that be?" Chard asked, giving her an innocent shrug.

"The one where I hate your guts," Jahn said, jamming a cold finger into his neck when he came within reach. "Because you're so disgusting, and all,"

"Disgusting," Chard repeated, turning to the left and circling her at arm's length. She scowled at him through the corner of her eye, but didn't make a move to stop him as he came to the other side of her and stopped. To look at them both, you would be hard pressed to tell that just over four years separated both their ages. Chard was in his early twenties and Jahn in her late teens, yet Jahn had always been that little bit taller than him. It went right along with her personality, for she had always been reaching for things before she had been in a position to get to them. Chard regarded her, reaching up with a hand and pushing the spherical punching bag lightly so that it wobbled above his head. "That's not what Cammy says,"

"Cammy didn't tell you...!" Jahn gasped. She struggled with her words as she desperately tried to figure out what she should say. "I mean, Cammy's a liar... I mean... Cammy doesn't know... she wouldn't... I never said..."

"So you didn't say that despite my obnoxious personality and lowly perception of women, I'm actually pretty cute and cuddly?" Chard asked, leaning forward so that his face was close to her own.

"I didn't say cuddly, I said dashing!" Jahn snapped. Her jaw dropped open as she realized he'd tricked her. "HEY!"

Chard fell back against the wall, knocking his head on the punching bag and sustaining a slight bump to his noggin in the process. It didn't matter though, as he was laughing much too hard to notice. Jahn pouted and glared angrily at him. In a flash, she had placed the punching bag in front of his head and was readying her leg in a fighter's stance.

"Hey, watch what you're..." he began, but she had already leapt into the air and knocked the punching bag off its ceiling attachment with a powerful spinning heel kick. The leather ball bounced off the wall and landed with a thud on her bed, nestling itself between the pillows. She placed her hands on her hips and stuck her chin out at him while silently pointing out that his head would've been just as easy a target. "Nice,"

"Why must you constantly prey on me?" Jahn said, turning away and walking out of her quarters. She tried to shut him in, but he sprang nimbly through the opening before it shrank into the side of the wall. He landed deftly beside her in the corridor, managing to keep up to her pace as she stormed towards the other end. "Go away, I don't want to talk to you!"

"But I have something real important to tell you," Chard said, striding out in front and walking backwards so that he faced her.

"Ugh," she rolled her eyes at his childish behavior. "Importance is subjective. I'm sure that, to you, a cold can of Sodiplaz is important, whereas to the majority of the halfway intelligent people working here, such things are without any real significance,"

"Hey, I know what's really important," he replied, having taken offence at Jahn's statement.

"Oh yeah?" Jahn asked, turning a corner and rushing past a small crowd of rebels. "And what would that be?"

"Well," said Chard, lagging behind a little as he dwelt on the subject. "I mean, living is important. Enjoying life, and... all that,"

"I shudder to think how you go about doing that," Jahn cringed.

"Look, do you want to hear the important message or not?" Chard asked, shaking his head and deciding to forget the issue.

"Message? From who?" she asked.

"Your dad," he said.

"I don't believe that," she scoffed, looking sideways at him.

"Why not?" he asked.

"My father wouldn't trust a simpleton such as you to carry his paperwork, let alone a message," said Jahn.

"Hey, Miss Crabby," Chard said, turning around and pushing Jahn against the wall. She was about to cry out, but the expression on his face didn't seem threatening, and his hands weren't really all that forceful or pressuring. He spoke deliberately and without holding back. "I know I can be pretty difficult sometimes, but you don't have to outright insult me like that. I've always had a great deal of respect for your dad, and just recently he's started to feel similarly towards me, and I'm proud of that. I worked hard for that. You didn't have to,"

"Let go!" she said, struggling to get free of his grip on her shoulders.

"No, you're going to listen," said Chard. "You wanna know what message your dad gave me to give to you? Well, I'll tell you. He's decided he wants to send you into the field. He knows you've been working towards that the entire time you've been together with him, and I know he's been too scared to let you go out there, but he feels he can't just expect you to stand by him your whole life. Now tell me that's not important,"

He let go of her shoulders with a jolt, though she didn't make a move to get away. They looked at one another, unsure of what to say. He'd never been quite so emotional or honest with her before, and it was very unfamiliar territory for them both. It was strange for him, because he'd never seen her listen to him for so long without criticism or a snide response, and it was strange for her because she'd never known that Chard and her father were close. For all she'd known, they only ever spoke to each other during meetings. Now, after all this time, she was getting her very first field mission... and Fleihric had chosen to let Chard tell her? What did this mean? Why wouldn't he inform her personally?

"Chard, I..." she began.

He looked at her, expectantly. What did he want from her? An apology? Surely not. She had nothing to apologize for. His behavior towards her had always been insulting, so why shouldn't she respond in kind? She didn't take kindly to being treated like an inferior being. So she stared back into his eyes and was about to tell him where to get off, when to her surprise she saw just how much he resembled her father. She'd never noticed it before, but he had his sloped brow, the very same hooked nose, and a cleft parked right in his chin just like Fleihric. The resemblance was truly frightening, and with a sharp intake of breath she turned around and started walking the other way.

"Jahn!" he said, watching her go.

"Just leave me alone," she whispered. "You can't replace him,"

**


"Why would you do that?" she begged her father to answer, leaning over his desk and keeping her tone just one notch below a yell. She didn't want anyone passing by his office to hear what she was discussing with him so heatedly. "You know I hate Chard! Why would you..."

"You don't give Chard a chance," Fleihric told her, his wise eyes folding beneath his furrowed brow. His age was starting to show though his voice hadn't changed a bit. Perhaps that was because he'd always sounded so far off and sage even when she was a little girl. The words he was speaking now, however, seemed to hold no intelligence whatsoever. "He's a perfectly nice..."

"Perfectly? Nice?" Jahn laughed. "Those descriptions don't suit him at all! He's a lowly, despicable, hideous man!"

"I would never have thought," Fleihric said, sadly. "That you would be concentrating so much on your hateful feelings when I at last allowed you to take part in a field mission,"

Jahn's perspective suddenly changed. She remembered the message that Chard had given to her, and despite her problems with him she had indeed been happy to receive such wonderful news. She had just taken it for granted, and was showing to Fleihric that perhaps she wasn't ready for such a responsibility. In order to snuff such notions, she smiled and relaxed, her arms dangled loosely by her sides and she snapped her heels together attentively.

"Sir," she said, beaming. "I would be honored if you were to allow me to fully contribute towards our victory over the Octid Empire by going out into the field and actively taking part in the operation,"

"That's a far more satisfactory attitude," Fleihric smiled. "How long has it been since you first came and asked me if you could go with the rest of the soldiers and help them out?"

"Since forever!" said Jahn, leaning back and watching the years rush past her eyeballs. She remembered watching the comings and goings of the other female soldiers like it was yesterday. She would run up to her father and plead with him to let her go along for the ride. She even promised him that she'd stay in the ship the whole time, but he wouldn't have any of it. "You were always too scared to let me go,"

"It wasn't letting you go that scared me," Fleihric said, nodded solemnly. "It was the thought of never getting you back. Besides, back then you were far too young. You wouldn't have been ready to face the atrocities that the Octids are committing, and you certainly wouldn't be able to cope with the struggles of battle,"

"Seems like the atrocities and struggles found their way to me anyways," Jahn sighed.

"Whatever do you mean?" asked Fleihric. "I certainly hope you aren't referring to young Chard..."

"No, of course not," she lied a little. "It's just that every day seems to be a struggle. It's so hard to stand back and do all the little jobs like crate-shifting and training the other cadets, knowing that those crates are filled with weapons that will be fired by those cadets in the field of battle. But me? I've always been stuck in here, continuing the cycle like I'll never get out of it,"

"Jahn," said Fleihric, reaching across the desk and placing a loving hand on her arm. "None of those tasks were ever menial. You were as important as I am. Do you ever see me out in the field? Besides... now's your chance to shine like I know you can. You're a strong girl, and very smart. You couldn't let me down if you tried,"

"You're not afraid you might lose me?" Jahn asked, carefully. She didn't want to change his mind about sending her, but she also feared he might spend all his time worrying whenever she wasn't safely under his nose.

"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't," said Fleihric. "But I'm sure you can handle yourself. After all, if I didn't have faith in you or your team-mates, I wouldn't be much of a leader now, would I?"

"Right," Jahn snickered. "By the way, who will my team-mates be?"

"I decided I'd put you in a group of soldiers you're already quite familiar with," Fleihric explained. "Co-operation is a key role in the sort of cloak-and-dagger stuff you'll be handling, and friendship is a very strong bond that allows such things to be made possible. So, your team will be made up of a pilot, Cammy Rose... a medic, Eve Hazakah... a scanning team, Thora Nyth and Kelly Zucor... and a fellow combat specialist, Chard K'flask,"

"Chard?!" Jahn gasped. "No way! You really expect me to go on a mission with him? This is unbelievable! How am I supposed to trust him?!"

"The same way I expect you to trust any other member of this Rebellion," said Fleihric, rather sternly. "Jahn, I am not asking you to do anything I wouldn't do myself. Chard is a noble warrior from our homeworld..."

"Yeah, you would say that," Jahn frowned. "You don't have to put up with him looking at you like you're a piece of meat all the time,"

"That's enough!" he said. "Jahn... putting Chard's attitude aside, I think he really is fond of you a great deal. This is why I placed him amongst your group's numbers, for if anybody will go out of their way to protect you it would be him. Heed my words, do not take his feelings for granted,"

"He'd just as soon take me for granted," said Jahn.

"If that's how you really feel, I suppose I'll just find somebody else to go on this away mission in your place," Fleihric said.

"Okay," said Jahn, reluctantly. "But I really don't know what you see in him,"

"Believe it or not," he said, with a faraway gleam wedged deep down in his eye sockets. "But I see myself,"

Jahn felt a shiver run up and down her spine as he said those words. She remembered pausing for that brief moment in the corridor as Chard looked into her eyes and she into his, and seeing the same features and expressions that belonged to her father. There was something not quite right about it; it felt like it should have been romantic, that she should have been more drawn towards Chard as a result of his aggressive compassion. Yet somehow she felt more repelled by him now, as if he represented a barrier between herself and her father... or was it something more than that? Was Chard a barrier between herself and the outside world? If so, how would she cross such a barrier? Perhaps the answer remained to be seen, or maybe just accepting this mission would allow her to cross the barrier and forever leave it behind along with Chard's loathsome gaze.

"Jahn, promise me you won't let him down," said Fleihric. "Co-operate with him. I want you two to get along,"

"You have my word, father," Jahn swallowed, the lump in her throat swelling with every syllable. The barrier had grown stronger with her promise. It was going to take a great amount of force to knock it down.

