“I should've started him at wing back.” Isa said, black eyes glaring at his holodevice. Adama’s reply came without a morsel of empathy. “You say this every week.”
You say this every week. Zayna thought angrily, she was tired of this, tired of the sun's relentless assault, tired of paying double for water at every rest stop north of the Tahgaz, tired of sitting in her hoverbike for 4 hours straight but most of all she tired of listening to her partners argue over fantasy league points.
Isa and Adame weren’t bad men just redundant men, the type of recruits happy to conduct their business far away from the frontlines. Not the sort of company a seasoned donzo keeps.
Posting Update: Desert Ranging. Zayna felt wounded the first time she’d read the notification.
The order had come straight from the unit captain, her uncle --her favorite uncle. Flesh and Blood. Madness. Her uncle was wearing the face of Colonel Jallo when she’d walked in and presented him with hard facts.
She was a seasoned donzo with more kills than friends, now she was being reduced to spending 12 hours a day in the Sahara's warm embrace, prowling from village to village on the trail of insurgent raiders --a plague to anyone with common sense yes but her skills were surely meant for impactful means not perormative ones.
“And that is exactly why we need people like you in those villages.” Colonel Jallo had said, with stern black eyes, wrinkled black skin, unblemished sitting posture and laconic speech.
Zayna was sure she’d bypass the charade soon. She always did. After all she was his favorite niece.
He broke faster than expected. Conversations with Zayna always left him happy, the opportunity to relax and be an uncle instead of a unit commander brought him the mental respite needed to fight such a drawn out war.
However duty commanded he be both with Zayna. Despite his warm demeanor her uncle remained adamant over the posting.
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“See just put yourself in the villagers shoes, a frontline soldier , a magi, with your – what do I call it infamy?”
“Call it whatever you want.” Nora said sharply, she came for answers not questions.
“I can see you’re angry but I can also see that you’re famous, that one man Calvary act you did months ago is still making rounds on the internet, most traffic coming from the villages I posted you to.” Uncle Jallo was pointing at crosshairs on his holomap.
“Hamzah gets more views than mea, how come you didnt-“ Jallo cut her off then.
“Because you and I know that this war is at a stalemate, this thing wont be settled on the battlefield. Rebellion and public opinion are the new belligerents here. The people, not the ones protected by Askia's high walls, need to know we’re not just a force for the army. These villages on the city's outskirts have seen nothing but droids and armored patrols for years now, we're starting to impose too much of a military presence.”
“Too much of a military presence?” Zayna's comment was laced with brief stints of soft laughter. She'd helped herself to a cup of what was clearly alcohol sitting on the desk separating them. Zayna downed its contents in one short swig then continued “I don’t know if you’ve noticed dear uncle but we're at war.”
“You're not listening." he said pointing one finger at his ear "I said, the war is moving to a different sort of theatre.”
He paused, tapped the glass surface of his table and projected a video recording Zayna had lived through.
“Reports say somebody I know took out 34 medium and 7 high ranking soldiers that day plus an armored ship. You’d think that would’ve broken their spirits a little but nooooo it was back to business the very next day.”
It was her uncle’s turn to drink. “38 ranked officers, at least 4,000 infantry men, 7 magi, countless droids, more tanks and planes than 3 previous campaigns combined yet they only lost half a mile of territory.”
Zayna rolled her eyes, she’d read the reports. Her uncle was making a point and she hated him for it. He went on about inspiration, chess and other things she didn’t care about, only when he mentioned raiders did her attention steer from the still playing recording of her exploits in Timioune.
“The raiders have been finishing these villages, if you can even call them raiders.” He poured a cup for both of them. “They’re butchering animals and burning the few trees they have out there. He sipped. “If we can’t protect villages so close to Askia they could switch sides out of fear? And even if we can’t protect them we should at least show we care.”
She couldn’t argue with that. Zayna gazed at the video one more time. She was thriving in the heat of battle, blade staff in one cybernetic hand nothing in the other. She leapt and struck an armored enemy, the impact sent the assaulted combatant flying off-screen, whirling around she sent a wave of telekinetic force at a line of similarly dressed soldiers before leaping past them. She remembered this part far more vividly, her jump's trajectory would send her smack dab in the middle of enemy droids.