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Is it a bad thing to constantly be busy? Will the business become a distraction that takes our eyes off Christ? Pastor Rush Witt talks about finding hope in Christ, and explains why activities become distractions if we are running to those things constantly and they begin to capitalize our thoughts. What’s your go-to when you have downtime? Is it Christ or a distraction? Surround yourself with Christian people who encourage you to keep your eyes on Jesus. A strong Christian community is a key component of staying firm in the faith. There is always hope in Christ, Rush says. Look to He who overcomes rather than the chaos of this world.

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We need to meditate on the truths of the Word of God when we are feeling discouraged

We MUST look to Christ who overcomes in all things

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Escapism holds a powerful allure in every season and it’s important to recognize if we are pursuing escapism instead of Jesus

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Summer Camp Mayhem.

In 16 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ►Podcast at Connected.

 

The miracle is not a person jumping into a torrent to save another. It is the dozen who form a chain to pull them both out.

(Midnight in the Grotto of Good and Evil)

We

were in one of the underground pools at the bottom of the mesa. Our

tour guide had informed us there were nine known caves and the complex

had never been fully explored due to the remaining waterways being

totally submerged. It was well past midnight, all my little friends had

crashed out and I had wisely ditched my security after Miyako silently

woke me up with her hand over my mouth.

She

pulled my hand to her lips and sucked deeply on two of my digits. I

took this to be an indicator to me she was in dire need of loving. The

grotto was my idea. I was inspired by my desire to see her naked and I

couldn't risk a light source any place but underground. The tool shed

and garage lacked a certain appeal. The fuel depot and septic tank were

also ruled out.

"Is the chaos in your mind still raging, Cáel?" Miyako asked in Nipponese, with enough worry to doubly enhance her cuteness.

"Which

of the twenty-seven unexplained languages rolling around in my head do

you want me to answer you in?" my toothy grin barely visible in the

darkness.

Around

half way through my sexual enlightenment in college, I had a

revelation. The two guys I had gone road-tripping with took me to a bar

in Portsmouth. I caught a woman looking us over. I already had my

one-night stand lined up and she was looking most agreeable to my

nefarious skullduggery (i.e. she had come with some other guy who

preferred beer and darts with his buddies over keeping his attention on

what mattered).

And then my awakening.

"Nah,

she's too fat," he remarked. For one thing, my friend who said that

could have stood to lose ten to fifteen kilograms himself. Next, we were

dressed like middle class college kids, jeans, shirts that were most

likely clean when we picked them out of the laundry basket, light

jackets and the shoe thing.

This

girl was dressed up for a good night out. Nice makeup, her clothing

choices were, eh, not stunning, but this wasn't a stunning

nightclub/bar. She looked fun, she smiled and yes, she was overweight.

It dawned on me that not only did I not care, I never cared. I was a

sexual omnivore and that meant any lady interested in sex with me was

fine in my book.

So, I turned the tables on him.

"If

you can score her number, I'll give you my watch," I dared him. The

wristwatch was really nice, one of those $500 handmade German ones. One

of my Ex’s great-granddad had swiped it off some Nazi pilot in World War

II, and the same girl gave it to me twice. See, by accident, as I was

exiting the (thankfully) first floor window of the Natural Sciences

building, she threw a pitcher at me.

It

had been sitting in an ornamental display case close by. I caught it,

nodded to the flabbergasted female professor-type gawking at the

semi-naked me, handed her the projectile, then fled like the

responsibility-dodging coward that I was. It turned out that that bit of

crockery was from the mid-1600's; the woman I'd surprised was the

item's owner.

That

older lady wasn't a teacher. She was a major benefactor in charge of

one of the school's larger endowments. Had it shattered, the Ex most

likely would have been expelled. Instead, after watching me round the

Chancellor's residence, the mature chick turned to the totally naked

chick leaning out the window, still screaming at me.

"Is

he on the track team?" she inquired as she handed the artifact back.

They talked, agreed I was a miserable human being, a cad and had firmly

developed buttocks. Well, I guess that makes me a pig with nice hams.

The next day, I showed up to return the watch, it was just an excuse for

one more round of sex.

She

explained the whole incident to me, took back the watch and sent me on

my way. I hurried back to my dorm room, changed the sheets and picked up

a bit. An hour later she was quietly knocking at my door. Rather epic

make-up sex followed, she gave me the watch as a keepsake and I swore

off intercourse in classrooms for two whole months. I'm a tower of

resolute willpower, I know.

Back

at the bar, my buddy snorted, made some comment about her being

obviously desperate and promised me he'd nail in her in one of the back

rooms. They talked a little, he got 'friendly', then said something that

really hurt the girl's feelings. She looked our way, steadied herself

with a shot of bourbon and came over to me and my other bud.

"Did you tell that guy you would give him fifty bucks if I put a lipstick ring on his cock?" she confronted us.

"No,

I told him you were too good for him and if he could get your phone

number, I would give him this watch," I showed her the watch. The girl's

face flashed back to 'cautiously curious'.

"Is it a nice watch?" she asked.

"It

is a family heirloom. My great-grandpa brought it back from World War

II after taking it off some high ranking kraut officer," I embellished.

"I knew he didn't have a chance with you."

"Thanks," she grinned. "I agree. Let me get my sister and we can get a bite to eat." Sex.

Two

guesses of who her sister was. If you guessed the girl I had been

cultivating since I got there, you would be right. I am too damn lucky.

Lads, the next time you blow a sure thing, blame me for sucking all the

good karma away from you, and nine of your friends. I got a three-way.

The guy I made the challenge to, got his revenge. He bailed and I had to

hitchhike back to school. You know, female truckers, oh, back to

Miyako.

After

stashing our clothing and weapons (all of mine anyway), I took a small

fluorescent lantern and slipped into the water. Cold, but doable. Miyako

joined me and then, by moonlight, we swam to the point where the guide

had said we'd find a passage to a secluded grotto. Down we went. My

motivation wasn't sex.

That

was coming no matter what. Seeing my Nipponese sweetie completely nude

directed my course of action. Security protocols meant no lights after

11 p.m. My solution was to cut on a light that couldn't be seen from

outside, the grotto. We felt our way along the rather wide submerged

passage emerging well before air became an issue. I raised the lantern

and cut it on.

Our

tour guru had forgotten to mention that the algae patches along the

sides and bottom as well as the quartz veins on the roof and walls

reflected the light over what must have been an eight by ten meter

cavern. Gorgeous. We glided to a shelf that met our needs, climbed up

and shared a high school 'nervous virgin' moment. She broke the spell by

pulling herself out of the water and, standing on her tippy-toes,

touched one of the roof veins.

I

drank in every inch of my little ninja babe's lithe, finely tuned body.

Once she got over the newness of my voyeurism, she became playful,

giving me a variety of silhouettes and poses. I stripped and returned

the favor, which earned me a giggling fit. As I took a minute to sit

down and stare into the tranquility of the still surface, she snuck up

on me.

She

said it all with her eyes. I tried to speak, but she put a forefinger

to my lips. 'Hold me forever,' her eyes relayed her intentions. 'Love me

for all eternity and think of no one else but me.' My elbows were

locked, supporting my upper torso as she hovered over my lap. She was a

lone feather falling upon the unyielding stone.

We

took it in increments. A sigh more at home in whispered Nirvana than on

mortal tongues escaped her lips as she nestled all the way down. We

didn't fuck. We rocked back and forth in a timid motion.