**


Jahn scuttled across the cold flooring of the great hall towards the row of Imperial shuttles that the Rebellion had collected over time. They were the perfect way of getting in and out of the major Octid cities without being spotted; as long as they had the right code clearances, no questions would be asked and they could dock anywhere they pleased. They had a total of five, each one the same design. Jahn had been given the task of cleaning their hull numerous times in the past, when she had always been imagining taking off in one of them and going on an adventure. Such childish dreams were behind her now, yet had suddenly become something of a reality as the hours ticked ever closer to the start of what would be her first away mission. She could feel the sweat forming on the back of her neck and dripping down her back, trying to tickle her into submission as she carried a hefty cargo box over towards the ship that they would be using for the mission.

"Need any help?" a voice said, startling her. It was very early in the morning, and she had assumed that the great hall was empty. Her vision had been obstructed by the cargo box, which she dropped out of shock, spilling its contents out onto the floor. The noise was almost deafening as it echoed from one side of the hall to the other, and she hunched her shoulders in painful frustration and gritted her teeth until the noise subsided.

"I do now," she sighed, seeing the owner of the voice standing over her with a smug expression on his face. She bent over and began to pick up the various tools and scanning equipment as Chard knelt down to aid her. "Let me guess, you just happened to be hanging around here at three o'clock in the morning,"

"You could say that," said Chard, throwing the tools into the box with an effortless flick of his wrist. "Your dad told me how..."

"I don't know how you pulled it off," Jahn grumbled, waving an electro-spanner in his face.

"Pulled what off?" he said, taking it out of her hand and throwing it into the cargo box with an empty clunk sound. He didn't have that familiar sarcastic, condescending twinge to his voice that Jahn was so used to.

"There's no way my dad would just put you on my team of his own free will," she said. "You had to have a part in it,"

"What makes you think he wouldn't want us to be on the same team?" asked Chard.

"For one thing," Jahn continued. "He said he was trying to put me together with my friends. I assume he got that impression from things you've been telling him,"

"Or maybe he just really thinks we're close that way," Chard replied, frowning at the heartless laugh he got in response. "Come on, Jahn. We have the same friends, we hang out together, we're always doing stuff together, we make each other laugh..."

"You don't make me laugh," Jahn said. "Not in the good friendly manner, anyway. I do however find your behavior to be quite laughable at times,"

"Jahn," Chard said, reaching out and grabbing her by the arm as she held out a piece of equipment. Though he wasn't exerting any force onto her, she found herself unable to move. The strength of his words was enough to hold her quite still. "Won't you just give me a chance?"

"Chard..." she said under her breath. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say, for he was clearly intent on keeping her there until she gave him an answer. But it was an answer she didn't want to give. She scrunched up her face and gave him a look of weak objection. "Only if you say you're sorry,"

"What?" he asked.

"Chard, whether you like to admit it or not, you've never given me the proper respect I deserve," Jahn said, looking down her nose at him. "I'm a woman now, not a little girl. I'm strong and competent,"

"And your daddy is my boss, right?" Chard smirked.

"That's not it!" Jahn insisted, tugging her arm away from him at last. "I don't want anyone to treat me any differently just because of who my father is. You know that more than anyone!"

"I do," whispered Chard, looking down at the floor. They weren't making much progress with the removal of the mess they'd made. "You're a remarkable girl, Jahn,"

"Don't say that," Jahn sighed. "I know you don't mean it in any honorable kind of way..."

"I mean it exactly the way I say it," Chard said, looking back up at her. "You may not be as powerful or influential as your father, but you have his spirit and fortitude. And believe it or not, I do respect that. That doesn't mean I have to treat you like a princess, though. I treat you like I would myself,"

"Well, it's fantastic that you've managed to go so long without killing yourself," Jahn frowned, avoiding the look his was giving her. She'd never had anyone talk to her like this apart from her father, and it was beginning to creep her out a little. "Of course, if you keep looking at me like that, I might end up doing it for you,"

"Wanna know something?" Chard asked, shuffling forward across the floor of the hall and nudging his blackened kneecaps against hers. In Gorg culture, such a gesture usually indicated that the nudging Gorg was about to tell the nudged Gorg a personal secret.

"I, uh..." Jahn said, staring down at his smooth kneecaps and feeling flushed from her head to her toes. She knew it was going to be something utterly unpleasant, but try as she might she just couldn't form the words to tell him to remove his kneecaps from their current position. Instead, all she could mumble was... "Grrumosnnuhn,"

"Then let me tell you," Chard said, reaching down and stroking her kneecaps affectionately. She really wasn't enjoying this one bit, and was this close to snapping and breaking his arms in two like twigs before he admitted his secret. "I can't apologize,"

"Excuse me?" she asked, more intrigued than disgusted now.

"I just can't," Chard repeated. He stopped massaging her knees and looked back up at her, finally having received her attention. "I mean, not just for the way I've treated you. I can't say I'm sorry for anything. Even if I want to, it just won't happen,"

"Yeah?" asked Jahn, before going back to piling the equipment into the awaiting cargo box beside her. "You should have that checked,"

"I would if I wanted to," he nodded. "But to be honest, I really don't have that much of a problem with it. I guess it's mostly just because I don't think I have anything to apologize for,"

"That's so mature of you," she scoffed.

"It's not like that," said Chard, picking up an empty metal cylinder and looking at it as Jahn watched him wonder about himself. "It's just I feel like I shouldn't have to feel bad for any of my choices or my personal behavior. I don't expect the world to look at me like a nice guy, heck I don't expect anything from the world. Likewise, it shouldn't expect anything from me... least of all an apology for who I am or what I do. That way I'm always pushed to make sure that I do what I feel is the right thing, so I won't have that empty pit in my stomach when I can't look back and make up for what I've done,"

"You're irresponsible," said Jahn. "Hey, at least you admit it,"

Chard watched her dunking bits of equipment and hefty tools into the box for a minute. Every now and then, Jahn would take a second between filling the crate to glower at him with a repulsed kind of sneer. He wasn't sure whether she really did feel such disdain towards him or what, but he knew that she was hiding all the good sensations that he also felt whenever they were together. In a snap, he pushed aside the cargo box and wrapped his arms around her.

"What are you doing...?!" she hissed.

"What I feel is right," Chard replied. "So that I won't feel that emptiness later on when I regret never getting the chance to do so,"

Jahn sighed; he was so impossible. Cautiously, she reached down to remove his hands from their place on her side, but before she could do so she became aware of his breath against the side of her face. It was delicate and warm, as if someone were rubbing the inside of a sleeping bag against her face and slowly pulling it away every few seconds. She shivered as his arms slid behind her back and he began to run a finger up and down her spine, and tensed as his other hand found its way onto her thigh. The conflict in her heart was immense, and as the hatred threatened to swallow those delightful feelings of heightened awareness that came with the joy of being so close to him, a single tear was released from her eye as if escaping the strain between hating and loving. She fell forwards into his arms and enjoyed his embrace.

"I'm sorry," Jahn said, the tear running down his back. For some reason it seemed that while her tear drew a black line down his body, the shade of his back was turning a dull shade of white like an old snowfall. She blinked and the image was gone.

"You don't have to be," he said, letting her go and looking into her face. "In the end, everything turns out all right. The world has its way, you have yours,"

"Sometimes it just seems like the world has its way," Jahn sighed, looking over at the full cargo box. She closed the lid and, after getting to her feet, she picked it up and began to scuttle across the great hall once more. "While my way just gets completely overshadowed,"

**


The dramatic blueish purple of the sky over Octagon was disected into millions of pieces by the thick maze-like trails of exhaust fumes that emerged from the dense traffic made up of thousands of tiny ships going about their daily business. They hovered like a cloud of locusts over Octo, the capital city of planet Octagon, and amidst their vast numbers flitted an Imperial shuttle that was headed deep into the bowels of the metropolis. It dodged past various obliging transports whose pilots remained unaware that the ship did not contain Octid officials or military personnel, but a team of Rebels hell-bent on reaching their destination.

The bridge area of the ship was a sort of semicircle around which ran a low metal rim that acted as a seat for all personnel that weren't piloting the craft. Its shiny surfaces were white in texture and had rounded edges that looked as if they had been molded out of clay, while the holographic view-screen in front of them sent out colorful streams of light. These glowing symbols told the pilot's highly trained eyes about their course, destination, and surrounding terrain in great detail, which Cammy was currently finding to be as helpful as she expected them to be.

"Blasted, good for nothing piece of Imperial equipment!" she shouted, slamming her fist down onto the controls. "I said set a course to Sector 14G, not 17C!"

"Would somebody mind telling me," asked Kelly Zucor, one member of the scanning crew for the mission and a close friend of Jahn's. Though she could be a tad slow from time to time, she was an amiable sort and was always there for Jahn when she needed someone to confide in who wouldn't ask too many questions or give her advice. Mostly because Kelly rarely had any clue as to what Jahn was actually talking about. "What it is we're going to do out here, again?"

"Kelly," said Eve Hazakah, the medical officer. Jahn didn't know Eve that well, but she was close to the other Octids on the mission so she wasn't entirely out of place. "You were briefed about the mission twice back at base, and again before we set out. Why would you need to hear the instructions again?"

"Well," said Kelly, drawing out the word as if it had more syllables in it than the infamous Motto owned solar system whose very name takes an entire Ecker life span to complete. "I think that it would give more insight into this scene for people who've just joined us and don't know what our motives are,"

"What?!" Eve spluttered.

"She means she forgot already," said Thora Nyth, Kelly's best friend and the only person who seemed to understand anything that Kelly tried to say. Thus she had been the perfect pick for Kelly's scanning crew partner.

"Ah," said Eve. She looked up to the male Gorg that sat on the opposite end of the semicircular rim, whose mind seemed to be elsewhere. "Would you like to take this one, Chard?"

After retrieving his thoughts from inside whatever world in which he had been daydreaming, Chard got to his feet and saluted the medical officer. He then turned to Jahn, who had been sitting two places away from him, and gave her a playful thumbs-up. At last, he began to explain the mission directives to the apparently bamboozled Kelly.

"It's pretty simple really," he said. "The Rebellion believes that Emperor P'twaaang has for several years been secretly using a number of abandoned training facilities to create a kind of elite guard. We believe that to do this, the Empire is using illegal narcotics that stimulate the particular neural paths that apply to reflex time and other combat-related aspects of the Octid nervous system. If we can prove that they're using these narcotics, we can have the operation shut down,"

"And why do we want that to happen again?" Kelly asked, inciting groans from the other members of the team.

"Because," Chard said, already exasperated with the girl. "If the Emperor's elite guard is truly as deadly and well trained as we think, it would mean that preventing cruel treatment towards females would become even more difficult if we had to deal with these guys every time we went into the field,"

"Also," Thora interjected. "If these super soldiers were to be let loose on the public, females and female sympathizers would never stand a chance,"

"Thanks," Kelly nodded, her expression as blank as her brain must have been. "The readers are very grateful for the exposition,"

"Readers?" Chard blinked, doing a double take at the empty-headed soldier as he sat down. "Thora, what is she talking about now?"

"Beats me," Thora shrugged.

"Hey, what do we do if any Octid patrols decide to pull us over?" asked Jahn.

