The BLTS Archive - Tea and Sympathy
fourth in the Riding The Tick series
by R.Schultz (cousindream@aol.com)

---

Disclaimer:  Paramount and other rich middle-aged white guys own Star
Trek in all its aspects, and the characters therein.  Not me.  I'm
just playing with some of their toys and I'll put `em all back good as
new.  No harm intended and I am not making money from this.  This
original story, however, is all mine under common-law copyright.
10,100 words.  October 2000.

---

Somewhere on the planet Keisha temperature will be in the mid twenties
Celsius, with moderate cloud formation in the afternoon.  It will be
perfect weather for celebrating the Fifteenth Anniversary of the
accession to Leadership of the Truth Faction and our own beloved First
Citizen.  The podium will be shared today with General Delair, fresh
from his triumphs in the field. All praise to our Republic and its
glorious leaders.

---

I leaned back in this deeply padded throne-like chair.  Relaxing
within its ornate plushness, enjoying the feel of soft upholstery
against the bare portions of my back and arm.  It was a genuine and
therefore valuable antique, of course.  One could hardly expect Bune
to own anything less than the best.  If by chance it had been
manufactured and aged within the past few months, it was nonetheless
the very best of its type.

Of course this lovely ornate chair had come from the display area up
front.  Here, in the office area, there was nothing but purely
functional pieces of junk.  Pity.  Good furniture, like good wine, was
meant to be enjoyed.

"Damn it, Bune" I commented, "this is some really superior ganja."
With that I took another deep draw on the burning cylinder in my
gloved hand, inhaling and holding it inside.  Trying to prolong the
effect.

"Definitely ist mir machsts...," I began, then continued with; "It's
been years since Turkana, and I've sampled many stim's on many worlds.
But this is definitely the best jackweed li' ol' Tasha has ever
smoked.  Is it local?"

My host didn't make any reply.  He looked pale and sweaty, but that
could be explained by the warm night.  He probably felt li'l ol'
Natasha Yar had lost most of her charm, and her endearing graces on
this night.  In normal circumstances he would never have allowed me to
smoke this in front of him.  C'est la vie.  After all, it was HIS
ganja.

"Excuse me" I corrected.  "Tea, isn't it?  Yes, you were explaining to
me once the history of this weed.  Followed us out from Old Terra.
Now it's cultivated across two quadrants, or so you said.  Boo, Mary
Warner, smack...

Oh, pardon me, that's something else, isn't it?  My mistake. You'll
have to excuse my social gaffe's tonight.  I've had a hard day."

I took another long puff and held it.  Allowing my host to say
something if he wished, but he remained silent.  He looked at the
trail of ash I was leaving on his lovely chair, so I brushed it off
with one gloved hand, the tight gray leather catching glints from the
table lamps.  I kept the lit end over the floor after that.

"It's very nice of you to take the time to listen to my woes, to allow
me to impose on your courtesy.  I want you to know you will always
remain in my memories.  Yes, until the day I die.

Of course, being a gunner in the Legion means my death might not be
far from this moment.  However, believe me when I say I'll always
remember you.  You'll live on in my memories."  Bune didn't seem
particularly impressed by my statement, but that was perfectly all
right with me.  I knew it was a true statement.

I carefully folded one long leg over the other.  Knowing Bune was
watching my every move, every ripple of flesh.  Presuming that he
would be watching my breasts was one reason I had left my bra at camp.
Now my jacket was draped over the backrest of this chair. Now Bune
could enjoy staring at my nipples.  If he wished.

Bune always had an appreciation for a woman.  It used to bother me the
way he'd appraise my body, but not tonight.  Tonight would be the last
time he saw me.  Tonight we lift off-planet.

I smiled, drawing deeply on the dope stick.  Hoping his eyes noticed
the movements of my breasts, lingered on the shapes of my nipples
under my clinging undershirt.  Legion issue, didn't leave a hell of a
lot to the imagination.

The pants, even camo patterned, were flattering as well.  I have a
good body, and I've used it before to get my way.  It wasn't even
bragging to say I have a plush body.  Women know if they're pretty, or
have a sexy body to go with it.  When we do, we pay for it all of our
lives.

My thick lifter's boots were incongruous, but then some men liked a
woman in uniform.  One leg metronomed in a swift nervous pattern.  Let
Bune's admire, if he wishes to do so.  It's my last night in his
lovely shop.

"I suppose you're wondering what brought li'l ol' Tasha Yar back to
your emporium of Antiques and drugs tonight.  It's been very sweet of
you to allow me this time to explain.

"No, no, you've been a doll, and I'll try to cut this short, then
leave.  You must have many things to think and worry about,
considering your interesting combination of professions."

At my feet lay a two meter by one by three-quarter chest.  It's lid is
presently propped against Bune's desk.  Inside were what must be three
fortunes in pharmaceuticals and drugs.  I hadn't intruded on Bune by
asking what he did with this interesting cache, that much was obvious,
after all.

All by itself it probably paid for a lovingly rich, and decadent, life
style.  It certainly underpinned the success of his Antique Store.
I'd rummaged through the cache earlier, amazed at the variety inside.
For his part Bune had been uncharacteristically silent while I'd had
my curiosity fulfilled.

"Actually this started over forty hours ago," I continued.  "In camp,
in the Legion camp.  But then you know that, don't you?  I told you
about that last night.  When I told you what I wanted and why.

"It's been a damned busy forty hours...  I must be boring you. Still,
let me tell it how everything occurred as it did. Including this
morning's events.  You do want to hear about them, don't you?"  Bune
said nothing.  So patient he was tonight!

I pulled a cheap stool over, and propped my boots on it.  Bune made no
move to help, but he also didn't object.  Maybe he felt pressed for
time, but he said nothing to speed me on my way.  The mark of a
perfect host.

"By contract, the Legion has the right to maintain its own military
jurisprudence in any camp it sets up.  Usually.  There will always be
exceptions, but not damned many, and not on this planet.

"On most worlds we reserve the right to dispense our own type of
justice in our own way, always within the confines of our own military
enclave.  Most times you're subject to local law if you screw up when
you're away from our friendly arms.  Yet even then, the Legion
reserves the right to take our stray lambs with us when we leave
planet.  A right we don't always invoke.

"Some few strays we leave behind anyways.  We let them be hung, or
shot by the Indig courts, or be imprisoned for long sentences. When we
consider their misdeeds warrant it.  Our troopers therefore understand
they cannot push things too far.  Especially when outside the
immediate control of our own lords and masters, our non-com's and
officers.

