Majgen Ch. 011

"Majgen!" There was something sharp in the woman's voice, a new taint of fear that made the child stop complaining and pay attention to the woman in front of her. There was something different about her mother today.

"What do you do if an adult grabs hold of you?" her mother asked again.

"Ice-One-Fire-Ten, I say that and then I scream and try to run home," Majgen recited obediently.

"What do you do if the bracelet beeps a few times?" her mother asked next.

"I go home," Majgen replied automatically, her mother had rehearsed all this with her a multitude of times over the past year, and to a five year old a year was a very long time. Her mother took her other hand in hers too.

"And if the bracelet starts ringing?"

"Then I drop everything I am doing and run home as fast as my legs can carry me!" Majgen imitated the actions as vividly and enthusiastically as a five year old could, with two hands held.

"That's my girl," the woman said and pulled her daughter in for a hug.

"Muuuum, let go off me I wanna go play."

"Let the child go play honey, she knows how to use the bracelet," Majgen's father said, coming to her rescue. Majgen's mother managed to make herself let go off her child, who immediately started running towards the hallway.

"Majgen!" The child stopped upon hearing her name. "Make sure you don't leave the building."

"Muuuum," Majgen's father mimicked his daughter's newest manner of complaining, which encouraged the child to giggle rather than complain herself.

"I won't mum," Majgen resumed her run to the door once safely on the other side of it she raced to the elevator, to get to the building playground four apartment floors up.

"We will be ok, won't we?" Majgen's father asked his spouse, when their child was out of hearing range.

"I'm afraid, Lover, I'm very afraid. Soldiers and armed ships at Hawlun, they shouldn't have brought the war this close." The woman's concern was audible in her voice, now that her child was not present to hear it.

"What will the yijejos do?" her husband asked her, "You know them better than that reporter. After all you fought them as a GED-soldier for four years."

The woman could hear he was hoping for reassurances, but she was not willing to lie.

"Honey. If those battle-cruisers don't leave Hawlun very soon, the yijejos will most likely come and blast them to pieces, civilian losses disregarding. The hulls on those ships are far stronger than anything used to build Hawlun. If the yijejos destroy the ships by firepower then Hawlun and everyone in it will be destroyed too."

"Please don't say that, Lover," he said, looking at his usually so confident wife, needing her strength to fight his own fear.

"If we are lucky the GED-battlecruisers will take off before the yijejos arrive," she said, trying to give him at least a little of the comfort he yearned for.

"Isn't there anything we can do?"

"No, Lover. I'm sorry but all we can do is wait and hope the GED will make the right choice for Hawlun, there is no place in this mining habitat strong enough to resist blasts of the strength needed to destroy a battle-cruiser."

The couple watched the next hour of news-broadcasts in quiet.

"Yijejo ships are approaching Hawlun! There are four yijejoan battlecruisers within a detectable range," the local news station's studio reader sounded more agitated than afraid, maybe he had forgotten he, himself, was on Hawlun.

"Umbra-elleven-viewer-off," Majgen's mother said while getting on her feet, hence turning off the broadcast.

"What are you doing!" her husband yelled, "We need to watch that, we need to see what is going on!"

"No, Lover, we don't. This might be our last hours alive, we need to spend them playing with our daughter, not watching broadcasts."

"WE ARE NOT GOING TO DIE! WE ARE GOING TO STAY RIGHT HERE AND WATCH NEWS UNTIL EVERYTHING IS OK AGAIN!"

Calmly, Molean Rahan watched her husband while he screamed at her from the top of his lungs.

"Are you done?" Her neutral voice brought tears to his eyes. He knew his wife had been a soldier, he knew she had a hard core inside. He loved that part of her too, but to see her looking at him with the cold eyes of a professional killer, to see her looking like a soldier, right there and then, it was more evidence than he wanted that things would not be ok again, ever. He averted his eyes, to spare himself the vision of the retired soldier.

He nodded.

"Wipe your eyes, don't let our child see you that way," she ordered.

"Don't talk to me that way, I'm not a soldier, I'm a civilian," his voice shook, "if these are the last hours of my life I want to spend them with my wife, not a soldier."

"Wolfe..." She spoke his name sternly, but then hugged him tight instead. "I love you Wolfe," his name came out as a sob, "I love you so much Wolfe. There is no one else I'd rather spend the last hours of my life with than you and our child."

The couple held each other tight, each of them trying to keep their tears back so they could meet their daughter without reddened eyes. Then they went to spend time with their daughter, their gift of love to Majgen was an afternoon that became her childhood's last happy memory of feeling loved and safe.

----=(Soldiers)=----

The small family walked slowly headed for one of the park's exits. They had had the park to themselves for the hours they had spent there, most of Hawlun's population was at home watching news broadcasts. Majgen's mother had been surprised when she realised evening had arrived and Hawlun still stood around them.

'Maybe the GED-ships left in the last minute,' she thought to herself,'or maybe they are negotiating a partial surrender with the yijejos - while holding us all hostage.' She was sufficiently disillusioned to consider high-ranking GED officers capable of holding human civilians hostage against the non-human enemy.'I truly hope not, I don't think the yijejos will allow the GED to use civilians as a shield.'

