Kotire

“There’s only one thing keeping me from leaving right now and taking my own chances on the trip south – or, really, one person. I think maybe if I write all of this down it will help me come to a more sensible decision – but the truth is that there’s only one person left any of us can trust to maybe get us out of this mess.”

-Final entry left by Henryk on central system terminal for Kurikuneku generator network

Just outside Kurikuneku. 245 YT. Spring.

“So it looks like they’re maybe twenty minutes’ forced march out.”

Kotire tilted the terminal and stood back, cracking her knuckles and smiling at a job well executed. Well, it was mostly not her job – Henryk had done most of it, truth be told – but the small cluster of blinking golden circles moving slowly perpendicular to a path from the power center, that was her doing. She looked around the room.

“You… are not thinking what I think you’re thinking, I hope.” Henryk tilted his head and raised an eyebrow at Kotire’s wild smile.

“Why not?” Kotire jerked a finger toward the door. “We could be out there and back within a couple hours. They won’t even know where we came from.”

Henryk shook his head. “They would call reinforcements, wouldn’t they? We should be focused on figuring out a way out of here, not on trying to run a gang out of an old power station.”

“It’s not like we’re staying in one place.” Kotire walked over to the window, pointing at the hill where she’d met the others. “And this place is extremely defensible.”

“We don’t really know it like they do,” one of the other Adma guerillas – what was his name, Corey? – muttered. “We can’t rely on keeping the advantage forever.”

“So we move again, then!” Kotire smiled. “And I’ve already thought about the reinforcements issue.” She nodded to Henryk. “Look at the circle I’ve drawn on the map, surrounding Kurikuneku. That is the radius at which any given patrol could call in reinforcements and have them arrive on foot within the hour. The wider circle? That’s vehicle range.”

Henryk leaned in, tapped his finger against the glass of the terminal, and then turned his head up toward Kotire. “We’re inside the wider circle.”

“But,” Kotire said, “consider the terrain. Look at where that patrol is going.” She went to the opposite window and stood on the tips of her toes, leaning out. “See that pass down there? No vehicle is getting over that. Not even Invictan war machines.”

“You seem to be taking all of this in stride almost a little too well, don’t you think?” Corey approached, reaching a hand toward Kotire’s shoulder to help her back down from the window.

“Are you kidding me?” Kotire chuckled. “This is the first time in… in months that I’ve felt like I can really make a difference.” She went to the weapon stockpile by the door and picked up a rifle, slinging it over her shoulder to supplement the sidearm and knife she carried. “Who’s coming with me?”

The others all shifted uncomfortably. Henryk stepped forward. “What is the point of this?”

Kotire scowled, walked over to the terminal, and pointed at the cluster of dots. “They are headed south,” she said. “South – toward the Crescent Land? Where we have allies currently hiding out? This isn’t just about us. Besides, I’m the leader of this unit.” She glanced around at the other soldiers. No eyes met hers – all were cast down toward the floor.

“Well?” Kotire half-shouted. “Aren’t I the leader of this cell? Is there anyone else who would care to step up and take this responsibility from me?” She held a hand on the hilt of her dagger, letting the sling of her rifle rest over her shoulder though her other hand stayed near to the stock.

Corey was the first to shake his head. “No. You’re the leader of this cell.”

“I don’t like your tone,” Kotire said, and Corey just scoffed and stepped back. Henryk took a few hesitant steps forward, a hand held out.

“Fine. You have a point. We’ll ambush this group – but then we move on, alright? We can’t rely on them not finding their way back to us after this.”

Kotire shrugged. “We’ll consider it after we get back. But right now…”

After that, the cell fell in line with only a few dissatisfied grumbles. Each fighter picked up their rifle, checked that the ammunition was loaded and chambered, and took a radio and scanning device. They checked the area around them for movement, emerging from the power plant slowly, leaving the windows uncovered as they went but making sure that everything which could give away their position was kept out of sight of the windows. They did not bother to clean the blood off the floor just inside, because as long as the place was kept running smoothly – and the terrified prisoner wandering the halls, sure that the Adma would finish him off at any moment, was sure to see to that – who would bother to check?

When the lack of movement outside the facility had been confirmed, except for the patrol heading due south, Kotire motioned for everyone to move out, and keeping their centers of gravity low as they walked fast forward, they slipped past a hill. To any watcher from the city itself – if indeed anyone was watching from the top of the Tower of God – only the barest hint of movement would be visible behind the crest of a small distant hill.

The country around Kurikuneku had rocky hills closer to the walls, before – to the west and east and north – it gave way to tall and equally rocky mountains. Even toward the peaks of these mountains, though there was a little snow that often capped them, the level of precipitation was relatively low. Most of the rains came over the lowlands themselves as clouds failed to be pushed away to any direction except the south.

