NationStates Jolt Archive

Nadia shook her head. "I'm not going to be passing out soon, but I'm not feeling very good." She accepted the crackers and nibbled one of the pieces.

Krika lay down across the bed. She seemed tired.

"You’re not very good at keeping secrets, you know..."

Nadia's mind raced. The thought that she couldn't keep a secret could be sobering. What if I'd given away tactical plans to the Amestrians? What if I revealed that I was opposed to their Torontian policy? Spilling the beans about Sara was bad enough, but maybe all that an enemy agent needs to get intel out of me is to get me drunk.

She finished her cracker. This was all coming down on her so hard...

"I should hope I'd be able to keep a secret," she said. It was the only thing she could think of to say.

Krika sighed. “But you can’t… You can be read like a book.”

Sklenova gave Krika a look. "So you knew something about me... without me having to talk? What is it you wanted to know about me?" Her mind was clearing up a little, but she still had little memory of what she had let slip while plastered.

"In all honesty I just wanted to know about the Shooban. Trust me, we were not pumping you for information, you just drank too much and started going on about your love life..."

Kirka smiled. "Don't tell me you’re paranoid about spies? Although it is interesting that you and Sara Liscel are friends...don't worry, we won't say anything..."

Chlo'e already knows.

Well, we have something to talk about. "What is Amestria's position on Shooban rights?"

Nadia knew that the Amestrians were not like the Roach-Busters or the Parthians, who abused Shoobans horribly, but while Kahanistan's own government viewed Shoobans as animals, it didn't abuse them, and hunting Shoobans had been banned in Kahanistan because of the brutal ways in which Shoobans were killed, often by having their heads torn off.

Many in the Communist Party agitated for Shoobans to be considered human beings, citing a case of interbreeding (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=413691) in Roach-Busters, which proved that humans and Shoobans were technically the same species. Nadia herself was uncertain that they were human, her own Shooban had been her ersatz garbage disposal, eating her leftovers and other waste. He also had the disgusting habit of drinking out of the toilet and then trying to lick her. But she kept him as a pet, trying to teach him to talk and even read, though her success in that area was minimal.

"No Shooban's are allowed in Amestria due to the risks that they pose to the ecosystem...which is why I was curious... Currently the country has no position on whether they are entitled to individual rights..."

Krika paused and stretched her arms in the air. She then sat up, a playful expression on her face. “Would you like to play a game of cards before you turn in? Perhaps you can tell me a funny story about your former Shooban.”

"OK," said Nadia. "What kinds of card games would you happen to know?"

"I'll try to think of something... I personally never thought of much of it as funny when happening to me, but I'll think of something an outsider might think of as funny."

"How about Tisonnier? I believe it is called in English Pokem, Pokmon, Poker... That’s it, Poker!"

Krika retrieved a deck of cards from the pants on the bed. She also retrieved her wallet and poured herself another glass of Elderberry Wine.

"So Hooters girl, care for some wagers? I declare a mandatory opening bid of Cinq Cents!"

Krika tossed down a coin of miniscule value (about five cents) and began to deal the cards.

"I'm afraid I only brought enough for the vending machines I thought would be on the ship," said Nadia. "It's not like I'll be buying anything in Kraven. I didn't even bring my credit cards." She threw down a couple of dimes, having figured the machines would take USD.

OOC: They're still in the Amestrians' cabin. Nadia may have brought a few bucks' worth of change with the intention of using them in a machine, but she's basically explaining that she doesn't have much to lose in poker with the Amestrians. She's just chucking down some coins that she'd originally thought she could use in the machine but never got around to trying. She might try that later, though.

OOC: Man, I need to get with the times. :p

"I'm afraid I only brought enough for the vending machines I thought would be on the ship," said Nadia. "It's not like I'll be buying anything in Kraven. I didn't even bring my credit cards." She threw down a couple of dimes, having figured the machines would take USD.

Krika gave a sly smile and tossed in several Dix Cent pieces (ten cent pieces). She began to deal the cards.

"There are two Jokers in this deck and both are wild. You are allowed to exchange up to four cards. There are three rounds of betting and speculation before anyone can call,"

Secret: Krika dealt herself three Aces (Heart, Diamond, and Spade), a King of Hearts, and a Three of Clubs.

"How about that story?" she remarked as she took another sip of Elderberry Wine.

"About the Shooban?" Nadia asked. "Well, I took him out once to play with some neighborhood children, and it didn't go over well at all. You know how they'll run around throwing feces at each other? Well, he picked up a really big dog turd that was laying around, and he chucked it at one of the children."

