GAIA: Rogue State (A Girl Power Novella) Read online

  Tonya runs through her options. None of them are very good. Why the hell didn’t she put a failsafe on the rifle so no one else can use it? Stupid oversight on her part. If she gets out of this alive she’ll have to fix it. In the meantime there’s nothing she can do that could cripple him before he could fire the weapon. From his grip on it she knows he won’t fall for the electromagnet trick again. She takes off the helmet and then shakes her head slightly to let her hair down. Maybe the sight of her face will kickstart his memory.

  “Christ, you’re a bloody kid.”

  “I’m eighteen according to the government,” she says.

  “Don’t try to follow me, lass.”

  “Diane, please—”

  He turns the rifle around to hit her in the head with its butt. The blue sky over Tonya begins to spin and then turns dark.

  Chapter 13

  The horrid men toss her into a jeep. As they drive her through the town, she notes hardly anyone around except white men dressed in paramilitary garb. There are a few occasional natives, all with the same furtive look to them. These natives all make sure to look away from the jeep. No help is coming from them.

  It seems a reasonable conclusion that whoever had attacked her village has also taken over this town. Apparently it’s too important for them to wipe off the face of the planet with one of those firebombs. To keep it operating they’ve left a few of the natives; they’re little more than servants really.

  What a fool she’s been. She should have known she couldn’t perform even so slight of a task as to get help for Diane and her village. She’s utterly useless, a complete waste of space. One of the men squeezes her arm. “Don’t cry yet, darling. You’ll have plenty more use for it later.”

  The way they all laugh gives her a chill. She imagines they’ll take her to a prison camp, something like the concentration camps the Nazis used. She won’t be one of the lucky ones to survive; she’ll die there before help can arrive.

  It’s not a concentration camp they take her to. The building’s size and the smoke stacks and such indicate they’re taking her to a factory. The name of the place is written in both the native language and German. She recognizes the logo as that of a car manufacturer. They’re putting her to work on an assembly line?

  The jeep stops in front of a loading dock where three men even bigger and more brutish wait for them. “This is what you’ve brought me?” He seizes her right arm to squeeze her bicep. “I don’t need another girl who’ll die after twelve hours.”

  “You’re quite right: I’m no use on the assembly line. Perhaps you should let me go.”

  “So you can tell someone about this place? I don’t think so.” The man turns to one of the others with him. “Put her to work on the cleaning staff.”

  “Yes, Kommandant.”

  Part of her wants to protest being put to work as a cleaning woman, but the rest of her realizes this is much better than working on an assembly line. She might even have the freedom to move around to find a way to escape. Perhaps that’s too hopeful, but it’s all she has at the moment.

  The inside looks similar to pictures of assembly line factories she’s seen in the newspaper and on television. Except from what she sees they aren’t making cars. It appears they’re assembling metal tubes. The workers they pass are all natives, most looking very undernourished.

  The men toss her at the feet of a scrawny young woman with a mop in her hand. “She’s yours,” one of them growls.

  The woman sets down her mop to help Dr. Pierce sit up. “Thank you, young lady. My name is Khala Pierce.” She leaves off her title, leery about giving away too much information to a complete stranger.

  “Tikembe,” the woman says.

  “That’s a pretty name. Do you speak English?”

  “Some. I go to school before it close.”

  “Ah, I see. Perhaps you can tell me what’s going on here?”

  “They work. We clean.”

  “Yes, quite.”

  Tikembe hands her mop to Dr. Pierce. “Clean.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  With a sigh, she gets to work.

  ***

  Melanie is studying the video from the assault on the prison when her phone beeps. She picks it up and gasps to see Tonya is calling her. Maybe she’s decided to bring Hitter back so they can resolve all this. “Tonya?”

  “It’s me, chief. I got bad news.” She proceeds to tell Melanie that Hitter managed to take her ion rifle and run off—without his pants.

  “And did he say where he was going?”

  “No. He mentioned there was a pub in London where he gets orders from.”