"Damn, this is good stuff, Bune!  Tea.  That's a nice word for it,
have to remember that.  You're probably right not to let Legionnaires
like me have access to the quality stuff like this. Just spoil us so
we don't appreciate the lesser quality goods we more usually can
afford.  Damned decent of you to share this Tea with me.

"Anywise, we in the Legion tend to be a law onto ourselves.  Judge our
own, punish our own, sometimes forgive our own.  You get six thousand
men and women of twenty-two sentient races in the same limited space
and troubles will always occur, of course.

"Including murder.

"I'm not too sure of your own local laws here on Keisha.  However, to
illustrate one problem, on some planets it isn't illegal to do what
Ele did.  All has to do with circumstances.  Even when it's illegal,
in some cases she would have gone unpunished.  Or nearly so.

"Let me give you a little background first.

"One of the drivers of our ground-effect armor units was this
black-haired human woman named Ele Forne.  Ele had formalized a
situation with the turret commander, the chief NCO on her lifter.

"Ele's customs and laws back home are unknown to me.  I don't even
know her planet of origin.  She told me it was founded by refugees
from a place on Terra named Assam.  Of course everyone's ancestors
were refugees from Terra.  Mine came to Turkana from a place called
Lithuania.

"Ele was a good driver, she could lay all thirty-two thousand kilos
across any surface crossable, and some that were not.  All that
composite HiChob plating, double Rhad fusion power plant and eight
point four plasma tube (with auto reload), and all aux weapon systems
across broken terrain like she was traveling across a calm pond.  Her
commander was a good hitter, too, cool in the pickle.  The trouble
came in the personality.

"Ele was older than the Turret Commander, maybe ten years T.  Why he
bothered letting himself get laagered into a formal arrangement I'll
never understand.  She was a cute little Madchen, Ele was.  A nice
piece of work, certainly, all those big brown eyes over smooth brown
skin.

"Maybe her age was what was wrong, maybe it was personality.  She
wanted someone permanent, and she thought she was female enough to
provide everything he needed.  Obviously she couldn't.  Some men just
won't be satisfied with one woman.  They can't recognize a good thing
when they have it, the more fools them.

"For no sooner had the two sealed, were listed in the log books of the
Legion, all prim and proper, than he was poking at other troopers than
Ele.  He tried to get some lift under my jacket too, and everybody but
Ele knew there would be trouble down the line.

"Typical trooper's problem.  You get sealed to someone in the unit and
they die the next day.  Or they begin getting some lift with someone
else, and soon you wind up with two Legionnaires who can't stand to be
on the same planet with the other.  Bad situation.

"It's not just with the hets, either.  Two women, or two men, they tie
to someone of their own sex, the odds are against their having better
luck than anyone else in the Legion.  Too much stress on the
partnership, you see.  We're paid killers, and we get killed as well.
Hard to hold together under those levels of pressure.

"Well, now this is where circumstances come in.  Ele literally
stumbles on her trooper, and he's draped over the backside of another
woman.  Ele curses him to hell, pulls her Angstrom, and empties twenty
wafers into her man.  Definitely overkill after the second hit.

Unfortunately this other female is lying underneath.  Twenty wafers in
the same spot will toast all the way down to bedrock, and pity the
poor frail between target and bedrock.  She fried both her cheating
man and the other Madchen.

"In some cultures murder under those circumstances would have been
serenely forgiven.  In flagrante delicto.  He was caught in the act of
being unfaithful to his wife.

"Not in the legion.  To toast her NCO Commanding, that was bad enough,
but she'd burked another trooper besides.  It's murder with us, and
the killer has to pay with her life.  Period.  End of story.

"Ele had no future left to her, besides her High Courts Martial. After
there would be the firing squad.  There was no doubt in anyone's mind
as to the result of her trial.  In the meantime she had to be
imprisoned.

"Unfortunately our stockade had been disassembled and beamed up to our
transports, complete with multiphasic sliding force shields. With the
ending of our present contract we were due to leave the planet.

"Did I ever mention this is a lovely planet?  I've seen some real
rejects in my few years.  Lizards and sandstorms, monsoons and mud,
but this place, it could be such a lovely place.  The Margrave's
domains, up in Caucassia, were pretty wild.  Young mountains there,
but even they were beautiful."

I didn't mention the mass graves, or what Arkarasana looked like once
we'd leveled it.  You try to forget.

"Damn, this is good!  Tea.  Have to remember that."  Another deep
draw, hold it in the lungs.  It didn't help the memories.  Just made
them not hurt so much.

"Poor Ele was put on a spot tether, and guarded inside a small farm
building.  Out where our camp met the curve of the bay. Worse news is
I'm drawing the black spot.  Guard duty on our single prisoner, and me
inside the room with her.  The building we commandeered is a solid
farm structure, and Ele's in a windowless room inside.

"I draw the inside guard, which means at the very least I'll be dry if
a squall hits us.  Even here by the Sapphire Sea (lovely name by the
way), old troopers had learned to avoid being caught in the open by
storms.

"Inside the farm building we could hear breakers below the bluff. We
prayed for a warmth none of us expected to get.  Everything felt damp
and cold on that cliff head.

"Ele was in a state, coming to pieces even as you watched.  Guilt
probably, regretting toasting her Mach.  And knowing she had to get
shot for it as well.  It's one thing to be sitting in a piece of
ground-effects armor and sweating out where the next blast will be.
It's quite another thing to know you're going to be stood up before
nine of your erstwhile kameraden and they're going to execute you.

"It's the certainty of it, the finality of your life.  You can count
the hours, minutes, to when you, the personal being, yourself, will be
terminated.  Finis.  Kaput.  End of the dance.

"My shift started early, last cycle my own choice.  The daytime
Officer of the Day escorted me inside, declining to argue, pointing
out my shift was therefore an hour longer.  No one wanted this duty.
Especially the one or two who would be in constant contact with the
prisoner, the condemned, the unlucky.  Those who were the suicide
watch, though Einstein knows how she could do it with what she was
left with.  Maybe open her wrists with her teeth.  That'd work.

"I knew the guard trooper I had to replace, and his eyes proclaimed
his grief, as mine must before this night was over.  He could not bear
to touch Ele, or give her a word of solace.  His determination not to
look at her again told its own story.  His hand held mine for just a
second, then the OD and he were gone through the door.  It had become
just the two of us, myself and Ele.

