Still the Uruk-Hai I Fell In Love With

Journal of Rowana, daughter of Rowetha
23 / 04 / 2120 of the Fourth Age

The Pathfinder was cramped. Bebe, not used to being up during the day, was asleep in the back seat within the cleanest of the hooded robes we had pulled off the White Hands. Azzie held Búrzi. I'd crammed the vehicle with bags full of trash—the normal non-burnables, and all the White Hands' clothes and whatever gear we didn't want to keep.

Back in the house, the closet which the Hobbits had designated for linens had been converted into a makeshift armory, containing every firearm, bullet, and knife we'd pulled off the corpses of our guests. I only had five rounds left for the Great Eagle, Azzie had burned through all the .22 rounds for the Squirrelslayer, and I wasn't prepared to trust the weapons we'd pulled off the Orcs until I had a chance to clean and inspect each one.

So we were relatively unarmed when I pulled into Bardur's Rest. The cold eyes of the crows were fixed on me, and perhaps more importantly, on the two passengers in the vehicle.

"Stay in the car," I told Azzie, as I stepped inside.

The Dwarf's hands weren't visible. I stopped as the glass doors slid shut behind me, raised my hands.

"Still friends?" I asked.

"Orc-lover," Bardur said. He didn't look toward me, the wires still plugged into his eye sockets, so he didn't need to. There were six black birds in the shop, all eyes locked on me.

"Orc-fucker," I corrected. "If you saw the tits on her, you'd understand."

"I can see," Bardur said carefully. "What about the other one?"

"White Hands stopped by a little while ago. My green girl traded a shotgun for this twink they were keeping as a sex ****. We don't like slaves," I said. Honesty is the best policy when a Dwarf is probably holding a shotgun under the counter. "They came by again yesterday. It got bloody. Not safe to leave them at home."

Finally, Bardur seemed to come to a decision. His hands emerged onto the countertop.

"So what do you want?" he said.

Slowly, I lowered my own hands. "Food. Petrol. Tampons. Dump some garbage, and..."

I reached into my front pocket and pulled out a tightly-wound but thick wad of plastic bills, and a small pouch that clinked. Old money. Not credits. Still legal tender, for those that cared, and being untraceable very popular for illegal transactions. Every scrap of cash that our uninvited guests had on them.

"...I was hoping you might have some firearms and ammunition for sale."

Bardur ushered me forward. A crow hopped onto the counter, scanned each bill. One by one, the Dwarf pulled out the coins. Worn discs of gold and silver. He weighed them on a little scale. It was, all told, more than my Pathfinder had cost when shiny and new. Bardur grinned at me.

"I think we do business," he said.

That is when the squishee machine pulled away from the wall, and revealed Bardur's other business. I stepped into a red-lit room that looked like an army surplus store. Last-generation body armor and helmets. A modest rack of fully automatic rifles. A variety of sidearms on wall-racks. Dwarven combat axes. Police-grade tasers and tactical radios.

We negotiated over the speaker. In exchange for my entire roll, I walked out of there with a suit of form-fitting body armor, all ballistic fiber and gel packs done up in desert camouflage, with optional armor plate inserts; a scuffed and highly illegal for civilian ownership Ironbeard Deathdealer model 16, just like I'd had in service, with four clips of ammo; a hundred rounds for the Great Eagle and a two hundred for the .22; and two tactical radios.

He even let Azzie and a sleepy Bebe into the store so they could pick out canned soup, toothbrushes, and underwear that actually fit them. Those I paid for with credits. The birds watched the newcomers with undisguised interest. As we turned to leave, Bardur had to ask:

"So, the Orc dildo I sold you..." he said.

"Feels good up mah ass," Bebe said with a sleepy yawn. He waved to the stunned Dwarf as he walked back toward the Pathfinder, a bag of groceries in his arms.

Búrzi leaped out of the Pathfinder as soon as the vehicle had come to a halt and Azzie had opened the door. I don't think Mordor-cats get carsick; I think she just hadn't killed anything in twelve hours and was determined to make up for lost time. We let her go; she knew where her food dish and catbox were, and the house could track her through the chip in her collar.

While the Orcs stayed in the vehicle, I did a quick reconnoiter. No sign of **** entry. Windows and doors intact, locked. Even the shack above the root cellar. There was no sign of any other unwanted visitors. Yet I was tense as I passed the bloodstains on the wall of the house. Eyes and ears alert for anything out of place, even an unexpected silence. Yet around us, Mordor was the same as ever, save for some birds circling the pit of the dead. That was to be expected.

Let the scavengers feast.

