War Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 5) by Aaron Ritchey (best short novels .TXT) 📕

prouder about questioning the ethics of our service. I love America, but I’m not going to blindly follow a flag.”

“But if you help us, in any way, you’ll be marked as a terrorist. There’s a death penalty for treason,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes, there is. But what I’m doing isn’t treason because the way it appears, President Swain is dancing to a tune Tibbs Hoyt is calling. Swain isn’t America and neither is Hoyt. Whatever I do, I will do for the good of the United States. And my family has been called terrorists before. My great-great-great grandfather worked with the abolitionists. Slavery was legal back then. That wasn’t right then, and what the U.S. has done to her vets isn’t right now.”

“I bet you were wildly popular in your unit,” Pilate smirked.

“I wasn’t,” Baptista agreed, “but I had friends. Officers saw us as a problem, but we argued the dissenting opinion is critical to ensure maximum effectiveness.”

Sketchy lifted her head. “Can I say something?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I’ll forgive you, Cavatica, for the Moby Dick. I loved her, but the way we were going, it was only a matter of time before she fell from the sky. That’s fine. It’s not, but I can get through it. And I wanna say I agree with Tech, Peeperz is a kid, and we’ve risked his life too much. This was only the last straw. Every time I had him work the guns in our battles, I felt bad, but mind you, I didn’t pull him. So I’ve sinned against him as well.” She took in a deep, deep breath and let it out. “I’ll fly for you, Cavatica. What Tibbs Hoyt and his ARK have done is downright evil. We have to get the truth out into the world. Mavis Meetchum herself said we should. She knows. And she’ll help. Tech, you in?”

Tech nodded, but when I looked at her, she couldn’t meet my eyes.

“So the truth is what?” Baptista asked. Then she knew ’cause she was a bright one. “Tibbs Hoyt really does have the cure to the Sterility Epidemic.”

“Damn straight,” I said. “Now, tell us about Denver. But I have to warn you, anything you say marks you as a terrorist.”

“I prefer the term righteous outlaw,” Baptista said. “Now, listen up.”

(iii)

Baptista went off. As she told us everything she knew, I kept thinking about our expectations of her. I truly thought she would toe the party line and give us only her name, rank, and serial number.

I’d really thought we’d have to put her down.

Then again, who had been our enemy for months and months? Cloned soldiers created to follow orders, who couldn’t betray their creators, who had to follow orders because it was in their neuro-chemical make-up.

Jen Baptista was a human being. Feelings as well as logic dictated her moves. She came from a military family, and such a family knew about duty and honor. But like in anything, the more involved you get into an organization or movement, the more you saw the moving parts, the more you were able to question things. If you worked at a sausage factory, you learned about the guts and unmentionables of the industry.

You work in a church and you’ll see that religion is like law and sausages: They all require bloodshed and ugliness. If you’re a thoughtful person, you could choose how bloody you wanted your hands to get.

Baptista saw that we weren’t terrorists and that her superiors weren’t working for the good of the United States of America. The U.S. military leadership worked for the American Reproduction Knowledge Initiative, a corporation, without a single elected official.

So she told us what she knew.

President Jack was coming for St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2059.

Denver was under siege. The U.S. had hit the city hard. At first. They thought if they could eliminate June Mai Angel and her troops, they would save the Juniper. She had become the great enemy of the people. The propaganda told the soldiers that without June Mai Angel, the territorial government could return to power. The truth was, though, the territorial government never did exercise any power at all.

I’d grown up with jokes about the governor, who we didn’t even name. It was just the Governor. Ha. Useless.

We’d offer the name up as excuses. “Mama, I don’t need to do it, the Governor will.”

“Who said I didn’t clean the barn? The Governor?”

“You might want to ask the Governor for help ’cause I ain’t gonna milk those cows with you tomorrow morning.”

Sheriff Lily was a different matter. We went to her to settle little things and for general help. However, Sheriff Lilly was an elected official. If she didn’t do her job, we’d find someone else.

But mostly, it was frontier justice and endless battles with Outlaw Warlords.

Twenty-five thousand American soldiers were sent to Denver, but from the gossip that Baptista heard, the peacekeeping wasn’t going well. The Denver Metro area had a thousand hidey-holes and if you expanded it out to all the suburbs, you had a million. What should’ve been another case of “over by Christmas” became a slog.

The U.S. had fallen back and created a perimeter around the entire Front Range, from Parker to Northglenn, from East Denver to Golden. They’d created a prison inside of a prison and Baptista didn’t know who had taken the fight to the guerillas inside, but we all knew. The ARK was doing the cleansing, so the normal Military Megs didn’t see the Gammas.

Another mystery that troubled Baptista and her comrades was the American wounded.

If you took a bullet, you were sent to special medical base in the New Mexico territory, only no one who went there seemed to leave. And no one ever saw or heard of medics or supplies being sent there. Rumor had it, the U.S. military had contracted the base out to the ARK. That all sounded like a conspiracy, but it did make Baptista pause. Were the American wounded being sent there to be killed? Brainwashed? Mutated?

I