"Hair black as her hope.  A huddle against one corner, that was Ele at
that moment.  My memories brought her to me.  As tall, or as short, as
my pointed chin.  Defensive, quick to anger, eyes as brown as the
tunic she always wore.  Uppers loose, over her camp pants.  A pair of
Risan slippers were on her feet, covering the wires of her tethers, a
pair of thick braids falling down her defeated back.

"Ele was not taking it at all well.  Could you, Herr Bune?  I know I
wouldn't.  I want my final death to be quick and unexpected, an
obliterating phaser blast out of the blue.  Zip, Zap, no more me.

"Ele could have used a dozen...sticks?...of this...Tea.

"No, she was in a total panic, one step away from tearing her own
throat out.  Couldn't much blame her.  Don't think I could hold up
well in the circumstances.  You know you can be toasted in a fight,
but you can at least guess at the odds.  This was certain and
irrevocable.

"Therefore Ele sat against the wall, sniveling and hacking.  The
sounds would have broken the heart of a robot.  Maybe even yours,
Bune's.  Certainly it broke mine, even as I tried to shut her and her
sounds out of my mind.  Knowing if I felt compassion, the morrow would
destroy me.  Of course compassion is not profitable, is it?

"Giving it up for a lost cause, I sighed, and folded my poncho next to
her, and sat with her.  She leaned against me, her face a wet ruin,
and I patted her other shoulder.  It was all I could do. After all
I've known, all I've been, I'm still human, and for me to be human
means feeling for other people when they're in pain.

"What occurred next was totally outside regulations, of course, and
hadn't been planned.  Not by me, not by her, not by anyone.

"It just....happened.  One moment I was the efficient trooper, the
next we were just two women having a damned good cry together.  I
propped myself up against the wall, and Ele tried to fit herself
between my lap and my chin.  She could just about do it, she was a
small woman, and she clung to me like I was her mother.

She babbled, telling me things about her father and mother and family,
life on a farm holding.  She had been married at T-age thirteen,
common in many of these new colonies.  They're trying to populate a
whole planet, and it does something to their good sense.

"The marriage was a mistake.  Worse, it was a horror.  Divorces and
separations were only possible for the male.

"This fool would beat on her, and their children.  He was a failure as
a farmer, and sold their two daughters to some brothel in a nearby
city.  I think Ele said they were still children.

"It's allowed to do something like that on too many planets,
regardless of age.  Raise money by selling one of your own children.
A few human cultures still treat their children and women as
livestock.  Even on a few UFP worlds it happens, and it's a case of
Federation Law be damned, catch me if you can.

"Ele killed her husband, then fled.  Whoring herself onto a freighter
and going off-planet.  On her new home she survived as a prostie until
she discovered the Legion.  She was able to join the Legion, and start
a new life.  Standard type of story for recruits of the Legion.  Dregs
of the Galaxy, that's us.

"At least that was what I understood.  It was difficult to make out
her words sometimes.  Still, like I said, Standard Story.  I could
guess what she didn't say outright or intelligibly.  It didn't matter
what the specifics of her story was.  We'd all heard it, and it's kin,
before.  She was on a crying jag, nerves shattered, and finally went
to sleep in my arms.

"I put her in a corner, cocooned in blankets, but still she would
start awake and cry for me, hold me.  Ele's sleep was sporadic, and
she must have screamed inside when the nightmares came.  She fled from
dreams she could not face to a reality she could not face.  Could
anyone blame her for her panic?

"She jerked awake again when my relief came in, and begged me to stay,
so I did.  I told him that I was staying with the Madchen. He got the
Sergeant of the Guard, and in came the Klingon, Hors.

"Happy Harry we called him, not understanding him.  On that night he
looked at the two of us.  Then simply stated he'd authorized the
situation.

"Never let it be said that Klingon's are unemotional.  They have
compassion, sometimes, and pity, and they'll show it at the damnedest
times.  They just don't wear their feelings on their face like us
T-stock do.  I think I like Klingons much better mow.

"Hors did come inside and relieve me of my prod and personal weapons,
though.  He knew about the two push knives in my belt, the wire under
my collar, the one-shot up my sleeve and the stiletto in my boot.  As
well as the needler in my crotch.

"Klingons may be damned stiff bastards, touchy about their honor, and
not very bendable, but they're not stupid.  Nor do they miss much.

"At some point the Squadron Exec, with the OD Night watch in tow,
stuck their heads in the doorway, but that was all.  It was
satisfactory to them if I wanted to do a night-long shift as inside
guard.  I was the one going to suffer with loss of sleep. The Exec
smiled faintly and left.  I think he fancied me.

"Ele woke while I was using the bucket, and lay intently watching me
with my pants down.  A little embarrassing, but nothing I hadn't done
before in view of entire companies in the field.  We exchanged places
and since some measure of sanity had returned to her, I told her it
was apparent I could spend the night with her. If she wanted it.

"She replied by curling up in my lap again.  Holding on as tight as
she could.  I kept caressing her arms and kissing her short black
hair, comforting her.  Trying not to see how sweet she looked, or how
soft she felt, or smell the last hint of scent lingering in her hair.

"Something had finally died inside her, or been birthed.  She had come
into a small measure of calm.

"Inside, part of her was accepting her death, now.  She was sorrowing
inside for all the past mistakes she had committed.  For all the sweet
loves and victories she would never know.

"I was already dreading the morning, with its formalities of Courts
Martial and cold precession's of sentence and execution. Mostly I was
already dreading how she might react when it came time to separate,
for me to leave her.  I was remembering past deaths, and not
anticipating the pains of this one.  It would have been much easier
for me if she had remained a near-stranger.

"An acquaintance, someone to share a bottle with, or a dope stick.
Someone with whom you might share a liberty on some mudball of a
planet.  A lot easier to forget, a lot easier to lump together with
the nameless and faceless ones who used to be your fellow troopers.
Or the ones we fought.

"It took a few seconds to realize she was kissing my neck and softly
rubbing her finger tips across my breasts.  I pulled her back by her
shoulders and questioned her with my look.  She replied by again
seeking out my lips with her own, by pulling my head to hers.

"I asked her if she knew what she was doing, and she whispered she
did.  She added I wouldn't be her first woman.  Unsaid was the fact
she badly needed someone to love this night.  She talked, whispered,
to me, her thoughts.  Sentences sometimes disjointed.

"It amazed me to find she had daydreamed about me before this night,
she'd noticed me, had admired my sense of purpose and my strength (as
if I had any!).  Daydreamed about Tasha Yar, me, the big hard Boss
Crocodile.  Dreamed of me taking her and showing how it could be
between two women.  Daydreamed about her black hair a fan across my
pale belly, daydreamed of my own blond head between her own olive
legs.  Daydreamed....