As

Miyako became accustomed to me once more, she would lean farther back

with each pulse until an in and out rhythm was achieved. Experience had

taught me that was her more sensitive one. For several seconds, she

fought it before knowledge caught up with instinct, then she loosed her

passion.

After

her vibrations subsided, she rested her body tightly against mine. I

still impaled her and she was returning a fraction of that warmth.

"Do

you ever think you will find true love?" she whispered into my ear, in

Nipponese. I was drawing my finger through her damp hair as it trailed

down her back.

"As in love one over all others, no," I confided. "Even if I did, I could never admit it."

"Why not?" she asked in Mandarin.

In

French I explained; "My life is a mad race through the forest and I

don't know if I am a hound or the stag. I don't dare slow down until I

know, and that is no way to repay such devotion."

"When do you think the race will end for you?" she moaned softly, in English.

"I

would really like to hold a child of mine. I don't regret my life's

path up until now, yet I leave so very little of me behind if it ends

soon," I muttered in Nipponese, and then chuckled. "It used to be at the

first sign of a pregnancy test, I would panic. The World turns very

rapidly."

A minute passed as she went from warm to heatedly sensuous.

"Less

talk, more babies," she sacrificed her emotions for my well-being with

her oh so naught Baby Metal band voice and questing fingers. How could I

say 'no' to that?

"I don't think it works that way," I teased.

"Let's find out." She implored me in Nipponese

Sometime

later, I was lying on my back, Miyako's body extended over mine so that

not one precious inch of her touched the cool slick rock surface.

Considering our position and location, it took me a bit longer to notice

the intruder. I thought she was all kinds of strange. Twin memories and

perception joined forces for once.

The

woman moved through the water, yet she was only hip deep in a place I

knew the bottom was three meters below. As she entered our isolated love

nest, I noticed she had sent forth not a single ripple in the water.

Memory filled in the rest. Her eyes, when her gaze met my own, had that

void that comes from a tortured life punctuated by horrors you witness

as well as ones you are forced to perform.

That

was from "me". The electron swarm inside my mind provided another

crucial piece of the puzzle. Utukku, phantoms, dead denied entrance to

the Nether Realms, trapped between, until some sin had been lifted. The

spirit gave me a look of shock, then turned and fled.

"We are in danger," I hissed to Miyako in Nipponese, before cutting off the lantern.

I

dove in, angling for the tunnel we'd entered by. I was close enough not

to jab my fingers into the stone surface as I clawed my way through. I

didn't burst noisily to the surface on the other side. My approach was

that of an alligator, slowly letting my head crest the surface so I

could look around. No one was in evidence. Miyako was soundless at my

side as we scramble to the hiding place of our gear.

Miyako

held my hand back until she was sure our belongings hadn't been

booby-trapped. I had to make quick judgment call: how time critical was

this? I went the 'clothes and weapons' route.

"What is going on?" Miyako spoke quietly.

"Back

there, I saw a feminine Asian ghost and the last time I witnessed such a

pained, hopeless look, I was confronting the Seven Pillars," I told

her. "Their slave had that same doomed stare."

"There

are only two things here of value," Miyako made her assessment. "You

and the children. You are far more accessible in New York City, so it

must be the children." We pressed ourselves tightly to the cave sides

when we heard the sound of footsteps coming our way. It was Charlotte,

my minder for evening, with her bow notched and ready.

Firearms

were kept to a minimum after hours, so bows were the order of the day,

except for the snipers on the mesa top. My movements must have alerted

her. I sat down and continued dressing.

"Charlotte, the Seven Pillars know we are here, they know the camp is here," I told her.

"How imminent is the threat?" Charlotte knelt beside me. I didn't know.

"They must be close, to be making a reconnaissance of the caves," Miyako said with tactical certainty.

"It

was drawn to you, Charlotte, you were out of place, so this thing

looked further. Otherwise these caves are irrelevant," she added. Miyako

had the mindset of a seasoned professional spy.

"The cavern and spring have a night guardian," Charlotte countered. "I saw her when I was following you two here."

I had on my light bulletproof vest (no shirt), shorts (no underwear) and shoes (no sox).

"Let's go check on her to see if she's seen anything," I suggested/ordered.

What

I had assumed was some sort of bedroll brought by Miyako turned out to

be a Ninja Survival pack. This allowed me to weapon up while she dressed

up. The amount of time we were taking still ate at my nerves. Charlotte

stopped me from heading out first, only to be stopped by Miyako. The

ninja slipped out like a cool desert breeze.

(Friend, Enemies and those In Between)

Thirty

seconds later, a plastic BB bounced off my right shoulder. This time, I

was leading Charlotte out. No one spoke. We couldn't see Miyako anyway,

now dressed in her black pajamas and her face being reduced to just one

slit for her eyes. We found the Amazon dead at her post. She was in a

cunningly crafted blind not easily spotted from any direction.

A

quick sweep for 'gifts' left behind revealed nothing, but the corpse

yielded plenty. She was shot multiple times with two separate flash and

sound suppressed submachine guns. The woman had been alive when we came

down and if there had been a firefight, Charlotte would have heard the

shots, if not seen them; thus the suppression. The bullet holes

suggested a small caliber weapon.

Miyako

stepped up, held up three fingers. Every piece of the Amazon's gear was

still on her. The attackers had shot up her phone box. Wireless

communications were deemed too risky so all the outposts had buried land

lines. At this point, a few seconds of extra effort stood between the

Seven Pillars and success; that and the Goddess Paranoia.

Had

the assailants yanked up the box and cut the phone line, it would have

been rendered useless. Instead, they shot up the device and moved on so

that when Charlotte pulled out the cache of concealed goodies, including

the spare phone box, we were back in business. As Charlotte got to work

switching out the busted for the back-up, I studied our situation.

Advanced

teams taking out the perimeter guards, and most likely the snipers,

didn't make much sense. The camp had 300 highly motivated Amazons.

Cutting them off temporarily from their armory and vehicles didn't make

any sense, since all Amazons were armed anyway. That left timing. But

timing meant nothing if I didn't have the goal of their attack.

It

came as a double-whammy. The Chinese place a high premium on family and

the Seven Pillars had mastered a sadistic art form of turning young

foreign women into their concubine/assassins. The Condotteiri would have

slaughtered the entire camp. The Seven Pillars would want to kidnap the

children, both as current bargaining chips and as future tools.

500

girls, 400 could be kidnappable. The oldest would go down fighting with

their sisters. How did you get 400 kids out of here? Helicopters? That

would be a fuck load of helicopters taking out their team and the

children. Besides, helicopters alone couldn't dig them out of their cave

and cliff-face strongpoints.

Desert,

no waterways. That left the road. You couldn't use ATVs, not enough

carrying capacity. The smart move would be to have tractor-trailers

parked alongside the hard top state road. They would use smaller, more

rugged trucks to ferry their captives out to the semis. That suggested

some sort of 'cover/support' vehicles.

2

half ton trucks with weaponized Hummers providing fire support a la

'Blackhawk Down' and that meant the bridge and the BBQ pit. That

objective would solve both of the Seven Pillars problems, moving the

main assault group into close contact with the Amazons so the Amazons

couldn't organize a defense, and removing their hostages in a prompt

manner so they all could be gone before anyone else could react.

The

Seven Pillars had to have secured the bridge and were mostly likely

replacing the missing piers. It was the choke point of their battle

plan. Worse for them, it wasn't part of a barricade where they could

attrition the Amazon numbers with vehicle mounted heavy weapons. The

ditch ran north-south, bow shaped with the arch to the west and was over

a kilometer from the camp.