"Don't worry," Chard told her, reassuringly. "Like Fleihric said, we won't have any trouble,"

"Even if we do run into any patrols," said Eve. "That's what our disguises are for,"

"Yeah," said Thora, pointing to their phoney capulona covers and Octid military outfits. "These are top of the range, too. Level 1 blasters won't even scratch the armor's paint work,"

"That's all well and good," said Jahn, uncomfortably. "But Chard and I don't have that option. We're Gorgs, we can hardly say that we just decided to tag along for the ride,"

"Then we'll just say that we captured two Gorg females from an Octid controlled system and we're transporting you both to a local slave market," Eve suggested.

"Just a second," said Chard, already sensing the laughter building from each of his team-mates. "Did you say... two Gorg females?"

"That's right, girlfriend," Jahn smirked as the others stifled their sniggering.

"Oh, that's rich," said Chard, not liking these new permutations one bit. "And how do you suggest I conveniently make myself out to be a woman for the sake of this theoretical little ruse?"

"Shouldn't be too difficult," said Eve, causing everyone bar Cammy and Chard to burst into hysterics.

"Hey now!" said Cammy, turning around and shaking her head at each of them. "Could we please put a lid on the childish antics? I'm trying to steer the ship,"

"Oh, I didn't mean it like that," said Eve, when she'd finally stopped laughing. "I just meant that it's hard for an Octid to tell the difference between a male and a female Gorg. I mean, you both look pretty similar except for a few of Jahn's obvious distinctions,"

"Point taken," Chard said, looking over at Jahn. A part of him seemed to be wishing that he'd been able to inspire or partake in such girlish merriment, but as Jahn noticed him glancing over at her she immediately replaced her gleeful expression with a far graver demeanor. "I guess I could just say I'm still developing,"

"You're such a pig," said Jahn, jokingly.

"I thought he was a female Gorg?" asked Kelly, totally lost. "Did we change the plan again?"

"No, Kelly," Thora told her.

"All right," Cammy said, swivelling around in the pilot's seat and proudly jamming a thumb towards the almost meaningless array of colorful symbols behind her. "We've landed!"

"You're sure about that?" asked Eve, as the others got to their feet.

"Of course I am!" Cammy replied, defensively. "Aren't you forgetting that I'm the best pilot in the Rebellion?"

"No, I don't forget that," Eve said, nodding to herself and checking on her backpack which contained the medical gear for the mission. "But I also remember that the last time I was on a mission where you piloted one of these things, when we tried to disembark you'd ended up parking the ship in the middle of the sea,"

"It wasn't the middle of the sea!" said Cammy, as the others prepared. "It was an ice-berg. Those things make perfectly good docking platforms,"

"They would," agreed Eve. "If it had been stable enough to hold an Imperial shuttle,"

"It's not my fault that these things are too heavy!" Cammy argued.

"Half the crew ended up falling into the sea!" said Eve.

"You can never get too much swimming practise," said Cammy.

"Girls, girls!" Chard soothed as he stood between them both, waving his arms casually at them. He had a typical Gorg dark chain-mail coat wrapped around his body, and a repeater rifle with a wealthy supply of ammunition strapped to his back. A pair of flash grenades were attached to his belt, their rough, shoddy exterior concealing their potential power. "You're both pretty. Now let's try to leave the fighting to myself and my partner,"

"Don't call me that," Jahn grunted, shuffling up behind him and trying to hide her excitement. The thrill of actually setting foot on enemy territory and committing such daring acts against the Octid Empire was so exhilarating to her that she felt fields of goose-bumps flaring up on her armor-clad skin. The dark chain-mail which she also wore pressed tightly against her chest and stomach as she held her rifle with sweaty palms. Chard turned to look at her, seeing how much she was looking forward to stepping outside. He grinned at her. "What?"

"Just looking at you," he said. "I mean, as hard as it would be for me to pretend to be a girl, I think you'd quite easily pass for a guy right now,"

"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" Jahn asked.

"I think you'll do good out there," he told her, with genuine support in his voice.

"Are we ready or what?" Thora asked, coming up behind the two Gorgs with Kelly in tow. Between them they carried via two circular handles a wide metal box which contained the scanning equipment they would be using on the training facilities' information cortex to scan for any evidence of illegal drug use being put into action as part of the system. "Open the doors and release the walkway, Cams,"

"Comin' right up!" said Cammy, pressing a few buttons and singing triumphantly as the doorway at the rear of the shuttle slowly pulled back with a loud hiss. "Ta-da!"

Thora and Kelly began to walk towards the exit, as Jahn stood behind Chard in silent trepidation. Even though it was all the way down the shuttle's corridor, Jahn could make out the cityscape all around them. Up above, gigantic transports and carriers seemed to weigh down upon them like a living net, and she could almost feel their jet-rockets as a few occasional speeding ships passed ever so close to them. She felt the shuttle's interior jerk to one side as they zoomed by, and she reached out and caught hold of Chard's arm to balance herself.

"Hey," he said, softly. He reached up to touch her hand, but she snatched it away quickly and gave him a stern look. "If you're feeling nervous..."

"I'm not nervous!" she growled. "I'm just excited, and the ship didn't feel all that stable... so don't think that I'm afraid or anything,"

"Oh," Chard said, shrugging. He turned back to the corridor in front of them as Thora and Kelly began to step out of the ship. "I was just going to say... I was nervous too, the first time,"

"Really?" Jahn asked, looking closely at the back of his head as he stood there in front of her. "I would have never thought of you to be afraid of combat at any point in your life,"

"It's not fear exactly," he said. "It's more like a sense that something's coming directly toward you that you've never experienced before, and you can't avoid it no matter what happens. You know that it's going to be big, too, and that nothing'll be the same when it's all said and done,"

"I guess," said Jahn, realizing he'd tapped right into her feelings somehow.

"It's strange," he said, turning back to her again. "I've got that feeling today, as well. I haven't had it since that first time I went to battle,"

"Well, don't feel like you have to worry about me," Jahn said, attempting to charge her voice with an extra boost of boldness. "There's some tricks I know that you haven't seen just yet,"

"I don't think it's that," Chard said, cryptically. He turned back to the corridor and left Jahn hanging, as Eve sidled up to them with her medical gear in hand.

"Remember, you guys," she told them both. "If either of you needs medical assistance, radio for help,"

"Yeah," Jahn replied. "Just take care of Thora and Kelly,"

"Especially Kelly," Chard said, bringing a smile to their faces.

"We'll be standing by at our position in case you guys need our backup," Jahn said, tilting her rifle and nodding to the medic. The three of them were interrupted by a feminine cry from down the corridor, and they all rushed to see what was happening. "What happened? Were we ambushed?"

"Oh great," Eve groaned, reaching the end of the corridor and looking out of the doors. "Cammy, remember what you said about swimming practise?"

"Um, yeah?" Cammy asked, busy checking the controls in the cockpit.

"It goes double for your piloting skills!" Eve sighed.

Jahn and Chard looked out of the door and were puzzled to find that there was no walkway extending out onto the rooftop-docking platform. In fact, there was no platform. Cammy had somehow managed to park the shuttle atop an Octid controlled radio tower, and it was teetering this way and that in an attempt to keep its balance. Fortunately, at the last minute Thora and Kelly had managed to grab a hold of the lower edge of the doorway and were hanging in mid-air above the cityscape thousands of feet below. As an example of their dedication, they were both still clinging to the scanning equipment. Jahn and Chard helped them back into the shuttle, and they all turned to Cammy expectantly.

"What?" she asked. "Did the walkway not release itself? Yeah, you can get a nasty scrape without a walkway to step onto,"

The others simply glowered at her as she began pressing a combination of buttons once more. She listened out for it, but still the walkway didn't budge.

"Still nothing?" Cammy frowned, pressing the buttons repeatedly in frustration. "That's odd, I could've sworn these buttons were to control the walkway. Blast it, what do they do if it's not that?"

On the exterior of the ship, the headlights indicating an intended right-turn were flashing at a tremendous rate in an attempt to keep up to speed with Cammy's commands.

**


When they had finally, and with minimal interference, found the correct Imperial designated landing platform, they proceeded with the mission as planned. Eve, Thora, and Kelly left the shuttle and headed towards the secret training facilities on foot, while Cammy stayed behind with the ship in case any Octid patrols should snoop on by. Chard and Jahn slipped across the roof under cover of the shadows created by the hulking ships parked nearby and planned the route they would take together to get to the training facilities unseen.

"The way I see it," Chard said, lifting his head above the four-foot steel guard-rail that ran along the edge of the roof and acted as their cover. In the darkness, a Gorg could blend in quite easily due to their pitch-black skin. Countless Octids might have passed them by without noticing the thin, almost snake-like humanoids at their feet pressed close against the railing. This was why Gorg armor and weaponry was kept very dark, as it gave them a definite advantage over their foes. "We need to keep against the sunlight, obviously. We'll follow the shadows created by the light, and keep out of sight. Now, the facilities are just five blocks downtown in that closed off district. We can cross over to another roof when a ship goes overhead and those bridges are covered in darkness,"

He motioned towards the metallic bridges that arched across the sheer drop between each of the buildings. They were made up of a single strip of grey that looked as if it would have been quite dangerous since it lacked any kind of safety barrier. They acted only as a means of getting from one of the docking platforms to another, though usually nobody bothered to use them as there were perfectly good elevators and teleportation chambers nearby. If only the other rooftop-docking platforms hadn't been off-limits to Imperial class shuttles, it would've been a much faster trip. Still, it seemed like a safe bet.

"Couldn't we just have done this at night?" Jahn asked. "There'd be no need to keep to the shadows then,"

"The training facility is shut down in the evenings," Chard explained. "It's only open between now and nineteen hundred hours. This is the best way around it,"

"All right," Jahn agreed. "You go first,"

Chard slithered along the railing with his head held down low and his knees against the floor. Jahn watched him move; he was like a cat, so adept to the skulking and sneaking that was such an important component of his job. He slipped around the corner of the ramp that led up to the bridge and waited. She watched with bated breath as he hesitated, glancing upwards toward the sky the whole time. Then, it happened; a transport of enormous size lowered itself from the collected multitude of ships above their heads and came so close to the rooftop that it almost seemed like it would graze the surface. It passed over the bridge and, right on cue, Chard leapt out from the ramp and rushed along the now darkened path between rooftops on his belly. It was a only a matter of seconds before he'd reached the end and, after sprinting to his feet to perform a glamorous handspring manoeuvre, he soared through the air and landed propped up comfortably against the steel guard-rail that ran along the circumference of the rooftop opposite her.

"Show-off," Jahn said under her breath. It was now her turn.