"Daydreamed about many loving's, possible and impossible.   Everyone
in the Legion must know I also have a taste for the Madchen's.

"Loving her would tear the guts out of me tomorrow, and I knew this.
I would have preferred to just comfort her, not to share sex.  She had
other ideas, and was determined.  She was also over me like a
madwoman, a dying soul in the desert finding an oasis.

"What can I say?  I should not have allowed either one of us that
night, but she'd somehow seen this weakness of mine for a determined
woman.  Maybe she knew how dear and gratifying it was to hear of her
many imaginings, her fantasies.

"Never spoken of to me, of the two of us together.  Or maybe she was
just lucky, and pushed all my input notations by accident.

"She was all warm, soft-skinned woman, desperate, passionate, giving,
taking, demanding.  She was asking for an act of compassion, charity,
asking me to give her something of myself to fill the emptiness she
must face tomorrow.

"Within minutes I was kissing her back.  Moaning inside her mouth
every time she mauled my breasts, my nipples.  Trying not to feel my
guts wrenching apart with shared fear, shared panic."

"In the twilight womb of the Antiques store, I watched smoke come out
from my nose.. Disappearing into the deeper darkness above. Bune said
nothing to my story, letting me spill my guts onto his lap.  His eyes
wandered, I think, as I silently cried, but he seemed to have ceased
sweating so heavily.  I wiped away tears and took another draw on my
dope stick.  Bune's' eyes might be getting weary, perhaps, but a good
host never interrupts.  He remained in his chair, and I continued.

"My own man knows me, and my nature, and I comforted myself with
thoughts of how he would have...accepted.  He would know of this
night's loving when I told him, and would accept it as he accepts me.
With all my faults and patterns, as he accepts all my loving. I am as
I am, and he, we, reached this understanding long ago.

"In a minute Ele had stripped my clothes from me, and I hers.  I
allowed my passion, hers, ours, to build tension and fire within me.
Her hand found me, and I knew it would be very good between us.  For
Ele knew of the loving of women, and she did not need to put into
words the fact that she was able to love women.  Not just have sex,
but able to love, to live with loving a humming wire in her blood.

"I felt the pain and sorrow and loss in her, and she my own losses.

"Yet when is that not the lot and the glory of every woman?  We are
sisters in a way men may never be brothers, for we are women in a
universe of men.  We speak in the same native tongues.  We women who
love women live in a special province of the women's country.  It is a
prison, part hell and part paradise, and we inside see too clearly our
walls.  Maybe we speak the woman's language too well.

"At some point during that short and endless night the Sergeant of the
Guard, Hors, the Klingon, came to check on us.  Maybe we, I, she, had
made a loud noise.  Maybe he had sensed something, or anticipated it.
The aliens amongst us see us more clearly than we do ourselves, you
know.

"His eyes met mine when I raised my head over Ele's brown and sweaty
hip.  I think my eyes were the eyes of a madwoman, blank and unseeing.
For he only nodded his head to me.  Acknowledging me, acknowledging
and accepting the truth of what the two of us were doing in our
nakedness.  Our desperate act of embracing life in the midst of death.
He turned and left.

""They cry in their sleeps, Lieutenant, let us leave them to their
short nightmares.  It is good that they can rest at all, on this worst
night of all nights," Hors said.

"Somewhere in that short corridor the OfficerNightDuty, probably the
Exec again, accepted the statements of Hors.  Maybe he guessed also,
but it is a wise officer who accepts his noncom's words as a truth.
They left.  With that I bent my head again, to kiss and savor the
flesh of my dark-haired lover.  There was nothing else to do.

"We made something closer to insanity than love last night.  She cried
in her releases, her comings, as did I, and neither one of us could
cease the tears, or the regrets, or the passions.

"We moved in a single night through a month's living and loving, a
years, most of it inarticulate, spiced with salty lines of tears. For
as we sought each other's flesh, driven by despair, we realized our
true losses.  I could have loved this woman, truly loved her.  She me.
Not just lust, but love.  Could any knowledge have been more bitter
than this joyful revelation at this terrible time?

"Maybe it was just an especially poignant one-night-stand, a delusion
spawned by circumstances.  Or it could have just been the raw sex, the
overflowing excesses of it, lust without a tomorrow.

"I cannot tell tonight what my true feelings are.  What you see is a
facade, for inside me there is a dead area, whose extent I do not
begin to guess at.  There may be nothing left of me between throat and
groin, there may be just a numb area about my heart.  I can only trust
time to heal this wound, as it has healed my others."

Mother Mary and Allah, I thought, this is becoming both mystical and
poetic.  Or delusional.  I had been too long without sleep, too busy,
too on edge, too driven.  Been smoking these dope stick's too long,
been reading too many books or screen displays, been allowing my
imagination too much leash.

I read too much, I think too much, I imagine too much, I love too
easily.  It doesn't help a trooper in the Legion to be poetic, or
maudlin, or emotional.  No profit to it.

Of course Bune is patiently waiting for me to finish.  Some men are
able to be perfect hosts and listeners, able to let you say all you
need saying.  May it never be said that Bune said a single word this
night to show any displeasure with my rambling tale.

"I had two dope stick's in a flat case in my money belt," I continued,
"and we shared each in turn.  She was trembling hard, the fright and
the terror coming back.  I knew there was nothing to do for it but
what I was already doing.  Hold her, cry with her, love her, hope for
a numbing of the mind.

"She came to me again, tears flowing, words pouring out of her like
water from a canteen.  I was crying as well, and wished there were
ten, twenty, thirty dope stick's of Tea to give her.  Some means to
give her release from her fears.  That was when I thought of you,
Tovarisch Bune.

"It took some arguing before Ele would let me go, would let me leave
her.  Some of the persuading was harsh, some of it was composed of
teary lovemaking, some of it artful persuasion. Mostly it took oaths
made on a dozen Gods, oaths to return before the morning, sealed with
benedictions, and curses on my soul if I was lying.  All my promises
bound with solemn words from at least a dozen sects and religions.  I
dressed quickly, now driven by a mission.

---

Hors crouched by the outside door, obviously having taken that post
for himself.  I almost cried to realize he had been guarding me, not
Ele.  He rose, slipping out of his poncho, and gazed at me blankly.
Being Klingon meant he didn't ask a single question of me.  Just stood
ready to accept whatever I gave him.  Words, excuses. pleas,
questions, anything.  Or nothing.

"I realized he would never say anything about what he saw inside.
Never.  It was not his place to judge, or even to comment.

