“We aren’t moving.”
“Yes, I think you’ve said that.”
“Ok, we still aren’t moving.”
“You’ve said that too.”
“Shit.”
“Aghhh, haven’t we had this conversation? Language. Little girls shouldn’t say those words.” Guinevere was, as she had been for the past few weeks, burying herself in her work. After seeing her city completely disappear in that explosion, she had been trying to sabotage her own project. That bastard, Ukko, he took everything from her. She wanted him to suffer. She wanted to design a coffin in the guise of the Trahir system that would be fit perfectly for that man.
But unfortunately, it wasn’t just the little girl that was sent to keep an eye on Guinevere and her fellow prisoners. Some of Ukko’s own researchers had arrived as well. They were all much more competent than Guinevere initially gave them credit for. It only took a few days for them to realize what she had been doing. She was punished severely, but more importantly to Guinevere, she was given time to think.
The coffin wouldn’t work. There were too many eyes on this system to make it anything other than a god of the battlefield.
But they must have brought Jace along for a reason.
He would be the answer to her problems.
He would be the tool she could use to kill Ukko and take everything he’s built and burn it to the ground.
Guinevere was certain at this point that Jace’s reason for being taken along was to serve as a disposable test pilot. They were bound to put safeties and checks in place to keep him from going AWOL, but Guinevere was only getting smarter as she worked herself to the bone. She was certain that, given a bit more time, she could make countermeasures to their precautions.
As of right now her main goal had become clear: build the Trahir system into the nightmarish warlord that only she could dream up.
Jace didn’t know yet, but Guinevere knew he would agree.
He had to. After all, he loved the city too.
The little girl dropped from her handholds in the ceiling directly onto the table Guinevere was using to crunch some numbers. The truck they were in was meant to hold a MAC so it was massive, which unfortunately meant the little girl had plenty of space to make herself as annoying as possible.
“We aren’t moving.”
Guinevere sighed and pulled over a chair, “And so? What do you want me to do about it?” She put aside some of the more important documents so the girl didn’t ruin them and then picked up her lukewarm coffee. It tasted awful.
“Hmm,” the little girl made the sound extraordinarily loud, letting everyone know she was working out a difficult problem, “I guess I didn’t think that far ahead.”
“Should I highjack the truck? We could start moving then.” Guinevere looked at the little girl. For a bloodthirsty creature, she was actually pretty cute. The oversized military gear only made her look more adorable. Guinevere couldn’t help smiling, which was nice considering she hadn’t smiled very often recently. But part of her was conflicted about her emotions for the little girl. After all, she was at least part of the reason that Guinevere’s city was reduced to ash.
Guinevere tried, as she always did, to come up with some sort of excuse for the little girl. Some sort of situation where she was being forced into her role here. For whatever reason Guinevere liked her despite everything, and she felt the need to justify that to herself.
The Vice Admiral smiled widely at the idea of hijacking the truck, “You mean it? That’d be awesome! We could probably drive over anything cause the tires are so big. We could just go crush crash crush right over all the others and make it straight to the ocean. Do you think we could make it straight to the ocean?” She was really getting fired up. Ever since Guinevere told her about some of the fish that lived in the coastal waters, the little girl was obsessed with getting there as quickly as possible.
Guinevere laid her head on the table and shut her eyes, “You’re right. We could probably crush everything and leave them all behind. Then we could get to the ocean and have a whole lot of fun. You wouldn’t have to fight anymore, and I…” She choked back a few tears. All she wanted anymore was to finish this design and to find herself a nice cliff.
She was tired.
“I wouldn’t have to fight anymore?”
Normally, one would expect that sort of line from a little girl forced to be a soldier to sound hopeful with an undercurrent of happiness. But not this girl. It was one thing Guinevere tried to simply ignore about the Vice Admiral. She said the words as if her whole world were falling apart, “But you wouldn’t like that, would you? Even though you could be a normal little girl and do all sorts of normal things.” It made Guinevere’s attempts to excuse the little girl from the destruction of her city very flimsy.