Slowly but surely, she scrambled along the floor of the roof and kept herself in the shade of the guard-rail. She could already hear Chard's sarcastic comments in her head that he would no doubt unleash upon her arrival on the other side of the bridge, asking her why it took her so long. Casting these thoughts aside, she found her way to the side of the ramp leading up to the bridge. Cautiously, she cast her eyes skyward. The shifting tapestry of metal became so distracting after a while, and she began to wonder if any more ships were going to even descend from its teeming masses. At last, a saucer shaped vehicle flew down that emitted an enthusiastic warbling from its engines as it hovered gracefully across the roof, casting a precise shadow over the bridge. Jahn seized the moment and scampered past the ramp and along the bridge. For a moment, she feared that the sound of her chain-mail scraping the surface of the bridge would attract unwanted attention, but then she remembered that the ship was making enough noise to cover up the din she was making. As she came to the end of the bridge, she rose to her feet and was about to mimic Chard's fancy display of acrobatics out of spite, when she suddenly found that the ship had passed overhead already and she was left standing there in the light.

"Oh no," she hissed, and panicked. Out of fear, she glanced to the left and to the right as if seeing the threat would help her get her bearings. It didn't. Then, she looked ahead of her to the frantic figure of Chard who peeked out at her from behind the guard-rail and motioned for her to keep running. For a second, she considered just turning back and going against his will. But sense took its hold on her again, and she rushed forward in what felt like slow motion, and landed with a queasy thud next to Chard.

"What was that?" Chard whispered. "Jahn, you can't afford to..."

"You did exactly the same thing!" Jahn told him, almost forgetting to keep her voice down. "You're so stupid and single-minded! You stupid... stupid..."

"Jahn," he said as she struggled to find an appropriately insulting word. "Jahn, listen to me. Relax. This is the problem, you're not relaxed enough. I wasn't talking about your attempt to copy my performance,"

"Performance," she scoffed. "You put it in such lavish terms. You were showing off! You big headed..."

"Nevertheless," Chard said, patiently. "You have to understand this. The Octids aren't looking for us. Sticking to the shadows is just a safety precaution, if we're caught in the light it doesn't mean instant failure. However, if you stand around looking like a target like you did just a minute ago, then we're obviously going to get caught in no time,"

"Well, I'm sorry mister perfect!" said Jahn, bitterly. Deep down, she would have preferred his sarcastic commentary, for at least it would've shown that he truly was impressed with her ability. This, however, was just painful.

"Jahn," he said, tilting his head at her in the darkness. She looked at him, expecting him to say something even more condescending, but instead he just smiled and waited 'till she'd calmed down before speaking. "Shall we move on to the next one?"

She stared at him and wondered why he wasn't fighting back. He was just lecturing her as if he knew everything, and whenever she tried to get him to come off his high horse he'd just slap her back down with another bit of insightful information. Then, she realized that he was just looking out for her, and that this was different to when they'd hang out back at the base. This was real, and they couldn't risk screwing up over some petty pseudo-rivalry.

"Sure," she said.

They took it in turns going first over the next three rooftops; it ran like clockwork, a ship would lower itself down and in turn they would work their way across the tops of the dark grey patchwork of buildings that lay beneath the silken indigo sky. They were a team, and their bonds grew stronger with every bridge they crossed. Jahn felt more confident as the adrenaline pumped through her veins and she crossed the fourth and penultimate bridge. She didn't feel nervous anymore, not in the least.

"Nice," Chard said, catching up with her after an Octid transport passed over the bridge. It had been shaped like a stingray, and its long tail had given them both the opportunity to run across at the same time. Jahn was panting, but not because she was out of breath; she just loved being a daredevil. "One more bridge to go, think you can do it?"

"Oh yeah," she smiled. "I think I could take on the entire Octid army right now,"

"We may just have to," Chard commented to himself. "If this elite guard is as reputable as we think, they might as well be an army if we end up having to fight,"

"You don't think we could take 'em?" Jahn asked, intrigued by his obvious concerns and reservations.

"You and me?" he said, rather bemused by her courage. His attention was swiftly altered as he looked over at the other side of the roof. "Come on, Jahn, I see a few more transports approaching. We can get across that bridge and then we're in the clear,"

"Affirmative," replied Jahn as she followed him along the guard-rail. It wasn't long before they had come to the ramp on the opposite end of the roof. Jahn looked across the bridge at the final building they'd need to get to; it was just like all the others had been. "It'll be a cinch, Chard,"

"Don't get too cocky," Chard said. And then, with a grin: "That's my job,"

With those words, he somersaulted into action and barely managed to land on the bridge as a school of Octid public transports shot overhead. From underneath, they looked like fish with their triangular noses and fin-like wings, and they were in such close formation that they just about gave Chard ample shadow-cover as he sprinted forth along the walkway between buildings. She marvelled at his agility as he flung himself headlong off the side of the bridge and caught hold of the guard-rail with a free hand. Hanging from the railing, he waved smugly to Jahn before swinging himself upwards and landing expertly on the other side as if it were child's play.

"That just about redefines cocky," Jahn murmured.

"What's that?" a voice suddenly rang through her ears. Just six feet away, an Octid patrol officer was stood staring in her direction. She tensed, unsure of what she was supposed to do. She was in the shadows, but it was entirely possible that the officer had heard her voice... or, even worse, seen Chard's showboating. He began walking towards her, and she felt sure that he was about to just reach down and grab her by the throat, when he simply walked on by and up the ramp towards the bridge. She watched him go as he said the most relieving sentence she'd ever heard. "That ship hasn't got a legal license plate for that docking platform!"

"Thank goodness," Jahn said, feeling bad for whoever had parked their ship on the opposing rooftop without first checking their plates. She waited 'till he had crossed over the bridge, and as a Motto transport came down to land, she got to her feet and ran.

She got halfway across and had been starting to pick up the pace when she suddenly came to a halt. Looking up from her horizontal position on the bridge, she saw the Octid patrol officer stopping in his tracks and turning around. Something was wrong, and it was about to get much worse if she didn't think fast. She saw him ascending the ramp as she began to sweat and look around for a means of help. Then, like the sound of the final nail in her coffin, the Motto transport whooshed away and left her exposed in the sunlight. She had nowhere to run.

"Must've left my badge in the office," the officer grumbled to himself as a potential arrest began to slip out of his fingers. He shambled along the bridge with an uncaring manner, finding his way quite safely to the other end and stepping off the ramp and onto the other rooftop. When he had finally gone, Jahn flipped herself out from underneath the bridge where she had been hanging and landed on top just as another Octid transport descended from the heavens.

"Student shows ingenuity," Chard feigned writing on an invisible notepad as she arrived on the other side. "Will consider giving her a higher grade than F this time,"

"For a second there I thought..." Jahn began. A look of shock came over her, and she began fumbling around with her equipment.

"What is it?" Chard asked, but he'd figured it out before she could tell him. "You lost your rifle when you were dangling from under the bridge?"

"Agh," she seethed at her own incompetence. "I don't believe this! It must've fallen all the way down to the..."

"Take mine," he said, offering her his rifle. She looked at him as if he were crazy. "Seriously, take it,"

"What's wrong with you?" Jahn asked. "Do you think I can't handle myself and accept responsibility for losing my weapon? I mean, maybe you can't do any of that stuff, but..."

"I can handle myself," Chard pointed out. "Besides, I'd prefer to know you've got some means of protection other than those fists and that mind of yours,"

"You don't think my mind amounts to much in comparison to a gun, huh?" Jahn asked.

"Stop it!" Chard shouted. His voice was so loud that it almost made Jahn jump out of the shadows, since she'd been so used to their whispering. She looked around, afraid that he'd drawn the attention of every living creature on the roof. Then, she looked back at him apologetically. "Jahn, you know I'm just looking out for you, so stop trying to turn this into something it's not. Take the gun,"

"Fine," Jahn said, taking it from him. She examined it as if scouring the surface for his germs, and then strapped it to her back. "But don't think I needed your help,"

"Of course," Chard sighed. He began to crawl away, clinging to the guard-rail like it was his only friend on this expedition. She followed close behind, still uncomfortable with his rifle on her back. After a few minutes of crawling, Chard held up his arm to motion for her to stop. Then he peered over the guard-rail at the building across from them. "There's our training facility,"

Jahn followed his gaze and was alarmed by the sheer size of the thing. It was as wide as at least three of the rooftop-docking platforms they had just crossed and only three storeys lower, with looming tower-like structures set on every corner of the building. It looked like a fortress, and if it weren't for the fact that the rest of the district looked totally run down and abandoned, the whole set-up would have appeared a great deal more threatening. As it was, it looked rather out of place and thrown together, with large patches of smoke stains on its walls and litter dominating its lower reaches like a moat of waste product, it only looked as if it was waiting to be torn down. It was gloomy and dank, covered only in shades of black and red, and even the tattered flags that displayed the colors of Octagon seemed half-hearted and depressed as they fluttered limply in the wind.

"You're sure this is the place?" Jahn asked. "I mean, I know it's supposed to be abandoned but..."

"This is it, all right," he confirmed. "See that balcony over there?"

"What about it?" Jahn asked, looking over at a small section of the nearest side of the facility that was taken up by a platform just below one of the towers. It jutted out a short distance from the wall of the building and seemed to be wide enough for two people to stand on at once. Some stairs led from it towards the tower up above, and a ladder was slung precariously over the edge from the other side leading down to one of the lower levels of the facility. "Don't tell me that's where we're headed,"

"Afraid so," Chard said, checking his belt was on tight. He turned to her and pointed to the gun on her back. "You'll need to set it to grappling hook mode. Aim it at the window frame about three storeys above the balcony, then we can swing across without any difficulty,"

"Wait a moment," Jahn said, retrieving the rifle and placing it on the correct settings. "If there's only one gun between us, how are we going to both get across?"

"Well," replied Chard, sheepishly. "There is one way,"

Jahn was busy setting up the rifle when she felt Chard's arms slide around her waist. She was about to lash out and elbow him in the stomach, when she decided with a sigh that this really was the only way they were going to both get across. She grimaced, but couldn't help but find that she was so very aware of how strong his arms felt against her dark chain-mail. Then there was his breath, again so warm on the back of her neck giving her such a pleasant feeling; she didn't know what it was that was making her feel this way, and she didn't dare let him know about it. But as he leaned his head against the back of her right shoulder, she felt her body tense suddenly... and there was a loud crack as the grappling hook shot out across the rooftop and landed solidly around one of the flagpoles on the other side.

"Looks like your aim was a little off there," Chard chuckled.

"I must've been distracted..." Jahn flushed. "I mean, you must've distracted me... I mean..."

"Don't worry," he whispered into her ear. "It's just a little too high is all. Extend the cord on the rifle's settings,"

"Okay," she nodded, hoping against hope that he didn't have any idea why she was still fumbling with the controls. Eventually, she changed the settings sufficiently, and then she placed a foot onto the guard-rail. "Are you ready?"

"As I'll ever be," he said.

Without looking back, Jahn pushed off from the roof and swung out into the indigo sky with Chard pressed tight against her. Her fingers became numb, and her feet felt like somebody was lifting them out from underneath her body and holding them up like some sort of god teaching an angel to fly. It was like the half-petrified and half-astonished sensation a child would get when learning how to read a bike, believing that their parents were holding on to them when in actuality they'd stopped doing so an eternity ago. She couldn't feel the rope in her hands or the wind in her eyes or the armor on her back. All she could feel was Chard, holding onto her and never wanting him to let go. And then they were twirling like dancers in the air...