"What sort of devils drive a Klingon, besides the obvious ones of
honor and pride and blood?  How do they see us?  I don't think I can
ever again joke about a Klingon's lack of emotions, for they do have
them.  We just don't decipher them easily.

"I wished I could have read his face as I asked him for favors, one
trooper to another.  My requests disturbed him deeply, this much I
could see.  Disturbed or not, he agreed to them all. Including
covering for me while I left the camp.  That he really had no taste
for.  But he nodded his head in resignation, tried to say something,
gave it up as a bad job, and settled back into his poncho, huddling
from the light cold mist that came in from the sea.

"He would cover for me.  After all, we were brothers together in the
Legion.  We both knew the Officer of the DayWatch would never enter
the house if Hors asked him not to.  An officer was an officer, our
handlers and masters.  Nonetheless he was still a trooper in the
Legion as we were.

"That was how I came to visit you last night, Tovarisch Bune.  My
Ruti, my man was with me, he stayed outside your door the whole time I
was inside.  As he stands outside now.  We both believe in rear
guards, when possible.  It's a military dictum.

"Ruti didn't like leaving the camp, either, not when the contract is
finished and we're due to lift off-planet.  But he's the sort who has
the good sense to forgo any questions when his Madchen asks a favor
and won't explain.

"I think he might have guessed what had happened between me and Ele
when I swung by our ASV, and asked him to follow me and cover my back.
He knew I was supposed to be on guard, and asked where we were going,
and why.  He asked why I needed to get out of camp, why it was
essential to visit Bune's Knickknack Shop.  Everyone knew you sold
things.  Dreams and releases and nightmares and death.  You were the
local toadstool that sold mindwine.

"'Cause," was all I said.  It was enough to make him follow me.

"You might not know, but the hardest part of my visit was afterwards,
getting back inside our perimeter.  Oh, we managed, but it should have
failed.  The result of not doing any preparatory planning.  My fault.

"Our exit hole in the wire of the green-line sensor net was covered by
two teams of kill-shrews and their handlers.  They'd discovered the
blind spot, and my jamming hadn't been good enough to make up for it.

"They'd noted the napse effect our out-cretions left.  So we had to
find another way back.  We should have realized our perimeter would be
fully on-line and protected, even if we were in the process of
embarking off-planet.  The Legion's a group of professionals, after
all.

"Eventually Ruti found a way in, but it was covered by our
headhunters.  We stood eye to eye and watched the pair very slowly and
carefully walk away.  I guess they thought if a pair of troopers was
trying so hard to sneak IN, they'd let us.

"We stood up, standing on shaky legs.  Free and clear inside the wire
thanks to a pair of SP's turning their faces away.  Not to any skill
or forethought of our own.  There, all of us with our AL's on, had
looked at each other.  Ruti and me dreading the alarm, and the painful
and embarrassing after's.

"Instead they buzzed at the shrews, and lifted the nodes so we could
get inside without alarmtripping.  Once we were inside they
reactivated the node and went their way.  We had luck, for once, to
cover my own weakness and idiocy.

"It could never have been planned.  It just happened.  They might be
SP's, but we were still brothers, and liftoff was near.

"We fled into camp, Ruti leaving me at the farm building.  He and Hors
exchanged looks, and Hors accepted me back.  Ruti knew he was now
under an obligation with the Klingon, but that was satisfactory.

"We had a stupid ox-dip of a story ready if we were caught, but we
doubted anyone would believe it.  At least we wouldn't have been shot
for deserters.  No one would have believed it of us.

"What I was carrying might have prompted angry words.  The punishments
might have pained us.  But we'd survive, still in the Legion.  We
weren't deserters.

"Why desertion is so harshly dealt with in the Legion is something you
can probably understand.  Yet, did you know why desertion is almost
unknown in the Legion?  It's not the punishments, though most are
Draconian.

"It's because it's so damned easy to leave the Legion at the end of a
campaign.

"So long as you notify fifty T-hours in advance, and accept an
estimate of final pay-out and final bonus rather than exact, you can
leave at the end of those fifty T-hours.  For exact you have to call a
Terran month in advance.

"And if you're willing to forego your final bonus. you can retire
immediately upon completion of campaign.

"The Legion will try to send you your bonus after 50 T-days, but some
of these worlds don't have a reliable post between surface and
Federation Mail.

"Some simply steal any outside monies that fall into their hands. You
take the chance of losing a sizable amount of Cred's, but you can
leave within minutes of a campaign being declared finished.  A legal
discharge without chaff.  Did you know that?

"Replacements are never a problem, either.  There's always some local
fool who thinks its romantic to be a mercenary.  Or is desperate
enough to take any means to get off-planet.  Our trip afterwards to
Falkhyn, or to our next contract usually allows for us to start
training the green recruits.  It's the way I came into the Legion.
Green as Champmesle's snow.

"Most of us leave the Legion the hard way, anyways.

"At any rate, Ruti and I were back inside, and I had only to return to
my post at the farmhouse.  Hors was still there in the mist and cold,
awake, waiting for me.  He didn't look especially exhausted, but I
think he stayed awake the entire time I was gone.

"Hors stared at me for some time, waiting for some word from me. When
I offered him none, he simply rose and accepted my weapons. Still
without a word.  Yes, he was curious.  But he was philosophical (and
maybe Klingon) enough to realize in a lifetime most of his questions
were never going to be answered.

"Hors huddled deep in his poncho, and stared out across the dark sea.

"Already me and my problems were something from a dream, a waking
fantasy which had never occurred.

"For some seconds I paused in the open doorway, trying to decipher
him, failing to do so.

"He might have been executed for what he had done, yet he knew so
little of me beyond my name, enlistment date, and rank.

"I wondered what hopes a Klingon has, what his dreams might be, and
could not guess.

"Maybe his dreams were of his past home, wherever that was, if not on
Klingon itself.  Wife, children, family name, why he couldn't ever go
back.

"Not everybody is from Turkana IV, not everyone is unable to return
because the suicidal bastards who governed my home world had burnt the
planet into slag.  It just seems all our returning's are equally
impossible.  None of us can return.

"Inside her rough prison Ele was alternating between tears and stoic
resignation, and accepted my present with eyes as dead as her body was
going to be.  She took the Anther-fruits as soon as I gave them to
her.  They would work to calm her.

There was no hope in her anymore, and her tears ceased without a word
from me.  There was nothing more to be said, no more promises to be
kept, no more lies, no more truths, no more future.