“I don’t want to be normal. I want to be the Vice Admiral. I’m already having bunches of fun and I’ve made lots of friends.”
Guinevere had had this conversation with the little girl before, but it never stopped her from trying to convince the girl that the world she was missing out on was worth seeing, “But maybe you would have even more fun and make even more friends if you just left all this behind.”
“Uh-uh, no can do. I’m having fun already, and if I want to have more fun I can just do more fun things here.” She had a note of finality creeping into her voice. Even though she was just a little girl, her rank was apparently quite high within The Stragglers. Guinevere knew very well that the little girl was going to get the last word in no matter what, so it was better to let things end here. But, this time, the Vice Admiral added in an extra piece, “Besides, if I went and left the Admiral alone, he’d probably go and do something stupid like dying.”
Guinevere couldn’t hold herself back. Her head was buried in books and papers and parts. She did her best to hide the red-eye hatred that must have been etched into her face, “Would that really be so bad?”
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There was a long silence while Guinevere waited for the child to throw some sort of tantrum at the idea. But no tantrum came. Rather, there was a sound of crumpling papers as the little girl climbed her way onto Guinevere’s desk.
Guinevere raised her head only for two little hands to wrap themselves around her neck. Guinevere wasn’t sure if the Vice Admiral was trying to choke her or if she was just trying to bring her face to face. The girl was as weak as one would expect a little girl to be, so her hands didn’t squeeze very hard.
“Yes. Yes it would be very bad. If the Admiral dies… if he dies then…” her face scrunched up as she tried to hold back the flood of tears. But the tears came anyway.
Something must have been wrong with Guinevere’s head. She knew very well that part of her had been broken ever since the city fell. Even though the little girl had just been trying to choke her, Guinevere wrapped her arms around the Vice Admiral. The girl struggled at first, but as the floodwalls broke down and more tears poured out, she went limp and let her emotions run free.
Guinevere knew what she was doing was superficial. She had no comforting words. She still hated Ukko with all her heart and wished for nothing more than a painful end to his existence.
But it was nice to hug someone.
Guinevere realized she was selfish.
Guinevere realized she was more broken than she thought.
She tried to hold back her heaving chest and ragged breaths as she cried silently.
The two couldn’t have been more different, but in that moment they fit together perfectly.
She was so lost in her misery that she didn’t notice Jace approaching them.
The Vice Admiral saw him first and broke away from Guinevere’s hug. She was still crying as she threw herself at Jace. Jace scooped the girl up in one arm as she now clutched onto his shoulders.
Guinevere wiped her face with a few of the papers on the desk. She hoped they weren’t important. She took a moment to calm her breathing before turning to Jace, “It’s nice to see you up.” She hoped she looked better than she felt. She didn’t want to worry Jace.
“Yeah, the convoy stopped and I thought…” he seemed to lose himself in his own mind. Ever since the city fell, something had been terribly wrong with Jace. More and more often he seemed to drift away like this. He would spend days on end in his cot just staring at the ceiling.
The Vice Admiral wasn’t crying as hard as she had been, but her face was still covered in tears and snot, “Jace! Jace the Admiral won’t die right? He’s not going to die, right Jace?”
Jace acknowledged the girl, but he didn’t really seem to see her. The two had gotten along surprisingly well. It was actually a bit unnerving when Guinevere heard them talking. It was always about the MACs and their weapons. And, although Guinevere didn’t like to think about it, they seemed to talk a lot about the things they had done in those MACs… with those weapons…
Jace was definitely lost in some sort of thought because his eyes only focused in on the little girl after a few minutes, “Oh, hm. Well he’s bound to die.” Guinevere was actually relieved to see Jace being an idiot. You don’t tell kids their loved ones are going to die. He always was a bit of an airhead, a bit innocent. But, unfortunately for Guinevere, he continued, “But he’s going to die in battle. He’ll get to die a good death. He’ll get to die fighting and killing.” He set the girl down, the girl who now had a smile on her face that sickened Guinevere, “He’ll die happy.” He placed a hand on her head.