Today, although the cold only recently had retreated, the spring rains were still sparse and the sky was bright. Visibility was good, but still, once they were far enough away from the power plant, there was no need to keep their profiles low. Kotire stood up and walked – still at forced march – with her rifle at the ready, until the patrol came almost into view and she lowered her weight again, motioned for everyone to follow her, crept along until she found a crag to hide behind.

From here, it was a straight shot down the hill to the spot where the Invictans would pass. There were perhaps two dozen of them, outnumbering the Adma by a significant margin but vulnerable in an enclosed space, on the ground, with nowhere to run except for forward or back. A sufficiently motivated runner could charge down the hill easily enough, but climbing back up was going to be a slow affair. Kotire crouched, concealed by the rock with her back to it and her rifle placed between her feet, barrel pointing up past her shoulder. Eyes on the scanner on her arm. The dots approached, slowly, as her people got into position. And then they were all sitting, waiting, breathing heavy. Henryk sat closest to Kotire on her right. Corey on her left. Kotire met the younger Adma fighter’s eyes – angry eyes, the eyes of a hungry youth who has had enough of accepting the world as it is.

He shook his head slightly, but didn’t dare speak – the Invictans were getting closer. Everyone sat as still as they could manage, even trying to slow their own breathing, to fool whatever scanners might have otherwise picked up their positions and broadcast it to the wolves of Kurikuneku.

Kotire did not call for the ambush until the mass of dots representing Invictan soldiers was past the center line on her scanner. Flashing gold passed the gold line that ran now perpendicular to the ground. Kotire turned slightly. All eyes were on her. She peeked around the corner. The soldiers all had their eyes forward, weapons out – one or two would occasionally glance a the rocks, but none came close to meeting Kotire’s eyes until one straggler near the back did. They made eye contact for only a second, while the rest of the soldiers had already made it well past the line in the center of Kotire’s scanner. Those little gold dots – dressed up in their finery, carrying everything they owned upon their backs as they walked along the roadway to hell – went steady on their way. And the one in the back stared.

Then he lifted his rifle silently, his mouth locked tight by fear itself.

Kotire shot him first, twice in the head, and the rest of the Adma burst into action.

Amid the chaos of bullets and unintelligible babbling, while Kotire slid unevenly down the hillside, adjusting her footing so she would not fall on the sharp crags, she heard the shout –

“It’s the Adma!”

She leapt from a sharp rock and landed on the one she’d shot, knife flashing into the neck of the medic who’d bent down for a moment to check on the fallen soldier. The medic let out a gasp and clutched at her neck, dropping the hypo onto the corpse of the first. Kotire dragged her up between herself and the rest of the Invictan unit – drew the knife forth and pinned her arm around the rest of the neck. Hot blood flowed over her forearm, and the body went limp in seconds. She raised her rifle one-handed, firing past the body-shield. She was sure, to the others, she must have been a grinning specter of death.

All the rage and fear and sleepless, tired, hungry nights huddling in old warehouses, picking shards of glass out of her own flesh, waiting for something – anything – to change in the streets of the lower city while the riots just continued, all that negativity flowed out of her through her arm, through her finger, through the barrel of her gun, and into the best Kurikuneku had to offer. Ragged soldiers all of them, trying to fill in the unplugged gaps left by their mad God-King’s absence. In a distant, cornered part of Kotire’s mind – the part that had time for things like speculating about the thoughts of her enemies in the midst of a firefight – she thought of how low morale must have been from the moment this group set out. The Core was in chaos, even some of the provinces were starting to join in the rioting – though their populaces were unusually hostile to any talk of revolution. Why wouldn’t you want to part of the Invictan Empire? It was home, wasn’t it?

Soldiers fell beneath Kotire’s bullets as she walked forward, and then she let go of the body of the medic and kicked it forward, spraying a fan of blood out into the crowd. She dove forward, into the rifle range of the soldiers, striking upward with her dagger.

When all the Invictans had fallen to the ground, Kotire walked from one to the next, dagger in hand, thrusting into their necks while the rest of the Adma stood over the gorge. Henryk half-ran down the hill, his rifle slung over his shoulder. “Hey!” he shouted, approaching the sharper rocks toward the base of the gorge.

Kotire knelt down with her knee on the back of the next soldier, her knife held high above the Invictan’s neck. She glanced up at Henryk, her arm held still. “I told you it’d go fine,” Kotire called out. “Look, we’ll be well supplied when we get out of here.”

Then something moved under her, and the soldier’s arm moved, wrapping around the stock of a pistol lying on the ground under another’s body. Henryk leapt over a stone toward the ground. The arm of the soldier rose with the gun, and a crack resounded a hundred times through Kotire’s inner ear. Rattling in her skull, forever.