The

flanks were purposefully strewn with huge boulders that limited traffic

to horse and motorcycles, no four-wheelers. They had to have control of

the bridge, so that's where I went.

"Charlotte,

I'm going to the bridge," I whispered before slipping out of the blind.

I didn't order Miyako to follow me and I was sure Charlotte wanted

strangle me for departing from her protective custody.

There

are four kinds of fights, be they between armies, or individuals.

Set-piece (sparring), assaults, ambushes and meeting engagements. I was

about to be in the latter one. Meeting engagements happen when opposing

forces are set on goals that unknowingly intersect one another. One of

the most famous battles in US history, Gettysburg, was a meeting

engagement.

I

was using the bone-dry culvert because we feared the Seven Pillars had

replaced our snipers. Miyako was, somewhere else. The enemy commandos

used the same conduit to avoid having the remaining Amazon pickets spot

them and raising the alarm. I had little doubt that the three men

speedily moving south were heading for the grotto and its three

inhabitants (Charlotte, Miyako and me).

Not

knowing that I could both see ghosts and guessed who its demonic

masters were, they assumed we were still in the caverns. Me not knowing

how this whole ghost-scout thing worked, I assumed that I had a chance

of surprising them at the bridge if I moved fast enough. In a final

prick of irony, they misinterpreted the role their snipers played in our

engagement.

They

believed that their snipers would alert them if anyone moved on the

bridge, ignoring the fact that the snipers didn't have a complete view

of the gulch. I was only using the big ditch because I was afraid they

had taken out the Amazon snipers and now had the high ground, which

turned out to be true. Thank you, Goddess Paranoia.

My

first tomahawk was in my left hand and my Glock-22 was in my right. My

fear of snipers and the bend in the gully saved my life. We literally

ran into each other, me and the first 7P soldier. His long barreled

Type-05 was pointing past my left, his torso slammed into my pistol,

ramming his front armored plate against it as it discharged.

The

proximity muffled the sound of the gunshot. The bullet failed to punch

through his impressive body armor, but the resulting force knocked him

down and out. Unfortunately, our shared momentum knocked my gun out of

my grasp. My right hand went for tomahawk two. The flattened man's team

mates swung their submachine guns my way.

Halfway

through his shift, a black dart flew out of the western darkness, past

the first one, then snapped back. The action caused the hardy thread to

wrap around the barrel of his weapon. I couldn't see her, but I knew it

was Miyako with her flying wedge with the thread attached. The middle

guy was startled and not moving as his training dictated.

That

allowed me to use him as a shield against the third guy. Right as 7P #2

decided to release his weapon, I kicked him hard into the confused man

behind him. Neither man went down, but I still got what I wanted.

Guy

number three's main weapon was trapped to his right as I rushed his

left. Vainly he tried to get an arm up to defend himself. My right

tomahawk shattered his forearm at the elbow joint. Only the body armor

on the inside of the blow stopped the appendage from falling off. My

rational mind was catching up with my instincts.

These

men had on head-to-toe ballistic body suits with knee guards and solid

ballistic inserts for the front and back of the torso. They had on some

sort of dull, dark-grey respirator mask which was why the armless guy

wasn't screaming his head off. They also had matte black circular ear

protections and a type of high tech visor on the ears and eyes

respectively.

The

sole survivor was falling back, drawing his silenced pistol while

trying to put some distance between us and find Miyako at the same time.

Dummy, tomahawks are designed for throwing. A bit of Amazons

indignation was behind that toss. His visor was cut in two as my anger

drove the blade 6 cm/2+ inches into his skull.

I

heard a sharp crack of a rock being shattered. Miyako's graceful flip

landed her at my side. I ran to the last victim, put my foot on his

chest and put my right hand on the tomahawk's shaft. The guy reached up

and grabbed the thigh of the foot on his chest with both hands. Shit,

the fucker wasn't dead!

My

left axe came down, struck his right temple and his skull came apart

like a nitrogen frozen cantaloupe. I was sure I'd be downing a case, or

ten, of something potently alcoholic to bury that visual for the rest of

my life.

"They have definitely taken out our snipers," Miyako murmured.

"You

didn't have to do that. He was already dead. It was a nerve spasm."

Nerve spasm? He GRABBED ME, okay, in the instant replay it was more of

his arms flying up than an actual grab. The cracking rock was a

near-miss of my tender, sensitive ninja athlete. The fuckers must pay.

I

wasn't expecting mercy to be the rule of the day, but still, Miyako was

a ninja, not an Amazon. She was a bystander in our feud. In hindsight,

that was a totally irrational line of thought. My closest ally pulled

another of her wedges from somewhere and stabbed my first opponent in

the throat three times. I hadn't killed him, so she did. I reassessed

our situation. Our opponents knew we were up and about.

The

final southern stretch to the bridge was eight to ten meters of open

ground and the width grew to almost eight meters. I returned my axes and

unslung my shotgun, I had loaded it with slugs instead of shot. I am a

'one shot/letting you know I'm pissed with you' kind of guy. By sticking

to the eastern side of this gully, gulch, micro-canyon, we remained

immune to the sniper fire from the top of the mesa.

As

the bad guys were coming to the conclusion that their three-man troop

was being born away on black wings for a long-overdue, one-way trip to

Diyu (Chinese Hell), they realized we still needed to be dealt with.

Either the dying gasps alerted them, or they found a lack of radio

contact disturbing, I'll never know. Miyako and me, we sprang upon them

unprepared, but not surprised.

As

I had feared, they were shoring up the bridge with semi-portable

hydraulic jacks. That segment of their plan had barely reached its

conclusion so the seven battle-clad types didn't have their weapons up

and ready to fire. There was an eighth guy who was looking right at us

and two tortured ghosts flanked him. One was the female spirit I'd seen

in the caves.

That

guy had on less physical protection than the others for reasons I

couldn't fathom. It was a combination of oriental lacquered wood, metal,

ballistic cloth and silk sleeves and pants. It appeared to allowed

greater freedom of movement, but left his hands and head uncovered.

His bald Han head was covered with tattoos that screeched 'Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!' at me for no rational reason.

"Rènwù

wánchéng. Qù," the man snapped. The ghost I hadn't seen before took off

to the southwest. In that freeze frame instant, I could make out

semi-translucent erosions in the ghosts' bodies. They were frayed around

the edges. The best parallel I could draw was the way a sheet of fine

paper starts to curl around the edges in that first second it catches

fire.

Every

second in that perverse continuation was a further mutilation of their

essence. At the same time, the other seven guys went combat-unfriendly.

Shooting the fanatic sorcerer glaring at me served my sense for the

dramatic. I put a solid slug into the guy behind him, because he had his

back to me and couldn't see it coming, just like the SD ladies at the

range taught me.

Naomi

wouldn't clap me on the back for the hit. But she would have been

disappointed had I shot someone else, or missed. Doing my duty was the

minimal expectation. The 12 gauge projectile caught the man between the

C2 and C3 vertebra. It didn't matter if the slug penetrated his fancy

suit of body armor, the impact snapped his spine and severed his spinal

column.

One

down, seven to go. They were about to get their turn, but not before I

put lead in one more. This one saw it coming. He was also kneeling and

aiming my way. It hit him just below the knee-guard, snapping his tibia.

I threw my back into a groove in the gully wall. It was more Aya-sized

then muscle-bound me-sized. It had the benefit of being the best of a

bad lot of choices.