Guinevere was sure Jace was only saying those things because it was what the Vice Admiral would want to hear. Jace didn’t think like that. Not the Jace she knew.
Jace looked up at Guinevere and showed a smile of his own. A very rare sight these days.
For some reason, though Guinevere tried not to think about it, that smile was just as unnerving as the little girl’s grin.
The Vice Admiral’s radio played a series of taps. The little girl stopped in her tracks and listened intently. When the tapping stopped she burst into a sprint toward the door.
Jace called after her, “What’s happening? Did they tell you why the convoy isn’t moving?”
She shouted back, “The Admiral says to get ready. I need to get to him quick. If he doesn’t have his MAC then he can’t fight. He can’t do all those things you said. I have to make sure he dies like you said he would. Then he’ll be happy!” She burst out one of the side doors of the mobile MAC hanger, off to the truck that held her own machine.
Guinevere noticed that Jace seemed livelier now. In fact, he almost looked the same as when he was looking out the truck window at their city being destroyed. Guinevere knew he wasn’t happy about the city falling, she was sure of that, but something back then captured his attention and made him look… almost euphoric.
But it was brief, and Guinevere was glad for that. She didn’t want to think these thoughts right now. Not after the emotional turmoil her conversation with the Little Admiral brought up. Their own general-purpose radio sounded off, meaning they were getting orders. They were told to stand down. Nothing more.
Something must be happening.
Jace looked disappointed. He walked over to Guinevere, “I guess there’s no fight. It kind of seemed like something was about to happen but, well, I guess not.” The life that was seemingly just filling him suddenly vanished. He was back to the husk he had been for this whole trip.
Guinevere wasn’t sure how to respond. “Should we get lunch?” This was all she could think to say. At least eating is normal. It might be good for them to take a breather.
Jace followed along. She tried to talk to him, but the conversations never went far. He responded mostly with singular words. He was clearly a man who had been gutted. Guinevere, no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t figure out how she could help him.
Guinevere, no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t convince him to try to help her.
They were both battered and bruised. Occasionally they would hold one another, like they had back in the truck, and it felt nice. It was nice to have someone to clasp onto. It was nice to have something real to cling to as the world spiraled.
It wasn’t long before it was Jace’s turn to ask questions. His questions were always the same though. Questions about her project. Questions about how it could be used, what machine it would end up in, whether or not he would be able to pilot again.
It was now Guinevere’s turn to give single word answers. Guinevere was sure that Jace would be test-piloting the new system. It would likely be in a disarmed basic model MAC. But she didn’t think Jace needed to know these things. She stopped talking to him about MACs early on in their imprisonment. He would get a look in his eyes that was so foreign to Guinevere. She didn’t want to look at that. She wanted to see Jace how he was. She wanted that Jace from Atlantis, at least for a while. Some sense of normalcy.
And, she knew, Jace would go through a drastic change soon enough.
The questions stopped, and now they simply ate in silence.
It was a far cry from their joyful nights back in Solace. Getting drunk and being a general nuisance in the city.
But Guinevere was happy for these moments at least.
Jace was… Jace was unstable.
That was what Guinevere decided to believe.
She couldn’t count on him to carry out her desires, to use the system to do what she wanted.
She put her hand on his and squeezed.
He stared blankly into the distance, probably in some far away thoughts, but he still squeezed back.
The Trahir system she was making now… it needed Jace
but,
it would mold him.
It would mold him into the pilot that would accomplish Guinevere’s goals.
All Jace would have to do is sit in the cockpit. Then the machine would do the work. And then… then she could get revenge.
Lionel’s words echoed in her head. The way he said she didn’t really care about the pilots.
But he was wrong.
Of course she cared about them.
How could she hope to accomplish her goals without the proper tools?