"The Courts Martial would be mercifully short, we already knew that.
She held me, kissed me with no passion, with too much passion, I can't
tell anymore how I felt, how we felt, what we did, what we said beyond
a few groans and mumbles.  It was the end of her song and she had no
voice left to sing with.  It was all over.

"Hors came in first, to warn us if necessary.  He was our brother now,
my brother.

"If I didn't know better I'd have said he was ready to cry when he saw
her at peace in my lap.  He stared in her dead eyes, and gently held
her hands with his, prompting her to rise to her feet. I rose as well,
and between us we carefully dressed my dead lover for her Endgame.

"Once more I swore my own Endgame would be swift and unexpected. Once
more I feared the Long Death would take me instead. Executions always
make us remember our frailty, how easily we can finish the dance.

"At the last I squeezed Ele's shoulders tight, bracing her, watching
Hors as he inspected her.  His parade-ground manners impeccable,
patting her flaps and checking her closures.  Yet not as a martinet,
but as a parent, the way a mother might a loved child.

"Ele said nothing, did nothing, allowed Hors his small intimacies as
he made sure she was properly squared away for her Courts Martial.  I
had ceased crying by then, my eyes sore and probably a vivid red.

"Outside the door of the building her formal guard waited for her,
white gloves and decorations on their dress blouses, if any.

"We have no medals of our own in the Legion, but we wear the ones our
contract worlds give individuals.  Ele looked into the rising sun
long, long enough for me to wonder if she saw it.  It would be her
last sunrise, and my heart broke to see her weak smile.  She smiled
for us, not for herself, to give us courage for the day. Me.

"She turned to Hors when he formally handed her over to her shining
escorts, her final paladins.  The last honors for Ele, bright silvers
and bronzes on their polished leathers.  Stiff clean clothes and
gilded edgings.  A glistening farewell to a fellow trooper.

"Ele raised up on her booted toes and kissed Hors then, silently
thanking him for what she knew he had done for me, for her, for us.
She would not look at me beyond a quick glance, maybe expecting me to
leave to lick my own wounds.

"Then she squared her light green beret and entered the ceremonial
circle of escorts.

"She was un-surpassed, I think, to find myself marching alongside her.
Maybe she had hoped I would walk with her on her last journey, but
could not request so much of me.

"It is allowed, you see, for friends to escort friends on a sad last
walk like this.  We are Brothers.

"Two of the guard looked at me out of the corner of their eyes, but
none said a word, simply opened up the circle to fit me inside it.

"Ele held my hand, then raised and kissed it.  Our hands brushed as we
marched to the cadences of the Officer of the Day.  We moved like a
single beast with many feet, to the nearby stand of linden trees, and
the formality of her trial and her sentencing.

"It was with some surprise I realized Hors had marched with us,
marching behind the Andorian drummer.  He knew Ele would need the
presence of Brothers on this morning.  And me, I would need the
presence of friends as well.

"The Court sat behind a long table covered with emerald-green chintz.
The green square of the Legion Banner lay bright against its darker
green.  Two crossed swords lay upon it.  Three females and two males
sat behind these swords as her Court.  Two officers, two NCO's, one
enlisted.  Our Risan was on it, both Tanugan's, and humans were the
two males.

"Chance can pick odd combinations for any grouping, and randomized
computing had chosen Ele's Court.  In the same way it had picked all
humans for her guard.  The ceremonial guard became the corners and
sides of a square, and the Courts Martial came into being.

"They sat Ele on a small folding chair.  With her decorations lying on
a small green pillow in front of her.  Colorful, glittering in the
morning light.

"Both counsels were Bajoran, and had the sense to use plain language
for the ceremonies.  Allah save us all from civilian lawyers.

"About us were perhaps a dozen troopers, all there to help Ele down
her dark path as well as they could by being there.

"We've all lost too many friends and lovers to watch a Courts for the
titillating excitement of it.  We are all family in the Legion, and we
kill our own if we must, but we still love one another.  It simply
means the survivors bleed inside.

"Ele freely admitted her crime of murder, ignoring the quaver she gave
to the words.  She stood straight for the verdict of guilty. For the
sentencing.  Then saluted the Court as they adjourned. Her salute was
ragged and she was trembling.

"The Risan was crying as she went away, and would not look at Ele, or
anyone else.  I have often wondered what could have ever driven one of
these Rican's from their paradise planet.  What dreams mar her nights,
what hopes sap her resolve?

"Her brown eyes wide and afraid, Ele looked to me, and I nodded to
her, putting my hand to my mouth.  She did the same, and one of the
guards stared at her as she swallowed what had been inside her glove.

"He swallowed the words on his lips and said nothing.  Somehow
divining my role, he looked to me, searching for instructions perhaps.
I laid one finger to a lip and he drew his eyes straight ahead.
Ignoring all reality besides what lay in his far-off gaze. We are
family.

"Ruti stood beside me as Ele calmly walked out of the square of stiff
guards to stand before me.

"The OD started after her in surprise, white belt flashing in the sun.
Then my Ruti made some motion of assurance, and the Officer subsided
to loose attention nearby.  I could not bear to say good-bye to my new
lover, yet my heart leaped to hold her one more time.

"A night can be an entire lifetime, after all.  A long marriage. Just
minus the arguments, is all.

"Ele would have simply embraced me, I'm sure, but I drew her head
forward and kissed her on her quivering lips.  How could I say goodbye
with an embrace?  How could I say goodbye at all?

"I could feel her body tense with the need not to shake.  I kissed her
eyes, her brow, her cheeks, her lips.  I held her close, and tried to
show the universe I was not ashamed to have been her lover.  She had
been for....  How long?

"I held her until the OD touched me on one arm,    Ruti gently prising
my hold from Ele on the other side.  It partially calmed her to kiss
me.  She licked the tears on my cheek.  Then shaking, she returned to
her guards as they reformed their circle.

"I could taste the orangey sweetness on her lips, the flavor of that
which she had just taken, that which she had received from my hand.
That for which I had given four bars of gold-pressed latinum, given
them to you, Mister Bune.

"The guard and us waited by the cliff, patient in the warming morning,
uncomfortable, weary beyond rational measure.  The firing squad formed
behind the farm building, and soon filed out into the sun, every
trooper carrying a stored-charge rifle.  Perhaps poetic justice, more
likely chance computer selection of that weapon. Ele had done her
crime with a stored-charge gun.

"Exposed to the gazes of the universe, Ele was obviously becoming more
agitated as time passed, her head searching as if to find some lost
quality of herself.