Dry

rock walls splintered, projecting fragments all around. A few stung,

but I had bigger problems. Bad things often come in threes and tonight

was no exception. First on the list didn't even involve me. A

fist-shaped divot exploded from the wall of the gulch across from me,

that sniper was shooting at Miyako who had moved to the east side of the

gulley.

My

secondary concern was the team of killers walking their fire into my

hiding place. Two or three were shooting at me so the others could edge

around for a clear shot. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do to

stop them. The tertiary issue was the chthonic ramblings of the Han

warlock.

Maybe

it was my imagination, or maybe my shelter really was decaying at an

accelerated rate. The rubble at my feet was inviting me to slip and fall

into the open. Of course, that line of thinking was superstitious

nonsense. Next time I was nearly killed I'd ask my goddess, Dot Ishara,

about it.

A

dozen firecrackers went off, the ditch flooded with a blinding light

and I ran for it. I even picked up a bullet along the way. Sweet Mother

Ishara! It was a searing burn along the back of my right thigh. I could

hear all the pain receptors on my left side rejoicing that for once, it

wasn't them squealing in pain.

The

far/west side of the ditch had a better niche to hide in with the

disadvantage being it would leave me open to sniper fire from the mesa.

I'd asked Rachel what her best shot had been. She was my detail's sniper

as well as its leader. 1.8 kilometers, then she'd promised me that any

shot over 500 meters was pretty much a crap shoot.

Oh,

I knew she was lying to me, but it was sweet of her to try. Now I was

hoping an elite Seven Pillar sniper would be daunted by a one

kilometer-distant target. I was feeling lucky. Actually I was feeling

like I had no choice, but being so screwed I had to trust in luck would

elicit more sympathy in the retelling. What I did know was that I had to

get under the bridge and waiting for those guys to run out of bullets

wasn't the solution.

I

knelt down as low as I could go, leaned out and started firing. The

Chinese gentlemen were nice enough to keep firing at my old hidey-hole,

their muzzle flashes clearly visible in the wispy ninja smoke. It was

more than I expected from a handful of tiny flash pellets. It was the

flash that had saved me. The smoke was a bonus.

I

fired at the target closest to the west wall. He'd have the best shot

at Miyako when she showed herself. Quick-firing meant I had to aim for

the center mass, their best protected region. I compensated by using the

'automatic' in my automatic shotgun. I switched to 'select fire'. Three

slugs hammered him back.

An

advantage of moving to my new cover was I cut down the range between us

to three meters. Was he alive? Most likely, but he was feeling like an

exceptionally malicious Red Cap had performed a River Dance on his

chest. The one next to that guy shifted toward my firing spot. He had a

half second on me. I'd give him this much, he knew his shit.

His

'shit' meant he had expended his mag and was putting in a fresh one

without missing a beat. Wiesława couldn't have been smoother, chambering

that first round flawlessly. Several successive hits from his rounds

walloped me back into the crevice even as I pulled the trigger. My

ballistic vest had saved me, though I had a whole new set of bruises to

explain to Rachel.

I'd

been aiming for the fuckers face mask, so odds were good that if my

first shot missed, so had the other two. My magazine had two shots left.

I went back to single shot and propelled myself out far enough to

invite more punishment. I was having an awesome firefight, compared to

the Seven Pillars hit-man I'd tried to kill.

If

you put three 12 gauge slugs into a person's jaw and throat at close

range, their head really does pop off, shades of the shootout at the

Medical Examiner's office. Of more immediate concern was Evil Han Wizard

guy looking right at me. Before I could squeeze of a shot some sixth

sense told me I was too late.

The

closest armored companion to his left had sprouted an arrow in the gap

between his underarm and chest plate. All three of us were shocked. Not

only were they both surprised to be dead, but the one arrow that had

done them both in had come from the west, away from camp. As the two

Chinese death-dealers harvested their own cursed reward, I saw the ruin

of the sorcerer's left ear.

That

was correct, someone shot Mr. Evil Tattoo-head through this skull and

punched into the second man's chest from the side, piercing his heart.

Yikes! Wilhelmina Tell? Then I got a clear look at the long, obsidian

shaft that seemed to suck in the light and at the fletching made with

oily black feathers donated from a bird that had never truly lived.

It

wasn't like there weren't dozens of people around willing to kill me.

What was one more? I had a bridge to sabotage and that Chinese warlock

had already sent the message, via the enslaved ghost, that the bridge

was secured for their cause. There were two more men to kill, so off I

went. There was another reminder I wasn't alone.

One

of the two remaining bad guys was being reacquainted with the gulch

being three meters high. He was kicking out his life, hanging from the

bridge while his companion was shooting into said pathway from below. I

had unfinished business to take care of. The man I'd crippled was gamely

bringing his QCW Type-05 to bear on me, so I put a round into his face.

Mr.

River Dance earned my final round into his respirator as he tried to

sit up. Whoops; left my Glock behind and I doubted my 38 could cut the

mustard against their body armor. Axes it was, proving I was an amateur.

To prove they were professionals, the hanging man flipped out a blade,

cut his noose and landed facing me. His remaining companion turned to

face me as well.

My

favorite ninja wasn't done yet. As the second man turned, Miyako

stepped from behind one of the false pylons and kicked the gun out of

his hands. The ex-hanging man had the choice of reaching for his dropped

Type-05, thus letting me chop him in the back as he bent over or, draw a

sword?

I

was a tad curious why he didn't draw his silenced pistol until I saw it

lying next to his submachine toy. Go Miyako! He'd dropped his big gun

when she snared him and she'd somehow knocked the pistol out of his hand

when he went for that next, most likely to shoot her as she was

securing his necktie to the bridge. The sword it was then.

'Jian'; I yanked that memory from somewhere along with a blitzkrieg quick montage of its proper use.

'Phifft,

phifft, phifft, Yeow!' came from under the bridge, followed by a

high-pitched whistling noise. That would be Miyako disabling a hydraulic

jack with a silenced pistol, then having the other bad guy knock it

from her grasp. New villain plan:, team up. It was a good plan. They had

Miyako on one side and me on the other.

By

using internal lines of maneuver, they could double-team one us, then

turn to fend off the other. All they had to do was keep us from

destroying the other hydraulic jacks. Miyako didn't have a gun and I had

two tomahawks. Help for them was on the way. Counterplan, Miyako

disappeared. New villain plan:, rush me.

It

was two 4ft double edged blades versus two tomahawks. Unlike earlier

skirmishes against less skilled foes, these two had perfected their

teamwork. They were fighting me, keeping an eye out for Miyako

(vis-a-vis the snipers) and they utilized their individually superior

fighting skills to preclude anything but a desperation defense on my

part.

Their

added bonus was that I would soon be a target for said sniper(s). Alien

memories came crashing in. I didn't fold up. This wasn't at all similar

to my fight with Caprica. There was no neurological turf war. My

survival warranted a temporary cease-fire between the foreign and

homegrown thought patterns. I didn't chop them up into sushi. Hell, I

didn't even hit them.

I

was getting in some swings though and that mattered. What mattered more

was a sudden urgency in their attacks. Then, over the humming of steel

on steel, I heard footsteps coming on fast and the tell-tale sound of

high caliber rounds chewing up the real estate. By the Holy Seven

Martial Goddesses of the Host, no matter how many times I would later

rewind that memory, I didn't know how she did it.

My

savior knew precisely where the leftmost combatant was. He expertly

spun to face her, ready to parry and counterstrike. Her blade was, a,

the bastard offspring of a Claymore and Dao, the other Chinese white

meat, I meant the other traditional steel sword design of China. At

first glance I thought that heavy SOB would be impossible to wield

effectively in a sword fight.

