You Worry

Journal of Rowana, daughter of Rowetha
18 / 04 / 2120 of the Fourth Age

The United Megacorp gave me wired reflexes, neural ports, headware memory, cybereyes with low-light augments...and I wasn't the most heavily modified member of my squad. Miltech is high tech, and I was taught to pilot drones, demolitions, electronic warfare. Some missions we were issued practical laser weapons, single action pistols that used chemical canisters to generate the burst of light—a technology first developed for space combat, because a bullet could ricochet or depressurize a hull.

Yet what set rangers apart from the corporate special forces were our low-tech approach. I had crawled into Orc tunnels with nothing but my Elf blade. Walked barefoot over mountain passes that would have shredded any tire. Mounted bayonets on smartrifles rendered useless by an EMP and charged. Taken down recon drones with impromptu spears. Technology was great, but in the wild, there was no substitute for ingenuity. When high-tech failed, low-tech could still be deadly.

I climbed atop the house and surveyed the layout of the farm with different eyes. Categorized lines of approach, defensibility. How many would they send next time? A dozen? How much was Azzie worth to them?

My jaw worked. What I should do is set up cameras or sensors along that track and the highway. Plant traps. Maybe a fence for the farm itself. A few more of those scarecrows, in the right spots... If I had the credits. My jaw worked at the thought. Trying to secure this farm on a budget was going to be doubly difficult. I'd have to start small. Foot-traps, pit-traps, hedges. The kind of thing I could do by physical labor.

A scuffling sound caught my attention. Azzie's head appeared, her long black hair tied behind her with three elastics to make a long braid. The camouflage pants emphasized her wide hips; the too-short T-shirt bared her soft yellow-green stomach. She held our one and only bucket in one hand.

"Dumped that acidic compost on the bodies," she said, her wide dark eyes inscrutable beneath the bright sunlight. "You can see the bone poking through now. You know, in my culture, it is traditional to give your love the skull of an enemy as a show of affection."

I raised an eyebrow. "You were grown in a tube," I challenged. "Not an Orc tribe."

Her smile was a wicked flash. She set the bucket down next to me, and sat down next to it.

A couple of beers, slices of soylent meat-substitute between slabs of mycoprotein, with a bit of the cheap horseradish they passed off as wasabi with a touch of green food coloring. A pair of apples.

We ate lunch, and Azzie seemed to enjoy the view. I had no idea if she appreciated the import of what had happened the other night. The danger we were still in. I hadn't brought up running away. I should have. At least, I should have started a plan. Made her pack a bug-out bag. Taught her how to drive the Pathfinder, how to live in the wild.

I had lived out in the bush for a month at a time. Been on survival courses that took weeks of living off the land. Azzie had none of that. I wasn't sure how she would adapt if we had to run.

"You have that look," she said, as she crushed an empty beercan in her hands. "You worry. Your forehead crinkles."

"Does it?" I said.

Her hand found the back of my neck. Fingers massaged the muscles there, around my neural port, but not touching it directly.

"I have never had more than I do now," she said simply. "Home. Love. Something more than food, shelter, clothing, warmth. I know you worry they will come back. That you will come back one day and find I am gone."

She inched closer, until her hip touched mine. Her arm went around my shoulder, her other hand played with the bottom of my shirt.

"What we have might disappear at any moment," she whispered. "I wish to enjoy it while we can. Love fiercely. Plant seeds. Perhaps we won't see them grow, but if we don't sow them..."

I wasn't sure she was talking just about pipe-weed. But her fangs nibbled at my neck. Her hand stole up under my shirt, found a breast and cupped it.

It was strange, how quickly she'd learned Westron, how much better she was at expressing some emotions that I struggle to record, even in in this journal. How sweet it was, the taste of apples on her lips as we kissed, the white curved roof of the Hobbit-hole warm in the sun. Some day, if we lived long enough, this shell would be covered with earth. Grass would grow on it. We could picnic up here. Just the two of us.

I didn't want to look out over the sea of grass and see the lines of barbed wire that marked the limits of my claim. Didn't want to wait for assassins to crawl out of the tall grass, their rubber souls trampling the green shoots of the pipe-weed in the field. Was it so bad, after twenty years where only the army had been my home, to want to wake up in a warm bed, a tit the size of my head pressed against my face? To not feel the moment of dull panic, the sudden instinctive snatching of a pistol, ready to deal **** in a fraction of a second?

Azzie moved to straddle me. Our tongues played with each other as both her hands played with my tits. Small as they were, she loved my hard little nipples. Loved to nibble on my little berries. Hear the sounds I made. Trace the scars on my skin. There, an Orc knife that had skidded off a rib. There, a bullet that had nearly taken out my liver. There, along my spine, the neat even scars where the mithril wires were laid in.

Her hips moved as she dry-humped me, excited beyond reason—or perhaps that was her escape, her way to cope with the stress. I had no idea what fate awaited her if they actually captured her. Or how she had been raised. She had only hinted, only given me bits and pieces.

The cat did not mewl, even when hungry. Yet suddenly Búrzi was there, beside us, front paws on Azzie's thigh. The Uruk sighed as she pulled her face away from mine. Our eyes met. I felt like maybe the moment had come.

"Azzie...I don't like to pry. Into where you came from. But I need to know what to expect. Who these people are. How you're connected. If I'm to protect us."

She sighed. Her jaw worked, and the fangs poked up above her lower lips.

"Tonight. I can show you. If we jack straight across," she said.

I frowned. But I trusted her. I had to. I loved her.

"Okay," I said.