  “That narrows it down to about five hundred places.”

  “I’m really sorry, Mel. Something’s happened to her—him, I mean. He doesn’t remember anything. He doesn’t remember ever being a girl. He doesn’t remember us.” Tonya’s sniffle is enough to cool Melanie’s anger over what happened. It’s clear Tonya and Diane had been in love, or at least Tonya had been.

  “I’m sorry too, Tonya. Look, we’ve got forty-eight hours to find him before Luden pulls out the big guns. Can I count on your help?”

  “Sure thing, boss. It’ll be like old times.”

  “Can you meet me in Bermuda?”

  “Not a problem. See you there.”

  The connection breaks. Melanie leans back in her chair. She was already planning to stop in Bermuda to pick up fuel—and the third member of their team. The only question is if she can trust Tonya with this; the girl did already interfere once. What if she does it again? But what other choice does she have? She doesn’t want to bring Robin or the rest of the Super Squad into this, not yet. She has to show the world GAIA can clean up its messes or her fledgling organization will be shut down before it can really get started.

  And as she told General Luden, she doesn’t know what’s going on here. She can’t very well ask Starla to tear apart the whole jungle in central Africa to look for something. Alan and Sally could cover a lot of ground fast, but they wouldn’t have any idea what they’re looking for; they might get hurt if they went blundering in—as Diane had. As she’d told Diane to do.

  Melanie barely manages to keep the tears at bay. She had felt this burden when she’d led the Super Squad Auxiliary into combat and when she’d been de facto leader of Earth. It’s that familiar burden of command, of sending those she cares about into harm’s way. Most commanders would be smarter than she had been in sending Diane into the middle of Africa with no idea of what she might encounter.

  Maybe she’d gotten too big for her britches as Mom would say. After all her success with the Super Squad Auxiliary and then this last year with GAIA, maybe she had gotten cocky. Maybe she thought she could ask her people to do anything and they’d get it done without a problem. She should have known better.

  The stewardess comes over to tell her they’re preparing to land in Bermuda. Melanie thanks her and then shuts down her laptop and phone. She has to find a way to fix this. It’s her responsibility as the general of this outfit.

  Melanie puts a hand to her stomach. Thanks to Alan her motion sickness has been under control over the last couple of years, but perhaps owing to the situation she feels what little she’s eaten rise up into her throat. She reaches into one of her pouches to retrieve a pill. Then she takes a few deep breaths to fight off the nausea. As she does, she shakes her head; what kind of general gets motion sickness?

  The plane touches down with a few gentle bumps. Melanie is grateful for this as it helps to ease the motion sickness. She squeezes her eyes shut anyway to focus on breathing, trying not to feel sick.

  After a couple of minutes the plane comes to a stop. Melanie opens her eyes to see the stewardess grinning at her. “Are you all right, General?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “If you’d care to stretch your legs, the pilot indicates we should be refueled and ready to go again in forty-five minutes.”

  “Thanks.” Melanie take
s off her seatbelt. She supposes some fresh air would do her good.

  She can smell the ocean over the fuel and exhaust of the planes. She’s never gone on a tropical vacation before; Mom was always too afraid her precious son might contract some mysterious disease in the tropics. She’s been far too busy since becoming a girl to make time for a vacation, but seeing the distant blue expanse of the ocean, she thinks it might be nice for her and Robin to come down here on a proper vacation. God knows they could both use it.

  “Oh, don’t you look so pretty!” Mom gushes, sounding as if Melanie is five years old.

  Before Melanie can stop her, Mom crushes her in a hug. She kisses Melanie on her left cheek. “I was so worried when I heard. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. What are you doing here?”

  “Someone had to look after Garlak.”

  “That’s what the stewardesses are for.”

  “Don’t be silly. I can’t very well let the two of you go into this by yourselves.”

  “Mom, please, we need someone back at the office to look after things.”

  Mom fixes her with a very motherly glare. “Young lady, you might be a high-and-mighty general to everyone else, but you’re still my daughter. Now, I’m coming and that’s final.”