The

blade alone was 5ft, with too much weight in the top third. I was

willing to bet the Seven Pillars special operations soldier was thinking

the same way, until her two-handed downward hack powered through his

overhead parry as if his steel Jian blade was nothing more than a

marshmallow stick. The blow sliced off his ear, severed his collarbone

and drove the front and back hard plates down below his crotch as she

plowed through his ribcage.

She

finished off that display by fluidly following through with the strike

so that her blade pulled effortlessly free of his corpse. The last guy

didn't lose his professional resolve. He tried to put himself between

both of us and the bridge. He successfully deflected the stranger's next

blow by switching to a two-handed grip as well. That opened him up to

me and I promptly chopped down into his left shoulder joint which ripped

open his arm with a gush of blood.

He

didn't have the strength left to fend off her next strike. She took his

right arm clean off. I put my left handed axe to use and slashed open

his throat.

"Bridge,"

I indicated as I ran to its relative safety. "We need to knock out

these devices." The jacks. I was a little worried she wouldn't

understand the technology.

"There

is a large convoy coming this way," she grumbled after she joined me.

"There are also four small helicopters hovering out there, waiting for

the signal to attack." So much for needing the History of Modern Warfare

update. "These," she looked around to the job at hand, "I don't know."

"I've got it," Miyako appeared.

"Smash

these two tablets together and you'll get a rather destructive acidic

reaction," she handed out blue and yellow marbles to me and, well, our

newfound non-enemy wasn't interested. The ninja and I got to work. She

was faster. In my defense, she'd trained for this and I had a sinking

feeling whatever acid this combo made was equally hazardous to my flesh.

"You are bleeding," the warrior woman snuck up on me.

"Got

shot. Hazards of the profession," I joked dryly. The hydraulics sounded

off a final, fatal objection. The bridge beams began to creak as the

upward pressure ceased.

"What exactly are you?" she persisted. She almost shook my shoulder to get my attention.

"Currently

I am a highly indignant 'attempted murder' victim," I murmured. That

was stupid of me. I already knew she had a temper problem. "I cannot

adequately explain my status to you 'mukīl rēš damiqti', which

translates as ‘guardian angel’ in Hittite, in the time allotted before

battle is rejoined."

"There is no way you are 'Hatti Lu' (a man of the Hatti), so how do you speak this tongue?"

She

punctuated her bullish attitude by putting her shoulder into one of the

disabled jacks and knocking it over. Miyako bounced a pebble off of my

shoulder to get my attention. I followed her gaze to the mesa. A

tripwire flare had gone up. A quick guesstimation put it halfway up the

mesa's rock pile; three-quarters of the way to the first buildings.

From

a command decision standpoint, this had all the hallmarks of the

quandary facing Admiral Nagumo at the Battle of Midway. Things were not

working out as planned for the I.J.N. (Imperial Japanese Navy), yet the

prospect of completing the mission, the destruction of the US carrier

fleet was possible.

For

the Seven Pillars leader, the situation was similar; his assault teams

had penetrated the Amazon defenses and were on the verge of separating

the Amazons from their heavy weapons. Or so he thought. Thanks to

Charlotte, the Amazons had been able to assemble a partial response.

It

wasn't perfect, but it put forth a far stronger defense than their

attackers had originally envisioned. Caprica and her patron goddess

Paranoia had planned for this near-disaster. The flare wasn't set off by

the Seven Pillars infiltrators. Caprica had it set off to both signal

the rest of the defenders to their rally points and put the leader of

the main, road-bound attack force on the horns of a dilemma.

If

he pressed the attack, a vicious firefight was in the offing. If he

pulled back, he could pull his snipers off the top of the mesa, but his

assault team's infiltrators were fucked. They were outnumbered and there

was no place to run and hide before the Sun came up. In the end, all

the glory and infamy fell on Miyako's and my shoulders. Charlotte had

convinced Caprica that I WOULD take the bridge.

The

Seven Pillars' leader was convinced that his soulless mystic and ten

elite troopers could dispose of me, Miyako and Charlotte. Had it not

been for the unexpected party crasher, he would most likely have been

right. His final deciding factor may very well have been 'hell, I'm

already this close to victory'.

For

Caprica, her 'Tar Baby' approach was based on her blast zones being

alive and kicking. Being buried under a centimeter, or two of loose

gravel and equipped with 'pop up' sprinkler heads, the ghosts hadn't

picked up on them during their recon. That left me, my new buddy and

Miyako kicking out struts under the bridge in the middle of the BBQ pit

with the added incentive that no other Amazons could see, or communicate

with us.

If

we were still there when the enemy arrived, we'd be cooked along with

everyone else. That left us in a frantic hurry to knock out the last

jacks as we heard the sound of that sizable convoy coming our way.

Simply hiding farther down the gulch wasn't going to work. The whole

place was about to be roasting our chestnuts at around 300C/575F, spiced

up with its napalm-like reputation.

The

last jack went down under our combined effort. I was making up my mind

about which abysmal exit strategy to embrace when the ghost distracted

me. She'd never gone away. Since I was the only one who could see her,

it hadn't been a problem. Now she knelt beside the unloving example of

why you only have your ear pierced by a professional, ear piercer, and

was clawing at his remains futilely.

At

first, I thought it was some sort of revenge, a 'beating on her

tormentor' kind of thing. It wasn't. She was trying to grab some

material object in her otherworldly hands. Love more than hate. I ran

out, grabbed up his body and dodged back under the bridge. I guessed the

snipers were busy elsewhere at that moment.

The

ghost came along, indicating there was something close to his chest she

wanted. I yanked up three chains from under his torso ballistic vest.

There were three tiny glass reliquaries attacked to the ends. The ghost

looked at me with pleading eyes.

"Those are talismans of Gong tau," Miyako whispered; Chinese black magic.

"Those

are finger bones," the friendless one added. Smashing them seemed like

the sane thing to do. Pamela wouldn't have liked that excuse. I held up

each trinket before the ghost. The first one, nothing. The second one,

pleading. The third one, nothing. I had to be sure. I smashed the second

one. The ghost's shape rippled then began to fade.

She

willed herself to continue for a few more seconds of torment. She said

something in a language I didn't understand (it turned out to be

Vietnamese) then repeated it in Mandarin. 'Thank you'. There was a

twinkle in her eyes. She had one last, mad act of defiance to hurl at

the people who had defiled her body and lacerated her soul.

We

would never know for sure what she did. I had a sneaking suspicion she

flew back to the Gong Tau practitioner with the convoy and humbly told

him everything was 'A-Okay' at the bridge. He relayed that message to

the Unit Commander. The Commander took it as gospel because their

enslave spirits didn't have a choice, but to tell them the truth, right?

All

we knew for sure was fifteen seconds after she left, the whole line of

light armored vehicles and trucks accelerated. I wrasseled up a Type-05,

a spare clip and three grenades.

"We

need to get out of here," the stranger stated. "Follow me." The white

horse hair plum on her helmet whipped around and she began running to an

easier path to the exit the ditch, to the west. The 'tons of enemies

coming at us in a big way' west. She climbed up to the lip and peeked

over.

"What are we doing?" I grumbled at her as I admired her kilted posterior from below.

"If

I have this correct, the ditch is about to become an impassible barrier

after a few vehicles go crashing in. We will need to circle around and

kill the people in the last one so the rest can't escape." The two of

us? Miyako had vanished again.

