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

It made me think of Alice, lying dead in that alley, with blood dripping from her head.

And it made me think of Howerter, who was just dying to seize control. He wouldn’t be a nameless governor. He’d be lord on Earth, King Howerter of Colorado, backed by the United States, financed by Hereford Gold. He’d lord over all of us but good.

Baptista took a deep hit from an oxygen tank and finished up. “If we elude the military’s perimeter and make it into Denver, it’s still a warzone. Trying to find your sisters is going to be rough.”

“And we have the thirty-day deadline to consider,” Pilate said.

I turned away and stared at the clouds out of the window. “But President Jack is coming. We have confirmation of that, and we have a date. We’ve done more with less.”

Baptista shrugged. “His appearance is going to be short. He’ll have the best of the best of the secret service guarding him. And once he is done, he’ll be airlifted out immediately. Getting to him will be impossible.”

“Impossible,” I whispered. “We hear that a lot. Doesn’t really stop us much.”

“But what price are you willing to pay?” Pilate asked. “You keep doing the impossible but look what it’s doing to you.”

“Don’t wanna look,” I said curtly. I spun. “So, we get past the American perimeter and into Denver, Sketchy drops us off, and we go looking for intel.”

“In a warzone,” Baptista said. “They’re calling it the Battle of Denver.”

“Fancy,” I said. “So Baptista, I keep throwing around the word ‘we.’ You with us? Can we trust you?”

Baptista sat quiet for a long time. “If Tibbs Hoyt has the cure to the Sterility Epidemic, if he has been manipulating my government, then it’s my duty to bring the truth out into the light and bring him down.”

Another long uncomfortable silence as we all thought about what she’d said.

I had to warn her. “People who join our cause die, Baptista. You seem like a nice enough woman, but Pilate is right. Doing the impossible comes with a price tag.”

And what had this quest cost us? Petal dead. Tenisha Keys and Crete, both dead. Cut off the leg of my sister. Wren prolly mutated into a monster. And me? My soul, my very heart, had been trampled underfoot.

“I’m a soldier, Cavatica Weller,” Baptista said. “Soldiers serve the greater good. Many die or lose what’s priceless to them in the process. It’s part of the deal.”

“But not you,” I said. “And not Peeperz, I added. You won’t die. I won’t let it happen. Sketchy and Tech are with us, so it’s settled.”

Sketchy nodded. Didn’t talk. Her silence hurt me.

Tech let out a long, dramatic sigh. “I’m in, but Cavatica, first, you and I are going to have a long talk.”

Fear filled me and I smiled. Sounded like she wanted to fight. Even scared, I looked forward to the battle.

I wasn’t my sister Wren, but I was finding her footsteps so very easy to follow.

Chapter Twelve

I WANTED TO CALL MY book Apologia, for it was a defense of my conduct and opinions over the course of my lifetime. But my editor at Simon & Schuster saw it as too esoteric a term for the countless women I’d helped. We settled on My Apologies, but I was never comfortable with the new title. How many women have needlessly said “I’m sorry,” repeatedly, in the history of our gender? In the end, I was sorry for many things, and it was title enough.

—Burke, Sally Brown, My Apologies, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2076

(i)

We split up for a few hours of sleep, though sleeping at high altitude was going to be a challenge. And I didn’t like the idea of lying on a mattress that had been used by Cuius Regios as some point. But Pilate insisted, and I’d grown used to following his orders. We found the barracks, rows and rows of two-story cots.

Pilate snored, coughed, snored some more and I lay above him on a bunk near the neofiber ceiling. Sleep found me until the first dreams of the culvert snapped me awake. Sunlight gleamed through the portholes. Checked my Moto Moto watch and it was a little after nine a.m.

Slept long enough. Might as well get on with arguing with Tech.

I found her in the weapons room. I sidled up to her. We stood in front of racks of high-powered armament, an arsenal there to equip at least five hundred soldiers. MG21s, AZ3s, and what would become my favorite weapon, G18s The G18 shot neofiber darts, slender, high-velocity rounds designed to rip through internal organs like needles. The darts would go through armor, skin, bone, and tissue and come right out your back to kill a dozen women behind you.

I hefted a Mossberg Quadcannon, otherwise known as a Beijing Homewrecker, Pilate’s weapon of choice. He said it was one confused beast—it didn’t know if it was a grenade launcher that wanted to be a shotgun, or a shotgun that wanted to be a grenade launcher. I found him a bandolier of 12-gauge shells and 20 mm grenades. Happy birthday, Pilate.

Maybe this would get him to his happy place. He’d untied Baptista, but instead of a hearty “Welcome aboard skank!” he had muttered something about the crazy Weller circus and led her somberly out of the room. And yet I caught him evaluating the spread of bruising across the lower half of her face. My handiwork. Amazing I hadn’t broken her jackering jaw.

Thinking about Baptista, I muttered, “She could be a Severin sent in to infiltrate us.”

“What’s that?” Tech asked.

“Baptista might be a Severin,” I said. “You know, the ARK soldiers who can pretend to be anyone until they turn on you and shoot you in the back.” Abruptly, sweat swamped me and I remembered Mariposa, a twelve-year-old girl that had changed from a sweet orphan into a killing machine the minute she saw the chalkdrive around