By the time we put the groceries away, the solar panels had recharged enough of the house battery that I could make a call on the satlink. I knew I needed to give Looseleaf an answer. Azzie and I had talked it over as Bebe snored softly. As Bebe collapsed onto the bed that now belonged to all of us, Azzie and I set up chairs next to the comm center.

"Ready?" I asked, as I pulled the dustcover off my neural port.

"Ready," she said, as she plugged two neural jacks into the comm panel. One for each of us.

Her dark eyes showed something. Fear? Apprehension? I reached over and gave her breast a squeeze. That brought a smile to her face, the little fangs bared.

We jacked in and made the call. This time, I could watch as the Elf-script flowed over the pillars, watched as Looseleaf slid into our home system. Azzie was next to me, her icon as generic as mine, but the hacker seemed to be able to tell us apart immediately.

"Alright," I said. "I'm in. If we can find something at Drake Industries that will put an end to this, I'm up for a little breaking and entering."

"But?" Looseleaf said, as if she sensed a caveat.

"The ones who made me. They restricted the controls on my birth control implant. I want you to hack it," Azzie said. "I want control of my own reproduction."

Looseleaf's avatar turned from one of us to the other.

"I respect that. I can try," the hacker said as she drifted forward. Raised her fingertips to touch the head of Azzie's avatar. "I'm going to interface with your headware. This may feel weird."

What happened next was fast. Looseleaf and Azzie's avatars flickered through several resolutions. One minute they were pixelated masses, mere humanoid blurs. The next moment they were too sharp, too clear, the background around them blurring as if distorted by their gravity. With something between a cry and a screech, the two finally disengaged, the hacker backing away, their avatar jittering still.

"Precious!" I said, as I turned toward her avatar, which had returned to normal. "Are you alright?"

"I'm just fucking fine, thanks," Looseleaf said, irritation in the hacker's tone. "I couldn't crack the lowest level of protection, but I unlocked—something. Some of her memories were locked away. She isn't—there's more to her than meets the eye. More than she knew."

I touched Azzie's avatar's shoulder, that weird tactile sensation that cheap stim gives, like your hand closing on a solid plastic cylinder instead of real flesh. Azzie's avatar blinked rapidly.

"She's right," Azzie said. She turned to Looseleaf. "You tried. I appreciate that. You'd better go now. We'll call later to coordinate."

With that, we all logged off.

The first meal after a grocery run always uses fresh foods. The stuff that will expire soonest. Fresh green and red bell peppers, stuffed with a pork-flavored soylent meat substitute. I finally managed to find time to replace the rag with a proper tampon; Bebe crawled out of bed. By the time darkness came and dinner was ready, Azzie was ready to talk.

"I wasn't made to be a sex ****," the Uruk-Hai said quietly, as she cracked open a beer—an Erebor Lager. "That was my cover identity. We were trained to be executive removal specialists. Infiltrate and eliminate high-value targets."

Azzie's eyes met mine.

"You didn't save me from being somebody's pet, 'Ro my love. You interfered with a carefully planned **** attempt. One I wasn't supposed to survive," she took a sip of the pale, fizzy beverage. "I don't remember it all. They...my mind is compartmentalized. I can feel her in there. The other Ash Nazg. The one they trained to kill. It's like...like a part of me was always watching, waiting, evaluating. Checking rooms. Prepared for ****. Even now, I can't turn it off. I didn't even know I was doing it, but now I can feel myself thinking about how I'd kill Bebe, or you..."

"But you won't, right?" Bebe said, or something to that effect, mouth full of pepper.

"No. There's more, locked away. The hacker, she ran into...IC. In my head. Protecting core memories, functionalities on my implants. She got deep enough to unlock some of my memories. Not everything."

Her lips bared to show her neat, even fangs.

"So...what now?" Bebe said, eyeing the Uruk-Hai who sat across from him. Azzie was seated in a chair, just short enough that her legs swung freely and her tits could rest on the table.

I washed down a bite of shredded not-pork with a sip of beer.

"Now, we need to coordinate with two hackers to break into a highly secure megacorporate black site, in the hopes that we can find something that will keep people from trying to kill us," I said.

"Oh," he looked down at his plate. "Was hopin' maybe sex."

"I'm still on my period," I said.

Bebe looked at me and licked his lips. There was a bit of red pepper stuck between two fangs. "So...brush my teeth before and after?"

"Let's do the dishes first," I said, noncommittal. Azzie's feet brushed my legs, and for a moment she gave a familiar mischievous smile.

Which is how I knew that, whatever had happened in the Matrix, she was still the Uruk-Hai I had fallen in love with.