"I love this plan," I groused. "Me, you and a Miyako Monkey holding off how many hundreds of guys."

"If

you are scared, feel free to run away," the stranger sneered. "I wasn't

planning on you being useful anyway." I made a quick assessment of my

resources.

Glock-22,

check; I'd dropped it. USAS-12, check; I'd dropped that too. My 38

versus their body armor, check; useless. A nifty Chinese Personal

Defense Weapon/SMG I had no experience with, three grenades, it took me a

second to access my Mandarin library, 308-1 (that was of no help), one

big knife, one small knife and four tomahawks.

"Try

to keep up, Gimli," I scoffed. "I bet I'll kill more than you. Loser

buys the winner a night's worth of koumiss." Chicks dig Legolas, nuff

said.

"What

is that? It sounds vile," she snorted. The vehicles were getting close.

Jumping up and trying to run past them at this point was a great way to

feed the vultures.

We had to wait until the pile-up began and confusion reigned.

"Chilled fermented mare's milk. You'll love it," I joked.

"It

doesn't sound vile. It sounds wretched," she corrected herself. Two of

the small helicopters flew over us, racing to aid their comrades already

inside our perimeter.

In

their wake, came some hybridized Hummer/Jeeps, including the guy at the

swivel mount of what could have been an automatic grenade launcher. He

was traveling so fast he almost made it, ALMOST. The bridge had a

built-in dip and as the force and weight of his vehicle hit that dip,

the entire eastern end of the bridge gave way.

Even

then, the bottom of his front bumper hit the lip of the far abutments.

So close. That momentum kept on trying. The vehicle's rear end rose up

and for a second, I thought they were going to flip all the way over. It

didn't. The problem was that like Special Forces world-wide, they had

clearly trained for this mission.

Seven

Pillars commandoes had worked out every detail of their plan, which

included racing through the night, bumper to bumper, so they could reach

their destination and deploy before the enemy could pin them to their

transports. Only the Unit Commander could execute the plan, or call it

off. It was an 'either/or' decision. Once he unleashed his hounds, all

bets were off.

Thus

everything hinged on the lead scout spotting danger in time to

communicate the threat for the whole unit to react. Such a formation

ensured rapid deployment, yet it really impeded your ability to slam on

the brakes if needed. Like right at that moment when they needed to

avoid the disaster overtaking the ride directly in front of them. It was

the downside of this assault's calculated risk.

The

second hybrid-weapons platform nearly knocked the first one over. The

driver, with lightning reflexes, had instinctively hit the brakes

instead of the gas. Faster would have slammed him into the undercarriage

of the first ride. Braking, not much better. The third driver

apparently had a different driving philosophy.

He

yanked his wheel to the right and gunned it. Had he not clipped the

bumper of the second roadster, but he did, resulting in him flying over

our heads and into the rock wall across the gulch. The fourth landed on

top of the second, only to have the first finally come down and land on

him. Momentarily, that was a good spot for vehicle one as it now was

level with the lip of the ditch.

But

wait, there was more. First off, Friendless and I took off, running

past the doomed convoy as fast as we could. A few of the armed guards in

the follow-up 2 1/2 ton truck glanced our way, but they had more

pressing concerns, like bracing for impact. Had they possessed a spare

moment, they might have been concerned about what we were running from.

The

driver of the first truck could see the unfolding fate of the fighting

vehicles ahead. He swerved to the left, aiming to skirt the edge of the

gully, but he had too much forward momentum. The truck flipped the lip,

landing upside down. The pain of this uncoiling serpent wasn't over. The

first truck had a clear view of the fate of the members before it.

The

trucks behind the first didn't. Even as communication warnings flared,

physics was playing hell with the Seven Pillars' column. The trucks were

bigger, so they needed a longer distance to stop, and the craftily

designed Amazon roadway didn't aid that. The final approach to the camp

was an 'L' that went from southwest-north to due east at the

half-kilometer mark.

That

slowed down would be attackers enough so the watching Amazons could

figure out what to do with you, yet left you enough space to accelerate

to an unsafe speed. This left the trucks piling up around the collapsed

bridge. The instant the first truck stopped short of disaster, the

sadistic sister observing the fiasco hit the first switch and out came

the sticky accelerant.

Their

respirators must have given the troopers a few more seconds of not

knowing what else was going wrong. With their enlightenment came the

running. No one screamed because they couldn't (their facemasks). Half

the Amazon naphtha remained a clingy liquid while the other half turned

to vapor. Instant Incendiary Inferno! The initial earthshaking explosive

force was followed by multiple secondary and tertiary detonations.

My

erstwhile ally and I picked ourselves off the ground and resumed our

footrace to the last in the line-up. She stopped, drew back her bow and

took aim. I didn't. I had a PLAN that required me to get just a bit

closer. The second to last vehicle, like the last, had a man standing up

at a swing mount. He pointed his vehicle-mounted grenade-launcher my

way just in time to take a black-fletched through the sinuses.

The

gunner in the last car barely had time to register he was under attack

when she killed him as well. When the trucks began slamming on their

brakes, the fighting vehicles did too. Braking distance, a slight gap

opened up between the last truck and the last two guardians. The rides

were four-doors with a rigid top and a fold-down trunk.

The

Seven Pillars commandoes flowed into action even as the last of the

dust was being kicked up. Ranged death was coming from their right, so

the left rear passengers in each vehicle dismounted. The right side rear

guy, pulled down their dead gunner and prepared to take his place. Me?

My plan required me to get a tiny bit closer! I bolted for the nearer of

the two targets.

I

swung the gun aside, pulled out one of my brand new grenades and pulled

the pin. Was that four seconds, or six? Come on Hollywood, get your

fiction straight! My right foot was on the bumper, the left went on the

hood, right on the roof and down went the grenade. If this bitch was a

smoke grenade, I was so boned.

At

the moment, the dead gunner had just been dragged down into the cabin.

Before he could be replaced, the grenade bounced down among them. One

toy down, two to go. I kept running on top of the vehicle. By the way,

the trucks 'behind me' had Special Forces fighters in them. Woot! The

shear insanity of my action bought me precious steps.

Off

the back of the first hybrid killer and onto the hood of the second.

The rear-left passenger would have been shooting me dead except he'd

sprouted a throwing dart in his visor and was pitching forward off the

slightly elevated road and rolling down the slope. I pulled the

grenade's pin too soon, whoops!

The

poor bastard wasn't even dead. He had a steel wedge shoved into his

ocular groove though. The pain had to be intense. My Miyako was out

there, somewhere, still watching over me. I went from the hood to the

roof of the last hummer. As I ran across the top, down went grenade

number two and, the 308-1 grenade is not made in China. The Seven

Pillars stole the design from the US Navy SEALs.

In

fact, the 308-1 is referred to as the 308-1 NAPALM grenade (my emphasis

is on the 'N+' part) in the US inventory. 'Arinniti's burning heart,

what a horrible way to die' was replace by 'they were going to use these

on my Amazons, the fuck-wads'. As I dove headlong off the end of the

second vehicle, another 'little' problem arose. If you recall, the first

victim's weapon mount was an auto-grenade launcher. The after-battle

evaluation indicated the Seven Pillar's team brought way too much spare

ammo to be remotely safe.

The

resulting explosion gave me a heck of a tail wind mid-flight. The

fireball chasing after me made any calculations of distance irrelevant

to my immediate survival. Suffice it to say, I did land, rolled with the

impact and wasn't crippled. The second ride/the rearmost one? The blast

shoved it down the road after me and twisted it sidewise, then it blew

up.