A movement was caught by the corner of the former soldier's eye, she turned her head. Humans were running into the park from one of its other exits, some 200 metres away from her and her family. Her eyes narrowed as she observed the quiet runners.

'Disciplined fast running, each of them keeping one arm rigid down and sideways while running. Those are armed GED units.' She analysed what she saw while watching the runners spread out around hard objects of art.'Twelve armed GED units moving into a face to face defensive-aggressive sheltered formation, but they are not wearing uniforms.'

Majgen and her father had not noticed Molean getting distracted. They were looking at flowers at the other side of the path, which the family had been following.

Molean, mother, wife, lover and former soldier, felt her heart freeze with fear as the exit the armed soldiers had come from opened again and three armed yijejos stormed in. Per reflex she grabbed at her upper thigh for a weapon, her body had forgotten she had not been armed for years. She woke to conscious action when her hand found no weapon attached to her pants.

"Be quiet, both of you," she whispered as she turned and grabbed Majgen, lifting the five year old up as if she was still a toddler, "Be very very quiet, follow me Wolfe, as fast as you can, don't fall behind."

Molean started running to the exit they had been heading for, her husband followed without asking questions, his wife was not prone to acting irrationally.

When they came out of the park Molean explained the situation to her husband without slowing her pace.

"I saw armed GED-units in the park, and yijejos. The bloody shit-bucket GED-officers on the battle-cruisers must have ordered their units to hide amongst the general population." She took some breaths before speaking on, she could not afford to run out of breath.

"Now they are being chased by yijejos." Molean allowed herself to feel rage towards whichever imbecile had made such a decision, anything that could make her hormones flow and her blood pump faster from lungs to legs was helpful just then. "What were they thinking? Yijejos are dangerous in their ships, but in face-to-face combat they are a genuine nightmare." She stopped wasting breath on things her husband did not need to know.

"We gotta hide, the yijejos will probably try to avoid civilian losses, but since our soldiers took off their uniforms they might very well shoot any human on sight." Her words caused Wolfe to clench his teeth. He felt fear, anger and sorrow pump through him, but all that truly mattered to him was to keep his wife's pace, to not slow her down in her attempt to save the three of them.

They were running along a simple street hallway when death came around a corner behind them, noticed only by the child looking over her mothers shoulders.

The yijejo saw two humans running in a direction away from him, he instantly raised his electric pulse weapon and shot a wide stream charge. Before moving to his fallen enemies, he scanned the hallway for hidden opponents with both eyes and equipment.

'Two adults, one child,' he thought to himself,'probably civilians. Never mind that soldier, in war orders are orders.' He kneeled next to Majgen's father and stabbed him in the leg with the tip of a bioanalytical device. The device blinked white, meaning; analysis complete, result negative. He aimed his weapon at the unconscious man and shot him with a lethal charge.

He turned to Molean and pulled her unconscious body away from her child, while stabbing her leg with the bioanalytical device. As soon as it blinked white he killed her too. Then turned his attention to Majgen.

'That one is empathic,' he thought to himself, he could feel her emanations even though she was unconscious.'They are going to use it in the war if it is allowed to grow up.' He pointed his weapon at the small form, so much smaller than even an adult human, but he lowered his weapon holding limb without firing. Instead he activated his communicator.

"Soldier seventeen of unit thirty-two requests non-emergency instructions." The yijejo soldier spoke in his native language.

He moved to a side of the hallway and crouched while monitoring his equipment for thermal activity in his vicinity. He had no intentions of letting his guard down while waiting for a response.

"Speak soldier seventeen."

"I found a human empath."

"Net it and bring it to nearest rendezvous point, alive, for later interrogation," dispatch sounded annoyed at having to repeat what was part of the general orders for this mission.

"It is not adult," the soldier explained.

"Then leave it, if it is not adult then it is a civilian and has no useful information for us."

"Should I kill it?"

"No. If it is not adult don't kill it, you have orders not to kill children."

"When it grows up it will be strong enough to be called menaaiiion, they might use it against us in the war," the soldier protested, without conviction. He had no desire to kill the harmless little creature. With menaaiiion he had meant mentarion, a human word which yijejos were unable to pronounce properly.

"Right now it is a child, hence clearly a civilian and not a soldier in civilian disguise, leave it and leave it alive," dispatch commanded.

"Affirmative," the soldier acknowledged the order and moved on with his search find/or destroy mission, leaving Majgen alive next to the dead bodies of her parents.

*

Copyright of Nanna Marker (lit ID ellynei)

This does not say everything about what happened at Hawlun, but we can't stay in the past for too long at a time. I also want to tell what happens to Majgen next.

The feedback from chapter 9 and 10 has been amazing. I hope you will keep it coming. Constructive criticism very welcome too, though have to warn you, if you put a return mail on it I tend to write back and yapper away, and ask further questions too. (I guess I should have put that warning on back at 9 and 10.)