... Which would have been far more romantic had Jahn not spun right around and almost crushed Chard as they made impact with the wall just above the platform.

"Oops!" she said as he groaned behind her. "You okay? Anything broken?"

"I'm swell," Chard replied as she lowered them both onto the platform as carefully as possible. "In fact, I'm swell all over. My head's swelling, my legs are swelling..."

"Come on," Jahn smiled, as she detached the grappling hook and retracted the cord. "It can't be so bad that you'd have to resort to a pun as poor as that one,"

"Holy crud..." Chard gasped behind her.

"That painful, huh?" said Jahn.

"Jahn," he stammered in response. "You might want to take a look at this,"

"I hope this isn't another scar," Jahn said, cringing as she remembered all the times Chard used to show her those gruesome blemishes he had sustained over time like a roadmap to his battle-fraught history. She saw, however, that he was looking through the window that gave sight to whatever was kept within the training facility. Curious as to what had rattled Chard's cage, Jahn looked over his shoulder.

The inside of the building was quite the opposite in comparison to its drab exterior. Surfaces glinted with a freshly cleaned sparkle, active spotlights cast their supple highlights across multi-layered ledges and the whole place thrived with an energy Jahn had never before witnessed, for it was a combination of two energies. There was the mechanical, automated energy that gave life to the multitudes of electric lights and elevators and computer units and radio terminals and other such tools... and there was the energy of the facility's inhabitants. A dark and furtive energy that could only be seen when caught inside one of the bright shafts of light that sliced through the darkness like searchlights. It was the kind of energy a scientist might witness in a mouse's beady red eyes as it patrols the complex mazes he has crafted for such an obtuse little learner.

There they stood side by side in their grey uniforms in rows of twelve, marching this way and that across the vast floors of the training facility. The reflective surfaces only made it appear that there were far more of them, but there were certainly too many to be counted by such aghast watchers as Jahn and Chard. Their faces were cold and emotionless, for their task was not one of joy or fulfilment; they were not training to better themselves. They were being trained for one reason and one reason only: Conquest. Their movements were precise and as mechanical as the swooping spotlights up above in the rafters, and they would look like robots if it weren't for the fact that their motions seemed far too cold and ruthless. Across their faces were placed elliptic visors that concealed their eyes from revealing any flaw or symbol of individuality. They were like one gigantic herd of predators, moving and thinking as one. They were the Octid elite guard.

"Geez!" said Jahn. "So these guys are what we're going to have to contend with in the field from now on?"

"Unless our sources were correct about the narcotics," Chard replied, hypnotized by the sound of their marching. "In which case, all this will hopefully be shut down,"

"Good riddance is all I can say," Jahn shivered, stepping away from the window and leaning over the platform's safety barrier.

"Do they frighten you?" Chard asked, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. Jahn looked back at him, wondering why he was so interested in her feelings all the time. "Hmm?"

"Not really," she said, with about as much honesty as a Selekin. Selekins are notorious for being compulsive liars, but if you asked one they'd be guaranteed to tell you otherwise without fail. They have forked tongues, you see. "I mean, the Rebellion could probably handle them,"

"Maybe," Chard smiled to himself. "You have a lot of faith in your father's operation,"

"Of course I do," she replied. "We all do. Why, don't you?"

"Certainly," said Chard. "But although I'm very supportive of your father, I'm also a realist. If those Octids in there are as skilled as I've heard..."

"You don't think we could take them?" Jahn asked, placing a hand on her hip.

"One on one, perhaps," he admitted. Then a pained look crossed over his face as he recounted an old story in his mind. "But I heard tell that a single squadron of these guys once wiped out an encampment of Motto pirates down in the Shrykten system. The Octids were outnumbered five to one, but they slaughtered the Mottos... and then they went on the burn the nearby villages to the ground. No survivors. All because the pirates had a pair of Octid female refugees living with them,"

"That's horrible," said Jahn, her face covered in anguish. "But... really it just makes me want to help the women more. There's got to be a way to put an end to this,"

"It's not going to happen overnight," Chard pointed out. "It might not happen in your lifetime, and it probably won't happen in mine. Sooner or later, the Octids get their way in every situation,"

"Things will change," Jahn said. "My father will help them change. I will make them change! I won't let another person die before my very eyes..."

"You're so passionate," Chard remarked, leaning over and putting an arm around her. She shrank away, so instead he casually used the arm to lean against the safety barrier. "You know, I really..."

"Why did my father choose to put me on this mission, anyway?" Jahn said, completely ignoring whatever Chard had to say. She wasn't enjoying this so much anymore. It wasn't just being fondled by Chard that put her off, but the fact that all they were doing was standing around talking. "Aren't we going to see any action? I mean, that's all I wanted to do, be a part of the action,"

"Believe me," Chard said, sliding his hand along the barrier and delicately stroking her fingers. "You wouldn't want to fight in a situation like this away,"

"And why not?" Jahn grumbled, walking over to the other side of the platform. For some reason, his presence was a lot more repulsive when he was going out of his way to be romantic. When their passions flared by chance, it was something she delighted in... but when he just grabbed her like some lecherous pervert it was absolutely not on her list of favorite things.

"We'd be totally outnumbered," Chard said. "We'd both die in each others' arms... hey, actually, that might not be a bad idea,"

Chard leapt forward and grabbed her from behind playfully. With a scream, Jahn turned around and slapped him across the face. The rhythmic marching from within the facility seemed to stop as she stared at him through hateful eyes and he stared back amidst the first instance of actual pain he'd ever shown her. Not physical pain, but emotional feelings of confusion and suffering. His heartache was visible in his face where she had slapped him, and it glowed with a life neither of them had seen before.

"Jahn..." he said, timidly. "I was just..."

"Well, now you know that you shouldn't just..." she snapped. "As if I hadn't made it blatantly obvious that you disgust me,"

"But..." he began. Then, he decided it was pointless to keep on this subject, so he changed it around so he didn't have to dwell on such sadness much longer. "Jahn, don't you get it? This is the only reason your father let you go on this mission,"

"Why's that?" she asked.

"Because you're in no danger here with me..." Chard said, his words recoiling in pain as she let out a laugh. She didn't seem to understand how much she was hurting him... or maybe she knew all too well. "He knew you wouldn't come to any harm on this mission. Didn't you think it was weird that we were given such a small combat force?"

"I just presumed he had faith in my capabilities," said Jahn.

"He had faith in my ability to keep you out of trouble," Chard corrected her, not really caring anymore if he revealed too much. "Don't you understand? This mission doesn't even involve combat,"

"Why would he do that?" Jahn asked. "Put me as your partner in a group that doesn't even need combat specialists?"

"To make you happy!" Chard explained. The hurt was starting to show in her face, too. He didn't like to see that, but if realization was a painful process than he was going to hurt her nonetheless. "It was the only way I could get him to agree to let you go into the field!"

"You...!" Jahn hissed.

It was all too late. He couldn't take it back now, and they'd both driven themselves so far over the edge that it would be impossible to draw back any further. She began to circle him as he had done so many times before in her room, except now she was the dominant one and he was the weak, lying, pathetic little scumbag that she'd always pretended to see him as. Their world had been turned upside-down, and where a minute ago there had been nothing but safety and romantic feelings, there now existed nothing but danger and immediate, unending pain and sorrow.

"You!" she repeated. "You were behind this! You manipulated him! I knew it all along! You pair of lying, scheming..."

"It wasn't like that," Chard said, hopelessly. "We... I just wanted to make you happy. That's all I ever..."

"That's a bunch of garbage!" she spat. "You've always tried to make my life miserable! And guess what? It worked! I'm miserable because of you! My father has no faith in me, and he thinks YOU, of all people, are my friend! You can't understand how much that hurts me! How much you've hurt me...! All the time you hurt me..."

"Jahn..." he said, wanting to just end this right now. As she passed in front of him he lurched forward as if he couldn't stand on his own two feet anymore, and reached out to give her an innocent hug. She saw his advancing arms heading towards her chest and with a vicious snarl she reached behind her back and pulled out what had once been his rifle.

"Get back!" she barked, her finger stroking the trigger. She was on the verge of insanity, and for all she knew she really wanted to do him in.

"Jahn, what are you...?" Chard was laughing. That didn't help one iota. His laughter stopped abruptly when she shoved the barrel of the rifle into his face, her body shaking with furious anger. Chard would have done something, but she undoubtedly had the upper hand; nothing he could say would have soothed her, and apart from his flash grenades he was defenceless. "Jahn, get a hold of yourself!"

"I wanted to see combat," Jahn cackled. "I wanted to use a gun. I wanted to fight! Funny who I ended up fighting with... isn't it?"

"Jahn," was all Chard could say, warily.

"You know what," she said, the rifle aimed square between his eyes. "You talk about those Octid soldiers wiping out that village. Well, you're just as bad as they are! You're just like them! You're no different! You only do things for your own personal gain,"

"Jahn, you can't possibly mean that," Chard said. He tried to step toward her, but she lashed out with the rifle and he stepped right back again. He was trying to remain calm, but it was hard to keep his wits together when his heart was falling apart. "Jahn, it's me. Look at yourself, you're not behaving like Fleihric's daughter,"

"Shut up!" Jahn cried, hating the sound of her father's name. She wanted so badly for Chard to be scared of her, but he was just standing there expecting her to snap out of it as if she were just going through a bad spell. She'd show him. She knew just how to torture him as he had done to her so many times before. Her body stopped shaking, and she sauntered sadistically toward him. She pressed the barrel of the rifle against his neck and purred. "Apologize,"

Chard's heart sank as her singular command reached his ears; he saw the years they'd spent together losing all meaning while his conscience grew heavier. Her dark skin... those wide, knowing eyes... her strong demeanor... her pretty stub of a nose. The times she would wait in the great hall whenever he would arrive back from a mission, and she would pretend she'd been there just to make sure he hadn't damaged any of the equipment she'd prepared so carefully. The first time she'd ever bested him in combat training, and she knelt down beside him all night to make sure the concussion she'd accidentally given him hadn't been too serious. The first time he let her handle one of his guns, and she'd told him she'd never want to use such a brutal looking thing. Everything he'd loved about her, from the first fruitful days to these last languid minutes. It had all just faded into obscurity behind those lidless eyes of hers and had become something to be ashamed of. And now, she wanted him to throw it all away as if its cherished value was irredeemable now. He looked right back at her, swallowing back the tears and letting the barrel of his own rifle stroke his charred Adam's apple.

"You know I can't," his hoarse voice mustered.

His defiance was to be his death sentence, and with a scornful look Jahn lowered her face so that she could stare down the rifle's barrel directly into his windpipe. Baring her teeth, she began to squeeze the trigger with an intent only to scare him into submission. But then she stopped, and saw his blackened throat was wobbling to and fro as if he were trying to form words. She glanced up at his face, and saw him mouthing those three syllables that her father had never once spoken aloud either. It was strange, looking closely at his lips and seeing with new eyes what had once seemed so adverse and indignant. His lips were soft, and untouched by the scars that the rest of his body had accumulated. She lowered the rifle and held her breath.