"By the time the firing squad was in place, and the OD was tying her
to the post, she was again blubbering, babbling, her eyes continually
seeking mine out.  Accusations in them.

"By the time the OD was drawing the black square of cloth from his
belt she was crying my name.  Words, phrases, tears, only I and Ruti
knew what she was talking about.  Maybe Hors too, the way he was
looking at me.

"She was falling apart before our eyes, and she was going to die with
her gut wrenching.  With her pants fouled and her cries for help
unanswered.  A few turned away, most of us tried to will some peace or
some strength or SOMETHING to her.

"I was walking across the small field of sand grass without ever
realizing I'd started to do any such thing.  Ele held my eyes, she
held my heart, she held my promises, I must save her this agony, I
could not let this go on as it was.

"Only later did I learn of the loud buzz my walk caused.  "Calm and
cool as walking across a room to spit out the window," Ruti said.  A
calm and coolness I did not feel.

"It was practically a parade.  Me, Ruti, Hors, and the OD, even the
Exec was surprised to discover he'd begun to walk forward to intercept
me.  Crossing in front of the firing squad to do so.

"Ele was crying out to me.  Drool on her chin, tears on her face, eyes
almost closed from puffy hysteria.  I laid one strong hand on her
shoulder, and started mouthing words of reassurance to her. At least
that's what Ruti remembers I was saying.  I can't remember, myself.

"I tugged at the cord tying her upright to the post, and kissed her on
the cheek, saying words of comfort and encouragement.

"When I shot her in the side of her head with my slug-thrower it made
the loudest noise I think I shall ever hear.  I pray Mary, I pray
Allah, I pray Buddha I may never again hear so frightening a noise as
when I pulled that trigger.

"Ele sagged instantly, her life fleeing faster than thought.  Gore
splattered the post, Ruti, myself.  Ele shed two tears of blackest red
out her eyes, twin regrets for the life she might have had. Ruti later
had to clean me off, but I have no recollection even of that.  I was
as dead at that instant as Ele Forne.

"Ruti led me away from what once was a lover, and none stopped us.
Walking steadily past us stalked Hors the Klingon.  Parade ground
perfect.  He picked up my pistol and threw it far out over the
Sapphire Sea.  The OD attempted to protest, but later told me what the
Klingon said to him.

""The woman has fainted, Lieutenant," he brazenly stated.  All present
knew otherwise, the blood must have fouled the grass for meters
around.  But the Klingon stood his ground, staring down the OD,
ignoring the darkling spatters on the OD's face and his own.

""I repeat, Sir, the woman has fainted.  Mercifully.  If you wish, I
shall place the blindfold about her eyes.  Hopefully this day's work
will be done before she comes to her senses," Hors added.  He took the
blindfold from the OD and gently tied it about Ele's poor shattered
head.

"The OD again almost made a comment, but the Klingon forestalled him.

""She has fainted, Sir.  Surely you would not question the word of a
Klingon warrior, Sir?"  The OD looked Hors in the face, millimeters
from his own.  He looked down at Ele, glanced at the direction Ruti
had taken me.  Then the OD nodded his head.  And turned his back on
the fouled corpse by the stake.  We are family.

"Amazingly enough the execution continued.  Right then, correct,
formal, no comment made by any present.

"The Exec told off the commands for the firing squad to lock, load and
fire.  The OD gave her the coup de grace, a formality as he fired into
the sea alongside us.  A doctor proclaimed the lifeless bundle to be
quite properly dead.

"All knew they had executed a dead woman, all held their tongues. The
firing squad was probably glad to be rid of responsibility for her
death.

"As she requested, and as was customary, she was cremated in one of
our power plants.  As is customary, the cremation was complete with
the medals on her little green pillow.  A half dozen, ten, planets had
awarded her those trinkets.  Why I don't know, and shall never ask.
Her few remains were spread over the waves near where she died.  There
by the Sapphire Sea.

"The OD came to my ASV later that night with a small bottle of very
good Saurian brandy.  After him appeared the Exec, with the Risan from
the Courts Martial.  The Doc gave me a shot to knock me out for a few
hours.  They were all gone when I awoke.  We are family.

"Ele deserved, I think, to die calm, at peace.  Forgetting the
universe rather than being ejected from it.  She deserved to die in a
haze with no returning, don't you think?.

"She deserved to die doped into oblivion, a gentle slide into the
dark, dreamless, a gentle dance until the music ceased.  The way I
promised she would.  Not with red tears on her cheeks.

"Last night I bought ten tiny tablets of Blue-Rowan from you.  I even
tasted the horrid bitterness of those tablets.  I paid a high price
for that drug, one which even you knew was excessive, Bune. I don't
know how you switched tablets on me, or whether only the outside was
coated with Blue-Rowan, but that drug doesn't taste sweet or orange.

"I tried Blue-Rowan once, Bune.  Years ago.  And it doesn't taste like
what I tasted on Ele's lips.  What she took brought her no daze, no
peaceful last minutes until a death in sleep.

"You cheated me!  You cheated me, Natasha Yar, and I might have killed
you for that alone.  Worse, you caused Ele to die with no dreams in
her dying mind, no bliss in her soul, no contentment to go with her
into the long darkness.

"You cheated Ele of a calm and dignity she had begged me for.  It was
her only request of me, you son of a goddamned bitch, it was her last
request.

"She knew she couldn't take the pressure, she knew she would crack at
the end, and she wanted something so small and insignificant from me.

"She wanted to die unknowing of the fact, she wanted to die with a
tiny drop of dignity.  An overdose of Blue-Rowan would have carried
her beyond where anything in our universe could have touched her.

"Was that so much to ask for?  Was it, you thieving bastard?"

I got up, ignoring Bune.  He wasn't moving now.  Not even rolling his
eyes.  That had been amusing, watching his eyes roll as the sweat ran
down his face.

I picked up my chair, my strong trooper's muscles moving easily in the
simple act.  I carried the chair back to it's place by the front door.
The legs were carefully placed in their previous position, in the
slight flattened spots in the cheap rug.  Again the showroom in front
seemed all as it had been, undisturbed, perfect, sterile.

My dope stick, my joint of .... yes, Tea, I liked the word.  It lay in
the archaic ashtray sitting on the desk of Gospodin Bune. I had placed
it where it might be assumed Bune had been smoking something, probably
illegal.  Remembering DNA signatures I flushed the remnants down his
dumper and washed it.

I carefully brushed my gloves against my thighs.  The Tea stick now
never was.  I didn't bother thanking Bune for the dope stick, or the
time he spent listening to my tale.