  “All right. But when we get there—”

  “We’ll discuss that later.”

  There’s a slight shake of the pavement beneath Melanie’s feet as Garlak approaches. She’s a little pudgier and her coarse hair a little longer, but otherwise she still looks like a flesh-colored She-Hulk dressed in a leopard print bikini. “Me here,” the Neanderthal announces.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” Melanie says. She knows better than to shake Garlak’s hand. “How are the kids?”

  “Tuk and Tuki good. They strong.”

  “Like their mother.” Melanie doesn’t envy the babysitter having to look after the two baby Neanderthals. Technically they’re only half-Neanderthal since they have an unidentified homo sapien father, but from what Melanie’s seen they’re every bit their mother’s children.

  There’s a roar of jet engines to indicate Tonya’s arrived. When she takes her helmet off it’s clear from the mascara running down her cheeks that she’s been crying. “Looks like the band is back together,” she says, trying to sound like her jaunty self, but it’s hollow to Melanie’s ears.

  “Almost,” Melanie says. She puts a hand on Tonya’s shoulder. “You don’t have to do this. Garlak and I can handle it.”

  “No, I want to help. It’s my fault he got out of that prison.”

  “I think we both know Hitter would have gotten out anyway.”

  “I have to make this right.”

  “We both do.” They nod to each other and then start to board the plane.

  Chapter 14

  Tikembe helps Dr. Pierce up from the floor. “They see you, they beat you,” she says.

  “Oh dear,” Dr. Pierce mumbles. If she had the energy she would laugh at her naïve thoughts earlier that this would somehow be easier than the assembly line. Cleaning the floors around here seems to be a full-time job. As soon as an area gets clean, more dirt begins to accumulate. Even with a half-dozen women under Tikembe’s command it’s not enough.

  She has no idea what time it is when they finally let them have a break. The cleaning staff sits against a wall to eat stale bread and drink from a bucket of musty water. One woman’s right arm hangs loose while she awkwardly tries to lift the bucket and drink with her right arm.

  Dr. Pierce tries to take the woman’s arm, but she yanks it away. She says something Dr. Pierce doesn’t understand. She turns to Tikembe. “Could you tell her I want to examine her arm? I’m a doctor.”

  “Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  Tikembe talks to the injured woman, who nods her understanding. This time she lets Dr. Pierce look at the arm. She pokes at it in a few spots, prompting the woman to wince. “Without a proper X-ray I can’t be sure, but I think this is only a sprain. If we could get her a sling—”

  “No! Guards see injury, guards kill.”

  “They would kill her for being injured?”

  “Yes.”

  She wants to say how horrible this is, but then she remembers where she is. “Tell her the arm should heal in a few days so long as she doesn’t use it. In the meantime, we all need to pitch in to help cover for her.”

  Tikembe passes this along to the others, who all nod in agreement. Then Dr. Pierce lifts the bucket so the woman can drink from it. As she’s doing this, the bucket is knocked from her hands. “Back to work,” a guard says.

  She goes back to cleaning, the injured woman staying close to her. They work together for hours, until the lights flicker. Guards appear to herd them into a fenced-off area. There are no mattresses, pillows, or blankets; they have to sleep on the bare floor as best they can. Dr. Pierce begins to miss the jungle; the floor there was a bit softer at least.

  Someone shakes her shoulder. She doesn’t recognize the young woman who says, “You doctor?”

  Dr. Pierce sits up. “Yes. I’m a doctor.”

  The woman takes her arm to lead her across the pen. It’s clear what the woman wants when Dr. Pierce sees the other woman on the floor, her stomach bulging and her face contorted in pain. “Oh dear.”

  “You help?”

  “I’ll try.” She turns to the woman who fetched her. “I need Tikembe. Do you know who she is?”

  “I find.”

  It’s not too difficult to find her in the pen. “I need you to translate for me,” Dr. Piece says. “When she feels the pain, I need her to push.”