"You love me?" she asked, as if it were a foreign language he was speaking.

Before he could answer, a shot rang out and for an instant Jahn thought she had fired the rifle accidentally as she had done before. But the shot had come from above, and as quick as a flash Jahn had brought herself to a crouching position on the corrugated metal of the platform's floor. Nimbly, she flashed the barrel of the rifle up towards the tower from where the blast of green laser had been fired. Chard also landed on the floor rather quickly.

"How do you think they found us?!" she asked him. The only answer she got was a pained groan, and she turned to see Chard clutching his chest. She frowned and looked closer; the skin that his hand was covering had been burnt through as if it had been stabbed with a red-hot poker. The stench of burning flesh reached her nostrils, and she coughed as the bile quickly rose up her throat. "Chard! Are you...?"

"Well, well, well," said a sinister voice, its sly braying almost as sickening as Chard's wound. Jahn looked up to where the staircase had once been, and there she now saw five of the Octid elite troops standing before her. They each had blasters in their hands, and their vibrant visors gleamed as they gloated over the pairing. "Looks like we found ourselves a couple of Gorg trespassers,"

"And look," said another from behind the leader of the group. "One's a girly girl,"

"How can you tell?" asked the leader.

"She's got big ha-has," the reply came.

"What's a...?" the leader began to ask. His visor whirred and a grin spread itself across his face. "Ohhh, yeah! Hey, we could have some fun with this one,"

"What did you do?" said Jahn, getting to her feet and pointing Chard's rifle at the five of them. She began to back away as the Octids advanced on her, their boots making loud clanking noises on the metal floor beneath them in unison. Chard's body was very still and unnerving, and try as she might Jahn just couldn't take her mind off it. "Why did you do that to him?"

"Sorry babe," said the leader. "You guys were screaming so loud, we decided to come along and check things out. I mean, you guys were trespassing, and all. We're under strict orders to off any unauthorized personnel that come within the limits of this facility. Of course, we can always give you some very special clearance. Would you like that, little girl?"

"But I thought we were gonna give her hoo-hoo?" the same Octid from before butted in.

"You're so dense," the leader sighed.

"Get away from me!" cried Jahn, continuing to walk backwards. Suddenly, she felt her almost losing balance as her foot slipped over the edge of the platform. Below her, the ladder stretched downwards for at least five storeys and came to an abrupt halt at the edge of another platform that ran in the opposite direction parallel to the one she was stood on. Much further down than that, ground transports plunged at a hectic rate across curved strips of flattened terrain that now acted as a dangerous highway for those that dared use it. It would've been a long plummet if she chose to step back any further. "Please, just get back!"

"She's so feisty," the leader guzzled over his words. He grabbed the rifle from Jahn's hands and threw it over the edge of the platform. She watched it tumble down toward the ground where it would no doubt be crushed by one of the oncoming transports, as such things were designed to ensure that nothing stood in their way when it came to the open road. "Come now, no struggling or we might have to hurt you,"

"You already have," she whispered, looking over at Chard's lifeless body. She stepped back into mid-air and fell out of sight over the edge of the platform.

"Where'd she go?" one of the Octids asked as the leader leaned over the edge to take a look.

"Honestly," the leader sighed, seeing that she was nowhere to be found. "Every time I have a chance with a girl, you guys go and mess it all up!"

All of a sudden, there was an incoherent feminine war cry as Jahn leapt from behind the rungs of the ladder and, catching hold of the safety barrier with her left arm, she swung her legs out at the five of them. She caught one across the side of the head, and he slammed into the wall with tremendous force. Balancing on the barrier with her hands, she flipped herself over two of them as they readied their blasters, and stood facing the leader as he was still hunched over the edge of the platform.

"Here's your clearance!" she grunted, kicking him in the backside and hearing him howl in terror as he fell off the platform. Swiftly, she lunged back and pressed herself against the wall as the two Octids she'd dodged before began to fire at her. Their first shots missed and lanced out into the distance, but their next shots would be far more precise if Jahn didn't do something fast. She noticed by her side the collapsed form of the Octid she had kicked into the wall. He was just coming to, so she took this opportunity to use his head spike as a step. She placed both feet on his head and heard him moan. "Mind if I borrow this for a minute? Thanks,"

She launched herself through the air, her knees barely grazing the tops of the other two Octid's heads. Landing on her feet, Jahn noticed the fourth and final Octid watching all this from the staircase. When their eyes met he panicked and ran up the steps, and she knew he would no doubt be going to fetch backup. Meanwhile, the two Octids behind her span around and began to fire. Quick as a flash, she somersaulted high into the air so that their blaster fire missed and slammed into the back of their fleeing comrade. Jahn landed on her hands and without hesitating she pushed off with as much energy as she could gather and kicked her heels into the jaws of both the blaster-wielding Octids, knocking them out cold.

"So much for 'elite soldiers'," she commented. The Octid whose head spike she had used as a springboard began to stir, and she walked on up and stood in front of him, her legs spread out and her hands on her hips. He rubbed his eyes and looked up at her, not sure what to think. "So, what's the deal with you guys? Are you administered illegal narcotics to boost your combat skills or what?"

"Illegal n...?" the Octid mumbled, searching for his weapon. He concluded that he must have lost it when he crashed into the wall. "N-no, we're just trained like any other Octids. But we have special... implants. I don't really understand it... it's... it's like... these visors..."

She could tell he wasn't going to be able to give her any important information about the facility, so she just sighed and looked down at her feet. At least, she thought to herself, Thora and Kelly might have had better luck. The Octid frowned, sensing her concern.

"Are you going to kill me?" he asked.

"Maybe," she said, gritting her teeth and thinking about Chard.

"Could you at least show me your ha-has first?" he asked, pathetically.

"Ha!" Jahn snapped, kicking him across the face. She then brought her foot back across his head as fast as she had lashed out with it, knocking him senseless. "Ha!"

Her blows caused the male Octid's visor to snap in two, revealing beneath it a network of circuits and wires where his eyes should have been. Disturbingly, it seemed that his visor had been fused to his face for some unknown reason. Jahn shuddered.

It was quiet again. The bodies of the three unconscious Octids lay motionless on the platform, and only the faint sounds of the ground transports and countless marching soldiers pierced the eerie silence. Jahn looked up at the facility's roof where the colors of Octagon while limp and lifeless still fluttered with a modicum of pride and dignity. Her actions had done nothing to stop the blood flow to the black heart of Octagon; she had merely managed to reaffirm it. While the Octids could no doubt replace their losses, she could never ever replace Chard. For although she had regretfully said otherwise so many times, she had truly cared for him. And now that she realized it, she had no means to act upon it. She wept a while and then, without remorse, turned to the safety barrier. Leaning over it, she tasted the air against the roof of her mouth. Such unfathomable feelings of loss, their taste still lingered. She wanted to fall and never stop falling. She wanted to let go of the safety barrier and...

"Jahn," his voice carried through the air. She immediately turned and saw Chard trying to sit up despite his mortal wound. Jahn rushed to his side and placed a hand on his shoulder. The searing flesh was starting to turn pale on the edges, and she couldn't tell how long he had left. "Jahn,"

"Chard, I'm sorry," she told him. "Damn it, if only you'd told me how you really felt sooner, I'd never have put you in this situation!"

"You already... knew..." said Chard, his veracious words rang true in her heart like the sound of waning sunlight, darkened and irretrievable.

"Don't be so stupid!" she scolded him, almost forgetting their predicament. "How could I have known? You never told me,"

"You just didn't... want to believe it," he said. "You didn't believe I could..."

"That's not my fault," she sighed, wiping the tears from her eyes. "You never acted like the loving sort. You always went away for days on end, leaving me nothing but stories and..."

"Jahn," he said, holding her hand tight. She pulled herself close to him and let her tears drip down onto his chest. She didn't care if they were discovered.

"I wish this wasn't happening," Jahn sniffed.

"Don't," he told her. Then, as the pain in his eyes dwindled and he looked at her face against the sun and her reflection became forever etched in the glassy orbs that contained his soul, he spoke to her a final time. "All I ever wanted was this moment,"

As he died in her arms, Jahn looked to one side in puzzlement. Those words didn't quite fit. All he ever wanted was this moment? But why? Why would anybody want to die like this? Then, to her horror his body started to change. She had never seen a Gorg die before, but she had heard the stories; indeed, they were true. The skin on his torso around the wound began to crumple and peel away as his flesh started to change color. It was like watching a piece of paper catching fire in reverse, for his body had started out a charred black shade and was now turning a pale white. All over him patches of white started to break out like someone was shovelling snow onto his corpse to forever bury his memory. As he died, so did the hopes and aspirations of her father, the only other man whose feelings she cared so much for. She let out a cry and turned away from the horrible image, sobbing into her chest and fumbling with the radio transmitter attached to her belt. When she'd finally loosened it, she brought it to her face and said the only word she could think of.

"Help!!!"

**


"I don't believe it," Fleihric said, looking over his desk at the five of them.

"It's the truth," Jahn replied, standing firm beside the other members of her away team that made it back in one piece. Chard's body had been transported to cryo-freezing so that he would be perfectly preserved for the funeral proceedings that were already being arranged. Just thinking about it made Jahn's skin crawl. It would feel so odd to see it listed on the time schedule for the next day. She wondered how many people would show up... or if she'd even be one of them.

"So what you're saying," Fleihric said, turning their report over in his head. He wasn't talking like he would when he and Jahn were alone, for right now he was Fleihric the great leader, wise and without flaws. It brought Jahn's confidence down a notch, as he wasn't going to show her the same leniency as he would if it had just been a personal matter. This, however, concerned the entire Rebellion. "Is that the entire mission went off without a hitch... except for the one part where I had strict assurances that it wouldn't even factor into the equation?"

"Like Jahn said," Thora stood up to the plate. "When we got into the facility, we had no problems. We got the data and we left. Unfortunately, it seemed our sources were incorrect and any traces of illegal narcotics were nowhere to be seen in the facilities' records. Then we received the emergency call from Jahn, and when we arrived at the platform it seemed she'd come upon at least four of the Octid elite guard. Chard must have died in the battle,"

"Yes," Fleihric nodded, wryly. He ran his thick black tongue across his charcoal-like teeth and pondered. Jahn wondered how much he was hurting inside from the loss of Chard. In retrospect, it seemed Chard must have been almost like a son to him. Then, Fleihric waved at them. "Very well, you may go,"

"Yes sir," Thora complied, turning and leaving with the others. She had to literally tug Kelly by the arm to get her to move, but eventually they each filed out of the room. Only Jahn remained, as resolute as she could be. Her quivering hands made it clear that she couldn't be quite as resolute as she wished to be.

"Sir," she said.

"Is there something else you wish to say?" Fleihric asked her, rotating his chair and looking at the wall behind his desk. She couldn't see him now, which in all fairness should have made it a great deal easier to feign courage. In Jahn's mind, it didn't. "Speak up, cadet,"

"Daddy?" she asked, weakly.