They

had a 'Hua Qing' Mini-gun onboard (why does Delilah knows so much about

Chinese weaponry? I'm not sure) plus a great deal of machinegun ammo.

Until that point, Gimli had a chance of humiliating me in the body count

race. The explosions rained shrapnel everywhere and propelled a flaming

engine block into the truck in front of it.

Twelve

more guys plus the driver and the guy riding shotgun. Four plus three

and a half for two fighting vehicles, I was sharing the blinded guy with

Miyako. I was looking even better if she let me include the ones I

killed pre-wager. I was also cultivating a full-body bruise. I was

morbidly curious if the soles of my boots had melted, because I was

feeling a bit singed.

Cover?

I had some. It was most likely pointless. There was a shit-ton of dead

bodies and ruined equipment between me and any combat effective enemy. I

saw a beam of light come up from the camp. Turned out it wasn't a beam

of light; it was the fiery tail of a woman-portable surface-to-air

missile. The exploding helicopter clarified the confusion for me.

Moments

later, a second streaking flame sought out another helicopter, this one

clearly veering away, too late. More fiery death. From the former

middle of the column, three of the hybrid fighting rides pulled off the

road and headed south. Escape wasn't that easy. From somewhere close to

the bead workshop, a thin tip of flame (it was coming at me) reached out

and punched the lead vehicle.

I

was moving up in the world. I could now honestly claim to have seen

what carnage a 90mm rocket could do, courtesy of an expertly aimed

M79-Osa. The explosion nearly ripped it in two and tossed both halves my

way. The remaining two split up and made a run for it. As I watched

them speed away, Miyako came up and lay on her stomach beside me.

"Many

of their warriors yet live. They will be making their way on foot to

some sort of gathering point, if their masters allow it," she told me.

"Seen

our 'friend'?" I asked. She shook her head. "I think I've put Rachel

through enough for one night," I added with a sigh. Miyako pulled down

her mask long enough for me to see her smile.

I

had done right by my people and my friends. Calamity had called me to

battle, yet in the end, I was Rachel's burden to bear. Her first job was

to safeguard me and I wasn't letting her do that job by running around

out in the dark, hunting down trained killers. Maybe Miyako was warming

up to the idea that our child and I would meet face to face one day.

Since

most of the enemy soldiers were slipping away to the south, we circled

around to the north. Of my temporary ally, there was no sign. As the

eastern sky began to lighten, I shattered the last two reliquaries. I

hadn't done it earlier out of fear that freeing the ghosts would alert

our enemies to the extent of our knowledge. Now a desire for them to be

free meant more.

(Aftermath and Alliances)

Sunrise

bore a dual bane for the Seven Pillars troopers. Their armor, while

impressive, was both very stifling and black. Many dumped it and went

around in their underwear and t-shirts. Having left the stables alone,

they were now being hunted down by Amazons on horseback and guided by

four small UAV's (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles).

It

wasn't vengeance. That would come later. The more men they killed now,

the less intelligence their enemies could wring from the survivors. The

priority was evacuation and the conundrum was: 'if the Seven Pillars

knew about the camp, what did they know about possible Amazon exit

strategy?' Enter Special Agent of the FBI Virginia Maddox. It was a long

shot. And that Caprica allowed it, showed the depths of her concern.

Javiera

Castello ran a multi-agency task force centered on the criminal

presence of heavily armed mercenaries gunning it out with civilians and

police in Chicago. That opened some doors for her, though her precise

authority was limited. It was a 'friend of a friend of a friend' deal,

what she needed was elements of the US Air Force and the US Air National

Guard.

I

don't know whose cocks she sucked, pussies she licked, asses she

kissed, or who she promised her 'first born' to, but she arranged for

air transport of 300 Amazons, destination: anywhere between Panama and

Alaska, Canada included. We could all see the decision eating at

Caprica's heart. Both St. Marie and Katrina left the final call with

her. She was the leader on the spot.

200

of the youngest and 80 Amazon warriors would take the offer of aid. In

four hours, local, state and federal authorities would be crawling all

over this place, so the majority of us had to be gone. Sophia and a

handful of others, including the worst wounded, along with Virginia

would stay behind to face the music.

The

rest of them would break for the northeast and the Kaibab Indian

Reservation. There was no agreement between the Amazon and Kaibab

people. They had been quiet neighbors for a hundred years. Before then,

the Southern Paiutes suffered considerably from the slave raids of the

Navaho and Ute.

One

winter, shortly after the establishment of an Amazon freehold in the

region, slavers grabbed an Amazon girl by mistake. The freehold tracked

the Navaho through Kaibab lands. Seeing that the Amazons were going to

get back their 'tribe' member and missing several of their own people

recently, the Kaibab offered to help.

Neither

side talks about the vengeance the Amazons subjected the Navaho to. It

took the Navaho eight years to return to the Kaibab lands. This time,

the tribal leaders asked the Amazons for help and help they got. The

Navaho didn't get their raiding party back. When they went looking, they

found the corpses hung from trees by their own intestines and their

testicles and phalluses stuffed into their mouths. Some really sick

bitches.

The

Navaho never came to the Kaibab lands after that. From that day

forward, the two groups had developed an understanding. If some outsider

group threatened the Kaibab, the Amazons, acting in their own

self-interest, would help out. Beyond that, it was live and let live,

until this day. The Amazons were in desperate need and only the hundred

or so Kaibab could help.

Why?

Another aspect, rarely discussed, went much more to the creeping fear

among all the camp guardians. If the Seven Pillars' ghosts found the

children once, they could do so again. In the Kaibab lands were a series

of old, old religious sites, sacred to the spirits of the land and the

Kaibab ancestors. Caprica was going to the aboriginal inhabitants for

mystic protection.

Two

ATVs head sped ahead to open negotiations. For the rest, it was

rounding up what we could carry and destroying what we couldn't. The

fifteen, sixteen and seventeen year olds took over security. The

thirteen and fourteen year olds prepared to be pack mules for the camp's

goods. The ten, eleven and twelve year olds corralled the youngest for

their transport to the assigned airfields.

Me?

I was being sent back to the remote airfield and heading home. A quick

meeting of minds allowed me to take Aya and her Squirts with me. Asking

any of my Security Detail to remain behind? They all wanted to, but

their duty was to stick by my side. Europa and Loraine hugged Aya and me

before returning to their duties.

Virginia

stayed because the camp had become a crime scene. She would catch up

with me when Javiera could replace her as lead investigator. Delilah and

Miyako were leaving with me. I had one last thing to take care of

before leaving. I went back to the site of the convoy slaughter. A few

dozen meters to the south I found what I was looking for and more.

I found two dead men with a black shafted arrow in each. This time I had my entourage (minus Virginia) with me.

"Target,"

Tiger Lily spoke softly. She'd brought her FN-P90 up and aimed at the

stranger. In the morning light, she cast a far more frightening figure.

"Rachel, I would like to talk to her," I 'suggested' to my chief bodyguard.

"Sure," Pamela joked. "She's all pom-poms, pastels and Puppy-love."

"Information,

please," Rachel inquired of me while watching the tall woman draw

close. She had taken off her archaic, white hair crested helm. Her braid

undone; her loose black mane was already plastered with sweat.

"She

is the Friendless, Queen Shammuramat of Assyria, traitor to the Host,

murderer of her twin sister and under a sentences of death."

"Oh, and here I thought we had survived this battle," Charlotte mused dryly.