  Tikembe translates this to the woman, who nods slightly. A few seconds later she begins to push. Dr. Pierce admires the woman’s courage to do this without screaming as any normal woman—including herself—does in this circumstance. The woman knows what will happen to her if the guards find out; she and the baby will most likely be killed.

  After several go-rounds, Dr. Pierce can finally see the baby’s head. “Tell her to push with everything she has. Then we’ll need something to wrap the baby in. And some way to cut the umbilical cord.”

  “No knives here.”

  “I know, but there must be something sharp.”

  “No weapons.”

  “Indeed. We need an edge of some sort.” She looks around helplessly. The sharpest thing she can see is the fence holding them in. “Ah, yes. That might work splendidly.”

  The pregnant woman barely makes a squeak as she expels the baby from her with a little guidance from Dr. Pierce. The baby girl is still attached to the umbilical cord. There’s no way she can survive without severing it. With Tikembe’s direction, the pregnant woman shifts closer to the fence, enough that Dr. Pierce can align the umbilical cord with the edge of the barbed wire fence. She gets the child as close to the fence as she dares, wanting to leave as little of the cord as possible. One of the women keeps a hand over the baby’s mouth to stifle her cries while Dr. Pierce delicately works to rub the cord against the fence.

  It seems to take forever before the cord is severed. At last the baby is free from her mother. There’s still nothing to use as a blanket, so Dr. Pierce takes off her own shirt. First she rips off one sleeve to wipe the blood off the girl. Then she uses the rest to swaddle the newborn. She smiles down at the girl, remembering why she came to this place. She had wanted to help people, to make her ancestral home a better place.

  She passes the baby into the new mother’s arms. The woman mumbles something. Tikembe says, “She wants to know your name.”

  “My name is Khala.”

  Tikembe translates and then the woman says something. “She say baby’s name is Khala.”

  “Oh my. That’s quite lovely,” Dr. Pierce says. She’s never had a patient name a baby for her before. Not even any of her own children or grandchildren; they all had “proper” English names, which only now fills her with shame. She smiles at the new mother and then says, “Tell her to r
est. She’s had a very long night.”

  Then Dr. Pierce does what she can to clean up the afterbirth so the guards won’t see it.

  ***

  Garlak snores loudly in the back of the plane while Melanie, Mom, and Tonya sit up front. “It doesn’t make sense,” Melanie says. “Turning her back into a man wouldn’t wipe her memory. There has to be something else going on here.”

  “It seems pretty obvious it has to do with this Klinsmann guy,” Tonya says. “That’s who they sent him to kill. “What was he up to?”

  “I was trying to get that out of him,” Melanie says. “All he said was they were making knockoffs of Peacekeeper staffs.”

  “Humans can’t use those. Can they?”

  “I asked Alan and Kila about that. They aren’t sure. No one’s ever tried it.”

  “OK, so they were building these staffs and Diane shut their lab down. Then she tumbles across something in Africa and ends up a man in Nairobi with no memory of the last year. We’re obviously missing a piece of the puzzle here.”

  “Who wants these staffs? And for what?”

  Melanie shakes her head. “That could be just about anyone.”

  Mom clears her throat. “I think you’re forgetting something: all those people who disappeared. Didn’t you say their clothes had been left behind?”

  “Yes. Kila said it was likely they had been shrunk to microscopic size—” Melanie resists the urge to slap her forehead. “There’s a Peacekeeper involved. And something going on in Africa.” She begins going through her records to find out which Peacekeeper is stationed in central Africa. She barely holds back a scream when what comes onto her screen looks like a Beholder from the Dungeons & Dragons she played as a boy. It’s basically a giant ball with tentacles for arms, one huge eye in the center, and teeth that could probably shred a rhino into kitty litter.

  “That thing is definitely a bad guy,” Tonya says.

  “Goodness,” Mom squeaks. “I thought the Peacekeepers were all pretty like that Kila.”

  “Each race in the universe is supposed to have one—except us.”