"No," Fleihric's firm response came at her like a bear-trap, slicing off the only legs she felt she had to stand on. "Jahn, a man is dead. A good man. You cannot just expect me to overlook that because you're my daughter. Now, do you want to tell me what really happened? Or do you actually expect me to believe my greatest combat specialist was taken down by a group of Octids that you had no trouble handling on your own?"

"We weren't expecting them," said Jahn. "They came out of nowhere,"

"Weren't expecting them?!" Fleihric snapped. "You were right next to a facility full of the blasted things! Chard would have had his guard up at all times, his assignment was to protect you,"

"Yeah, I heard about that," said Jahn, her temper suddenly flaring. Perhaps it was due to the indifference her father was showing towards her sorrow. Perhaps she just didn't want to be treated like everybody else. After all, Chard had been closest to her out of everybody. Except, perhaps, Fleihric himself... "He was telling me all about how you two figured out a way to trick me into taking this mission,"

"I knew there was more to this than met the eye," Fleihric sighed, swivelling around in his seat and facing her again. He looked more forlorn than angry... and there was an aspect of disappointment to his eyes. Was he disappointed in her? No, he couldn't have been. It must have been Chard's death affecting him. "Let me guess. You two got into a fight, and it got out of hand,"

"Right," Jahn said, sparing him what she considered to be the needless details. "When we were fighting, he got shot. I would've saved him, but... they really did come out of nowhere. If they hadn't been there, we would've been fine,"

"You're making excuses!" Fleihric exclaimed, rising from his chair. "Lose the childish attitude! You're a Rebel soldier! Accept responsibility like Chard would have if he were in your position!"

"So what, now I'm supposed to replace him?" Jahn asked, taken aback. "I can't do that! He was Chard; I'm... not the person he was. You can't go around expecting me to be, either,"

"All I expect," said Fleihric, pacing back and forth in front of his desk as he contemplated his daughter's behavior and how to rectify it. "Is for you to try to act like half the soldier he was. Accept responsibility, don't deny your own faults, and be true to your word. But you always run from your problems! You won't believe how much of a void he's left in this operation. I'm sorry, Jahn, but I'm going to have to prohibit you from going into the field,"

"For how long?" Jahn asked. She was shocked.

"Indefinitely," Fleihric replied.

"That's crazy!" she shouted. "You can't expect me to take that! I didn't mess up! I beat those Octids on my own! I saved the mission from complete failure!"

"As far as I'm concerned," Fleihric stated. "It was your fighting with Chard that endangered the mission in the first place. In fact, your part was only to stay alive and enjoy yourself. Chard is dead, and you certainly didn't enjoy yourself. Your half of the mission was a complete failure, no matter how many Octids you fought off. It's just my opinion that you are much better at aiding the troops on the home front than you are in the field, based on that performance. Be glad that I am not being too harsh on you,"

"Not being too harsh?!" Jahn shrieked. Then she decided to really launch the heavy artillery, as she brought out the worst insult she could think of. It had been brewing inside her like an evil concoction since Chard had died, and she wasn't thinking straight enough to stop herself from blurting it out. "You Octid!"

"Excuse me...?" Fleihric asked, not quite trusting his ears.

"You're an Octid!" she said again. "And you're making me your slave! You won't let me be free to do what I want to do! You suppress my emotions and behave as if my feelings don't matter! Do you think I didn't care about Chard?! I'm hurt by his loss, too! But don't you go taking it out on me!"

Fleihric stepped around the desk; his eyes fixed on his daughter. It was a cold, callous look that she'd heard tell of from the other girls. But they hadn't been talking about Fleihric; they had been talking about their own fathers. Male Octids would take to frequently disciplining their children with great malice, and before they would do so they'd stare them down just as Fleihric was doing now. It was to make them dread what they had done. It was to punish them without having to lift a finger. It worked on the Octid children... and it was certainly working on Jahn. Now, Fleihric stood right in front of her, their faces almost touching. She had grown a great deal, but in Fleihric's eyes she was still a child. His child. And he would discipline her like his own child.

"When you were conceived," he said, raising a finger at Jahn. "I promised your mother that I would never strike you... or hurt you physically in any way,"

Jahn felt relief washing over her, and she let out a little smile. She was just about ready to wrap her arms around him and give him a kiss on the cheek, when he struck her hard across the face. The snap of her jaw against his hand sounded like the breaking of eternal promises forged out of love. It was the sound of wings being torn from small animals that would never get to fly again. It was pain in its purest form. It was losing something brilliant. And as she lifted her head back up at him and saw the anger on his face, she knew it really had hurt him just as much as it had her.

"Calling me an Octid," he told her. "Was as cold-hearted and spiteful as what I just did. Telling me that you cared for Chard after you rejected him to the point of causing his death... Well, that's just you, Jahn. Always running around things so your feet never touch solid ground,"

"How could you..." she said.

"Do you want to know what makes an Octid truly an Octid?" Fleihric asked. "They have such ill feelings towards the women because they are kept at such great distances from one another for so long in their lives. It's a bit of a paradox, really. An Octid boy is born and his mother leaves to become a slave. The boy grows up believing his mother rejected him, so he helps enslave the women on his world and has a child with one of them. Then his child grows up believing the same things about females. And so the process continues, while the women have absolutely no choice in the matter. Do you know why I care so much about those women? Because I know they're worth caring for. Your mother showed me that much. My own mother showed me that much. Even though I'm far away from them now, I have the memory of the good times to keep me going. Because I know even if I'm not with them, they are still these wonderful creatures that I could never possibly compare to. But they're in cages, Jahn... and I have to set them free...

"But you... I can look at you right now and know that your reasons for wanting to help them are far different. You hate the men that are keeping them locked away in those cages, nothing more. In fact, it doesn't stop there. When you came to me, you hated me for not being closer to you during your childhood. Now I see those feelings haven't changed. You hated Chard for not being a good enough replacement for me, just because he had intentions other than giving you an innocent, father-like hug. You would have gladly spent your life keeping him at bay, expecting him to always be there as a friend and nothing more. But eventually he would have grown tired and either tried to make a move, or leave you altogether for some other girl. And then what?

"Well, I'll tell you. You would have hated him even more, despite the choices being so self-centred and impossible for him to take. He takes one path, he hurts you. He takes another path, he hurts you. Now he's dead, and what do you do? You make excuses and complain about the fact that it hurt you! So if you come to me and say that I'm an Octid... you're damn right I'm going to strike you and go back on all those promises I made to your mother, because looking at what you've become I feel that it hardly seemed worth making them! Out of anybody in this operation, YOU are the Octid, my little Jahn!"

"But I had no idea that Chard loved..." Jahn began, tears streaming down her face. Then she remembered what Chard had said before passing away, and he had been right; she'd always known. Her anger boiled as she tried to come to terms with what she'd become, but instead of apologizing or making excuses she decided to do the opposite; she would lash out at him. "At least HE told me he loved me!"

"Jahn," Fleihric said, suddenly very exasperated. He slumped down into his chair and turned ninety degrees to the right so he wasn't facing her. "All I'm saying is there's one thing that we in the Rebellion have in common: a love for both genders. Rather than run from them, perhaps you should go out there and find out all the wonderful things about men that you never knew existed. It's too late for you to find Chard's wonderful thing... but trust me, it exists in all men and women,"

"I knew about his wonderful thing!" Jahn yelled, spinning around and nearly pulling the door off its hinges as she swung it open. "He couldn't apologize! Just like I'll never apologize to you for what I'm about to do!"

And with that, she left.

Or to be more precise, she ran away.

**


The troubling sounds of a faraway Octid patrol ship's jets thundered by in the distance as the public transport came to a standstill at the central station in north-east Jornpen. Row upon row of smooth, dusty seats lined the carriages that connected one another like a centipede's thorax to the main engine section at the front of the transport. Harsh blue lights flickered on and off within the front section of the ship which contained a very minimal amount of passengers due to the engineer's notorious gas problems. Word had gotten out that he had been spotted eating a whole can of beans before this trip, so the majority of the passengers had shifted themselves to the rear sections of the transport. However, the elephantine Tommikin who now boarded the transport had no trouble shifting his weight ever so slowly into the foremost seating section. Tommikins are a species of alien made up almost entirely of bulging, colorful fur and a pair of noseless, one-eyed heads on stalks that protrude from their chest. Their muscular arms and legs hidden beneath their fur make them formidable adversaries, especially if they are challenged when standing in line or trying to buy tickets for a passage between points "A" and "B". The squealing Ecker lying outside the transport would have verified that at this point in time, if he'd been able to find the strength to properly put his vocal chords to use.

This Tommikin, a pink one named Grunturgh who looked like one would expect him to turn around and display a great big zipper running down his back, was actually quite a nice fellow when not being jumped from behind by angry and impatient Eckers. His two separate blue eyes each examined very carefully the opposing sides of the carriage, and then they both switched over and examined the one that the other head had been checking. The entire carriage seemed to be empty. This was handy, he thought to himself, as he always needed an ample amount of room to place himself down. So, taking the nearest row to him, he stretched his furry back and shoved his bottom down onto the seat contentedly.

"Mmmrrrphhh!" a sound came from beneath him.

"That's funny," said Grunturgh, scratching both his heads. "Seats don't normally yell out in pain when I plop down on 'em. Maybe I really should go on a diet,"

"Mmrrrrphhhmrr!" the sound came again, and he felt something grabbing his backside.

"'ey oop!" he cried, getting to his feet and rubbing his sore rump. "Now see 'ere, you're a nice seat and all, but I just can't have you getting fresh with me,"

Grunturgh turned around and looked down at the seat, half-expecting it to be blushing and casting him a coy wink. Instead, he saw a Gorg girl that had been sleeping on the seat out of sight; her body was frail and delicate like a little insect in comparison to his bulky constitution. She was nearly choking on clumps of his back fur, so he whistled through his teeth apologetically and sat down beside her.

"I'm sorry, miss," he told her. "I never look where I'm s'posed to be going. Funny, eh? What with me having two heads and all, you'd think I'd be able to do somethin' simple like that,"

"Forget about it," Jahn told him, brushing herself off with her hands.

"Me name's Grunturgh," he said, offering her an enormous hand. Jahn looked at it. It was as if someone had just placed a giant ball of cotton candy in front of her to shake. She smiled and reached into it, hoping to grab hold of flesh. His warm hand closed around her dainty fingers as he exchanged greetings with her enthusiastically. "You can call me Grunty, missy. What's your name, then?"

"It's Jahn," she replied as the transport shifted and started to move away from the platform. As she looked through the window, she thought she caught sight of an Ecker with a pained expression hopping after the transport as fast as he could. She rubbed her eyes and wondered if coming into contact with Tommikin fur generally tended to cause hallucinations. "Jahn Z'darsk. I'm sorry, I must've dozed off. I'm supposed to be getting off in a few stops anyway. Thanks for the wake-up call, I guess,"

"No problem!" Grunty boomed. His voice was gruff and simple, but he didn't seem stupid or dim-witted... just a little slow, maybe. Jahn noticed that he kept switching between mouths every time he started a new sentence. It was oddly unnerving yet still rather charming. If she'd been in the mood to be charmed, she would've been compelled to smile. From out of his fur, he removed a packed lunch and a flask of chilled Sodiplaz. Jahn wondered what else he had in there... and then instantly stopped wondering as fast as she possibly could. "Whereabouts are you headed to, lass?"