I had time for a leisured and careful look around, time to review my
actions since I arrived an hour ago.

Let's see ....  First thing, I came through the back door, over there.
Really stupid of Bune to allow me to get past his first defenses.  He
must not have expected anyone in the Legion to still be on-planet.
Sloppy thinking, he should have assured himself he was safe.  He
should have had all his safeties in operation. Instead he opened the
back door, careless as you please.  Standing there was me with a VERY
long knife in a sheath in the small of my back..

We all make mistakes.

Of course I had been prepared to blow his door, or phaser it into
non-existence.  Being in a military organization means you have access
to a large range of brute-force options.  Untidy, but damned
effective.

Or subterfuge.  I'd rubbed my bra-less body all over his body in order
to gain entrance.  I've been a whore.  I know how to convincingly fake
sexual attraction towards a male.

That's one of my own failings, thinking first of force, then
considering subtler methods.  Ruti had been the one to suggest I
simply knock on the rear entranceway.  Then try charming my way
inside.  And it worked.

I was calmer now.  I removed one leather glove and tested the
pulse-rate in his throat.  Deliberately not feeling any emotion as I
noted its faint, frantic and erratic rate.  The glassy look on his
face accused me.  My own return look accused him.  I restrained my
impulse to spit in his face.  From his pulse rate, he may have had no
more than another minute to live.

By the side of his desk glittered the wide open safe in his floor.
Gaping in it's raised and open position, dozens of jars and canisters
lying invitingly unprotected.  Drawers and pigeon-holes filled the
inside, filled with vials, hypo-canister's, and bottles resplendent
with a rainbow's worth of pills.

One side of his treasure trove was in either refrigeration, or stasis.
Most likely there was a fortune, no, four fortune's in pharmaceuticals
and chemicals within that tiered safe.  As well as in the sturdy
little chest that had come out of it.  The one sitting open on Bune's
desk.

It should take a great while for the police on this planet to simply
catalog the items inside the chest's.  The Police will also assume
that no one could have passed up that fortune or four if a stranger
had been in here.

I removed Bune's restraints now.  They weren't necessary any more. I
carefully rolled and replaced them in my thigh pockets.  The gag I
re-rolled and placed under my cap.  The leg and thigh restraints went
into my back pockets.

From the smaller drug treasure chest on his desk, I had given him two
small hypo doses of something labeled Daphne.  Then two doses of Pink
Indigo.  Then one dose of Electric Day.  The three doses of Night-mare
were probably overkill.

There were two or three hundred numbered and labeled packets in the
three compartments in the little chest I had searched.  Even I was
amazed at the variety and quantities of the pharmacy I'd discovered
there alongside and upon his business desk.  Half of the named items
triggered no memories in me.  , All those with just code letters and
numbers I considered unknowns.

To really ensure his fate I had given Bune three doses of an
unlabelled clear substance.  His lips had immediately turned a deep
cerulean blue.

It had been pleasing to be able to administer Bune endgame drugs
through tunic and skin with his own hypo-spray.  He had been preparing
to give himself some of his own vintage's.  It was a bonus to be able
to use his own hypo-spray that way.  Once in my hands Bune was dead in
any event.

My choices must have been lovingly fatal, for as I watched Bune
twitched, sweat being replaced by a deep waxy coldness on his brow.
The room filled with the stench of his body muscles losing control,
spewing all its contents.  His eyes no longer had a living gaze to
them.  A finger to his throat showed no pulse, no breath, no reaction
to a gloved finger on his eyeball.  He had now taken his own
terrifying one-way journey to meet the conqueror worm. Gone dancing
into his own dreams and nightmares.

It hadn't taken much work to find Bune's caches of drugs and rare
substances, either.

When I entered his office, Bune was protesting my entrance.  A few
painful fighting holds, and kicks in the groin, and he stopped
protesting.  He was lucky I didn't take his teeth and eyes out. After
a few seconds additional scuffle, Bune collapsed in his over-stuffed
chair.  And sitting there was his treasure chest, next to the desk.
Plus the smaller chest on his desk.  His safe had been raised and
open.  Yeah, no doubt he had been about to indulge himself in some
pleasing chemical mind-rot.

The vintage the vintner keeps in his own cellar.  I had been spared
the necessity of cutting his heart out.

Naturally I left Bune's cache of undoubtedly illegal drugs intact.
Excepting my pilfering of a pair of dope stick's, ganja, Tea. They
were all I used of his supply of exotic substances.

I wouldn't touch his money, excepting four quarter-bars of
gold-pressed latinum.  Those were mine, Ruti's rather.  There were
perhaps forty bars and thick wads of other money left in his safe. As
well as two phasers.  All of which I left for the police.  Let them
use it, resell it, burn it, whatever they wished to do.

A last careful and measured pacing inside here, and then to the back
room.  Remembering my route exactly smiling to myself. There, there,
now my movements in the shop.  Straightening a few small items of
furniture.  I stood before Bune again.  I felt so cold now, too cold.

Standing, looking around.  Reflecting on how little joy I was feeling
in my cold revenge.  I had been expecting satisfaction, release, the
loss of my own sense of guilt.  Instead I felt like crying.  Feeling a
small regret at bothering to destroy a cockroach like Bune.

"I don't think you can still hear me where you are now, Bune, but if
you can I wish you to know someone should eventually find your body.

"Here, peaceful, no signs of robbery, no forced entry.  Your local
cops might conclude it was death by accident, but it won't matter. The
last of the Legion goes off-planet in less than two hours from now.
Most units have already lifted.

"If any of your police should suspect anything, they'll be too late to
catch me.  Some might wish they could have congratulated me.  Some may
regret your passing if you were bribing them. That's quite a
collection of drugs you have for sale, and you must have been
protected.  Those razzers will miss their many Cred's in bribes.

"As for me, I shall always remember Ele's last tears.

"Her last two tears were dark red, Bune.  Dark red because they were
blood.  When I shot her in the temple, the shock wave, the sudden
fluid pressure wave forced blood through her tear-ducts, made Ele cry
blood.

"She cried tears of blood, Bune , tears of blood.

"She died in pain she should have not experienced, you son of a bitch.

"Although I doubt such a place exists, I may roast in hell for what
sins I have committed, and one sin may be your death.  But at least if
there is a Hell you'll have gotten there before me."

I had rehearsed that little spiteful speech, and it seemed so
contrived now, and so empty.  All I had now of Ele were a few
memories, and Bune's staring eyes didn't enlarge them a whit.

With that I left.

---

continued in the fifth story in the Riding The Tick series 'The Bodyguard'