"Come on, Charlotte," Pamela snorted. "She's an old chick. How tough can she be?"

Had anyone a hostile look to spare, they would have tossed it Pamela's way.

"We have unfinished business, you and I," Shammy glared.

Her

arms and armor were equally archaic seeming yet, I felt the design had

incorporated techniques and materials not available when the original

was crafted.

The attentiveness of the ladies around me cruelly amused her.

"Let's return to my camp. We can drink water and eat some breakfast," I evaded.

"No," she snapped. "I want to know who you are and I want to know now."

"Neither my hostess nor I are bound to your timetable," I grinned.

"For

that matter, I know you don't have a timetable." I balanced that

thought with, "Meet with the Amazon whose prestige you helped save. This

was a gathering place for the young of the Host and you are not here by

accident, I'd wager."

"I am not of the Host," she growled.

"You

are telling this to a guy, you know?" I countered. "Take an extra hour

out of your life. Eat and drink with me and I will answer what I can."

"Fine,"

she grumbled. "It is already hot and the Sun hasn't even begun to cook

me." As we headed across the bloody, stinking burned out ruin of a

landscape, I caught Shammy looking around in a haunted fashion.

Tiger

Lily went ahead to give the bare basics to Caprica. This was more than a

matter between the Friendless and me. After the water and a dry

breakfast, the introductions went around, me last of all. The stage was

set, the players were in their spots, and it was up to me to screw this

up.

"I am Cáel, Head of House Ishara, and I come with a pledge of peace," I said as I approached with empty hands.

"I

do not want your peace, " she punctuated with disdainful laughter,

"Ishara? Groveling is your specialty, not mine. Bow before me and I will

press my sandal upon your neck," Shammuramat scoffed. That meant make

me her slave. Nope. I'd been dodging that fate for way too long (was it

two months already?)

"Stick

your foot in my direction, it better be because you want a foot

massage, Princess. Falling down has never been my problem. Staying down

when I should give up on the other hand, it simply isn't me."

"If it makes you feel better, I will kill you standing up," her inner wolfishness came forth.

"I would rather you kill me on my death bed, say in 70 more years," I grinned.

My bravado made Shammy smirk.

"You aren't the gloomy Isharans I have dealt with before. Your tongue is rather glib," she casually noted.

"Why, thank you," I kept things positive.

"It wasn't a compliment. I find your pedantic nature annoying," her non-violent mood was dissipating.

"Before

passing your final verdict on my tongue, give me ten minutes in private

to convince you of its multitude of other uses," my fearlessness

riposted.

"Boys with pink lips do not interest me," her eyes narrowed.

"Me

neither. See? We are already finding common ground in less than five

minutes. Give me another century and I'll have 'letting him die slowly'

off your list of possible ways for me to go," I proved I wasn't going

away.

Shammy allowed, then crushed, a tiny smile.

"Last

chance, Isharan, Ishara. I only came here to present my challenge to

the current High Priestess. I have a pathetic, contemptible bit of filth

to deal with," Shammy declared. She was referring to her death

sentence.

Normally,

the High Priestess was the final source of reprieve, but I got the

feeling Shammuramat was committed to spilling a sea of Amazon blood to

force her way to a pardon.

"There is no High Priestess. She took herself to the cliffs eight days ago."

"That

was exceptionally insipid. What made her do that? I smell the copper

taste of blood and burning stench of flesh on the wind. There is a war

coming," she glowered.

"Too bad you are going to miss it," I sighed.

"Unlike you, I do not desire to talk my enemies to death," was her chosen insult.

"Due

to your limited vocabulary, consistently bad attitude and onerously

boring desire to have a one-track conversation, we should all count that

as mercy."

"The

only mercy any of you will see from me is knowing you have died a

warrior's death," she threatened. As a man with a long history with

angry women and a more recent bout with casual killers, I counted her

continuing to talk, not kill, as a victory. Women lie all the time, very

often to themselves.

"I

can balance your gift of mercy with a gift of mercy of my own," I began

chiseling away at her desire to return to the red, red haze of battle.

"I do not need your mercy, Ishara," Shammy answered.

"I am not talking to you, Shammuramat. I am talking to Anat." If looks could kill,

"I

care nothing for Anat. They turned their back on me long ago," she

spat. Having died in shame, she had no clue that all her descendants had

long passed into extinction. She, like yours truly, was the last

'survivor' of our line.

"Your reckless self-loathing is appalling, Shammy," I grinned. She was PISSED-OFF!

"I am Shammuramat, Warrior-Queen of Assyria, Mother of Kings, She who slays all who oppose her. I do not need, "

"You are, " backhand. Oh, I saw it coming and was able to bend with the blow. It still hurt like a mother-fucker.

"They need you, Shammy, " earned me an open-palm slap that attempted to snap my cervical spine.

"That's two, Bitch," Pamela sounded bored. "Wind up for another, the gratitude ends and the slaying resumes."

"For

someone who has clearly never found the courage to take that long

overdue trip to the cliffs, you have developed a sudden distaste for

living," she said to Pamela.

"Think

so, Shammuramat? I have gone to the cliffs and come back from the dead

ahead of you, and certainly with more insight and wisdom.

Before

you give us another teaspoon of your arrogant disdain, take a good look

at the man who stands before you, a really good look."

Pamela

was constantly educating me in Amazon lore, 'know your enemy' being a

recurring mantra. In that case, I couldn't blame her for withholding a

certain someone's history. No, not Shammy's. No, she meant to tell me,

yet withheld that crucial tidbit because of my still fragile mental

state and the impact she feared it would have. It turned out she was

right to do so.

All

three of us were bushwhacked by circumstance. Despite her general

tendency to take no one's council, Shammy gave me a second, far more

intense scan. She'd already felt something she couldn't identify when

she was around me. Her Amazon 'stillness' and single-minded devotion to

her mission had repressed her desire to dwell on those instincts.

I've

been told that gay men go through the same emotional yo-yo crap that we

straight dudes do. I was starting to think those people had been lying

to me.

'White

Hair' Shammy whispered to me a nonsensical yet passionate sobriquet in

an Akkadian tongue she had no reason to think I knew.

Her

face lost its rock-hard contempt for all life and became one of shocked

recognition, love and sorrow. I was her 'White hair' and by that, I

knew she was referring to the white horse hair crests every man in my

hand-picked fraternity wore on our helmets.

'Black Cloud'?

If

there was any doubt, it was the hair of white stallions, sacred to the

Aryan people whose warlike mien I, the humble son of a potter from Umma,

had adopted. For what seemed like an eternity, I lost the ability to

discern the present from the past.

To be continued.

By FinalStand, for Literotica

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The Book of Zechariah, Part 17

The Book of Zechariah is a time-travel scroll which will bring us through many visions and revelations where we will see how God is observing and noting the actions of man. He is carefully regulating the flow of history and preparing His glorious coming to earth.

In this book, the past, the present and the future are often intertwined within the same scene, and even in the same couplet of verses. Time, in all its forms, is frequently reduced to a moment so that one can see the beginning and the end where, regardless of the problem or the size of the giants, our LORD is always sovereign and His Word is continually at work. Please join us for this most awesome book where we see the unity of the Godhead, yet at the same time the divisibility in function of the Father, Son (Messiah) and Holy Spirit.

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Again, we see in the Scripture in the book of Proverbs, how God wants us to be unique and different from the world. And the only way that we can do that is to rely upon him. And when I say rely upon him, I'm talking about except his word, except his knowledge, his wisdom, understand things according to how he understands them.

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