"I'm going home," she replied, looking out of the window at the foggy city that started to grow ever smaller as they zoomed away. The staccato sound of rattling furniture and machinery stammered through the uncomfortable silence she left in her sentence's wake.

"Like they say where ol' Grunty comes from," Grunty replied, thumping his chest with a free hand as one of his heads took a swig of the Sodiplaz. "Home is where the heart is. Literally, actually. I just remembered I left it behind on my last visit to me mammy and pappy,"

"Left what behind?" Jahn asked.

"Me heart, o' course!" Grunty bellowed, cheerily. "My, but you're a slow lass,"

"Um, you left your heart back home...?" Jahn asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Course, course!" he nodded. "We Tommikins have two hearts, though mind you we can live with only one for a few days. But me pappy, he wanted to borrow one of mine because his are windin' down a bit in his old age. You should've seen the expression on 'is faces when he plopped it down in his ribcage and he sprang outta bed and dashed right out the door. He coulda run a hundred miles, I'm sure of it! At least, he would've if his eyes were workin' properly,"

"Why didn't you just lend him your eyes, then?" said Jahn.

"Don't be so foolish, lass!" Grunty said. "Me eyes are far too important to go lendin' around like that! Else how would I see?"

"I doubt there'd be much of a difference," Jahn said, rubbing her aching sides. "So, you just up and forgot about your heart? Seems pretty careless,"

"Ahhh," Grunty bleated, the shaggy fur around his throat shaking furiously like treetops being bothered by a sudden gust of wind. He winked at her with one head and tapped the side of the other with his plump hand, knowingly. "Some less fortunate men have done much worse. Even ones who don't have the cardiovascular blessin's of a Tommikin. Some people, I heard they foolishly forget about their minds! Besides, who's to say I didn't just give me pappy an extended loan of me heart without letting on that I knew about it?"

"I think I left my heart with my mother," Jahn said, looking out of the window. A pair of Octid patrol ships darted down from the gloomy sky and hovered beside the transport for a few minutes, inspecting its passenger holds with great interest. Jahn felt her body tense and she leaned over to one side as they passed by the carriage she was sitting in, her face pressing against Grunty's burly shoulder. It felt like she was turning over in bed and trying to find someone that she was supposed to be lying next to. She told herself over and over in her head that the Octids couldn't be looking for her, that nobody knew she had secretly fled the Rebellion in the night with the help of Cammy. Her fears were answered when the Octid patrol ships raised their noses to the heavens and headed off in the opposite direction. "Thank goodness,"

"Looks like your mind is elsewhere, missy," Grunty said, curious as to the reasons behind the girl's reaction. He decided to postpone such questions and instead offered her a bite of his grizzled looking meat sandwich. She declined and folded her arms tightly around her chest, shivering as if with cold. "You can't be used to such freezin' weather as there is on this here planet. You don't come from Shrykten, do you missy?"

"No," she said. He gave the planet's name such a warm and cuddly sound, as he'd obviously grown accustomed to it like you would a loved one. But to her, the planet's name would always remind her of the story Chard had revealed just before his untimely demise. Somewhere within its dark reaches the name brought up images of the Motto encampment being slaughtered and the musty smell of burning houses, and the sense of her being powerless to do anything to stop such things happening again. For she had left the Rebellion, never to return. "I come from Gorgo. That's where I'm going... that's where I'm running, back home to my mother,"

"Ooh," Grunty cooed, patting her on the knee. He stifled questions about who or what she was running from and instead decided to keep the conversation's nature a more pleasant thing. "You been away from your mother long, then?"

"Since forever, it seems like," she replied. Rain started to splatter against the window and rub its slimy essence all over the distant cities, ridding them of their homely appeal. "Since I was a little girl. It's been so long, and... to be honest, I'm at a loss for where else to go and what else to do. I think she'll know what I should do. She always knew best. She knew that I was wrong to go visit my father,"

"Deary me," said Grunty, sadly. "Ol' Grunty's really stumbled across a tragic case this time,"

"Sir, please don't judge me," she said to him, starting to grow restless with the hairy oaf sitting next to her. "It may appear to you that I'm weak and pathetic and that I'm totally lost, but I know where I'm going. I always knew where I was going. Back home is where I belong, with my wonderful... caring mother,"

"So much talk of your mammy but none of your pappy," Grunty noticed. "Tell me, missy, what happened between the two of you?"

"I was a disappointment to him," Jahn replied. "A major one. But it doesn't matter anymore, because I won't disappoint my mother,"

"Very few people I know of can go 'round saying that they've done the impossible like that, missy," said Grunty.

"Excuse me?" Jahn frowned.

"I willing to bet me other heart," Grunty declared. "That your pappy ain't in the slightest bit disappointed in you. No real father of any kind would willingly feel such a way about their children,"

"Well, thanks," Jahn sighed. "But you weren't there. If he wasn't disappointed in me, I doubt he'd get so angry at me and insult me like he did,"

"Tell me, missy," said Grunty. "Did you not also get angry?"

"Of course I did!" she replied.

"Then I suppose you're disappointed in him also?" Grunty asked.

"Listen, I love my father," said Jahn, icily. "And not you or anybody else can tell me otherwise!"

"Sounds like it's a two-way thing to me, missy," Grunty said, treading carefully with his words as he tried to get his point across the precarious bridge of her denial. "Both of you, yourself and your pappy, got mad at each other. You're both shuttin' each other out. But the love's still there, isn't it missy?"

"What would you know?" Jahn scowled.

"I'm gonna be honest with you, missy," said Grunty, his expressions changing to those of blunt seriousness. "In fact, I'm gonna be cruel in me honesty, which is a thing people don't often see in ol' Grunty. But me pappy, he isn't off runnin' hundreds of miles. That's just a story I tell all folks who come on this here transport to warm up to them, make 'em feel like ol' Grunty isn't so bad, that they can confide in him. Now, seeing as you ain't gonna let ol' Grunty do such a terrible thing as that, I may as well just burst that little bubble around our heads,"

"So, you're a liar," Jahn shrugged, scornfully. "Good for you,"

"Me story is no lie, missy," Grunty told her, his voice rising and falling as he changed between heads in mid-sentence out of mild impatience. "I gave me heart to me pappy when he needed it. But me heart, it wasn't quite good enough for the old codger. And with me own heart still beating in his chest, he died two years ago to this day. That final gesture I gave to 'im was an apology for the fact that I'd run out on him a long, long time ago when we'd both gotten pretty infuriated with one another. But even when me heart was rejected by 'is system, he had felt through it me love... and he forgave ol' Grunty for bein' such a fool,"

"That's..." Jahn began, but couldn't quite find the words for it. She wanted to say it was horrible, but it was also rather beautiful. She wanted to say it was sad, but in a way it made her happy for the Tommikin sitting next to her. "Is that why you're here?"

"Yes, lass," he said. "Ol' Grunty's here to visit pappy's resting place. You're welcome to come join me if you like, missy,"

"No, I've got to get to Gorgo," Jahn said. She looked up at the twin faces of the Tommikin and she saw they were smiling down at her, waiting for her to say what was buzzing around in her head. "Oh come on, Grumpy, what do you expect me to do? Go running back to him?"

"No," he replied, politely ignoring the fact that she'd confused his name. "You know, you're a big, strong lass now. You shouldn't be wanderin' off to either your mammy or your pappy for guidance. Ol' Grunty bets that's part of the reason you got in such high tempers with each other, hmm? You felt he was maybe tryin' to tell you what to do?"

"Maybe a little," Jahn said, making what was perhaps the understatement of the decade in such an unimportant little transport carriage.

"Well," Grunty said as the transport's engine breathed a sigh of relief. In the midst of their heated conversation, they had arrived at the next city's south-west platform. They were still at least three stops away from the city where Jahn was supposed to catch a shuttle over to Gorgo, yet Jahn felt tense as if something were calling to her from out of the murky twilight of the commercial district outside the transport. Flashing neon lights beckoned with their luminous, bony fingers, and the bustling streets seemed to have room for one more. Still, she stuck around to hear Grunty's sage yet simple words. "When I decided to give me heart to me pappy, I was takin' a big risk. I'd left me home on this here planet of Shrykten and had me a nice little life on the outer rim of the Bojhn system. Me pappy saw that I was willin' to give it all away to make amends with him. I doubt his smile woulda been so big if I'd just reached into me pockets and pulled out a heart like it were nothin'. Me heart meant somethin', I'd made it mean somethin'. What does your heart mean to your mammy and pappy, lass, if you just give it to 'em to take charge of because you can't use it yourself proper like?"

Those last few words had really hit a note somewhere in Jahn's being. She looked up at the furry gentleman and nodded in total understanding, though she wasn't sure if what he'd said had been intended to hold such a meaning. She rose from the seat and squeezed past him into the aisle, looking towards the automatic doors that had opened invitingly after they had reached whatever potential paradise this city represented. The rain was pouring, and it danced about amidst the steamy vents of light that emanated from beneath the transport's slab-like abdomen. She didn't remember ever seeing rain on Gorgo, and it was so alien to her. But alien was what she wanted to be; not the same person who'd run out on her father and rejected Chard for so long. She wanted to be a different person, and here there were so many different people. She would make both her father and mother proud at the same time.

"Thanks, Grunty," she said as she stepped on the edge of blackened portal that led onto the streets. "Gosh, it's so cold here,"

"Aye, but I'm sure it'll get a lot warmer with thee here, lass," Grunty said, watching her go.

When she'd gone, he turned to look out of the window with a content feeling in the pit of his hefty stomach. Suddenly, the tone of both his faces changed to one of worry, as his eyes slowly caught sight of a squadron of Octids dressed all in grey. Cold visors covered their faces and their stealthy movements gave recognition to their malicious intent. His eyes shrivelled in pain as he remembered pulling his father from the burning remains of the village after the Octid elite forces had burned it to the ground. He remembered the feeling of dread in his hearts when he learned that the smoke from the fire had caused damage to his father's respiratory system. He remembered wishing the Octids had had the guts to kill the innocents as they lay there suffering. He remembered the laughter of their grey cloaked leader as he'd turned away from Grunturgh, ignoring his pleas. He remembered so much of the torment, and through glassy eyes and horror-driven tears he choked out a curse and prayed to God.

"Why can't someone put an end to all of this?" he asked.

Then, as the transport engines started up again and thunder clapped overhead like the slamming of enormous doors, a sultry looking Dinguan female and her male partner waltzed into the carriage and squelched down in the seat beside Grunturgh. They both giggled together for a while, and then they both started to sniff the air. Warily, the male Dinguan turned to Grunturgh and asked with disdain:

"Did you fart?"

**

End of Part One