Nadia fumbled around, looking for her empty glass. "The turd hit the kid right in the face, I was laughing hysterically. Not at the kid so much as at the Shooban. I swear... those kids would have torn the Shooban to pieces if I hadn't been there... and his parents looked like they wanted to do that to me too for laughing. He never learned when I tried to teach him basic skills like getting glasses from the dishwasher or pouring juice... he preferred to drink toilet water from the sound of things..."

She looked up, trying to think of something funnier than a kid getting pied with a juicy lump of dog shit. "He once came out of a neighbor's apartment, he had this habit of walking right into people's homes when they leave them unlocked, I was always being yelled at by someone or another for keeping a Shooban, some people thought I was enslaving him, others thought I should enslave him... anyway, he came out of the neighbor's apartment with a sex toy... and he extended it to me, like it was a treat or something, and he was offering it to me."

"Apparently he thought it was a treat, he'd chewed on it a little from the look of it, and this brat, must have been in the Academy or in university from the look of him, looks at me and says, 'Miss Sklenova, I didn't know you were screwing a Shooban!' I wanted to die right there. If I'd been packing then, I would have probably shot myself in the head right there. Seriously, the last thing I needed was being labeled a Shooban buggerer in front of the neighborhood. I burst into tears right there in front of everybody."

Krika tried to hide her amusement, but she failed. It was quite clear she found the whole story of the Shooban and the sex toy hilarious. "Sex and you do not seem to mix... Oh, I am being awful... You are drunk, focus on some positive experiences, all this negativity cannot be healthy... Who gets drunk to be depressed?"

Krika fetched Nadia's glass and handed it to her. She held up the Elderberry wine bottle.

"Are you sure you want some more?"

Nadia nodded enthusiastically. While sober, she would have been horribly embarrassed, but while pleasantly drunk she found the story quite amusing. She yanked the bottle out of Krika's hand and poured her glass full, drinking happily.

"Careful now, you don't want to throw up again..."

Krika paused in a moment of thought. It is only fair that I swap an embarrassing story of my own.

“To be honest, I have never been accused of bestiality, even in jest, but I have had a similar experience of sorts. Now my family were Immigrés from Indochina, and growing up I had to learn Amestrian… Even though I already spoke ok English, the de facto second language of Central, not being able to speak Amestrian marks one as a foreigner and limits ones chances for advancement… I was 15 when this happened; I was walking to the local State School, the transit system being paralyzed by anti-government strikes. It was cold and I was hungry. Along the way, I spotted a hot dog vender who was servicing demonstrators and decided to have a quick snack. I walked up and said…”

“‘Je voudrais un Heißer Hund svp.’ He burst out laughing. It turns out I had asked him for ‘a dog in heat’… 'I would like one dog in heat please.'”

Krika was beginning to feel tipsy. She held out her mostly empty glass.

"Top me off..."

Sklenova poured the glass full. Laughing hysterically, she pulled a small book out of her bag. Amestrian 101: The Moron's Guide. "It talks about that expression in the food section, where it tells you how to order food in Amestrian, it says never to use the literal Amestrian translation of the English words, 'hot dog' because of too many travelers from Kahanistan and other English-speaking countries who made that mistake." She showed Krika page 98 of her book.

Krika drained her glass and began whispering to Nadia in a slightly drunken manner. "So trying to learn Amestrian are we...? Planning to spend some vacation time there or is it so you can impress your petite amie*."

(*girlfriend)

"Planning to go to Central after I get back from Kraven," said Nadia. "I don't have a girlfriend." She gulped almost all of her drink down in one chug and reached for the bottle, but her hand was wobbly again. "But I have a friend who has an annoying habit of writing to me in Amestrian and speaking to me in Amestrian... even after I told her I don't speak it."

Krika grabbed the bottle before Nadia could get her hands on it. "No! You have had enough already, mine..."

She then poured herself another glass...

"Do you know if any of the vending machines on this ship have beer or anything like that?" Nadia asked. The question might have sounded absurd, but beer in vending machines was quite common in Kahanistan, which lacked a drinking age and therefore a reason to make alcohol less accessible.

Nadia had lost nearly half of the coins she'd brought with her, she had about eight, maybe ten, USD left in coins of various denominations. If she had been sober she would have sworn the Amestrians were deliberately dealing her shitty cards.

"Let's go out and look, before I lose any more quarters in poker."

"Oh no, better not... You heard the Velkyan broadcast, we are now under Velkyan law in regards to drugs and alcohol, whatever that means... They might not have as liberal an opinion of alcohol consumption as we do... Besides, I think you have had enough... (giggle) You lack self control..."

Krika poured herself another glass... Her eyes had glazed over.

"Let’s wait for Mireille to get back, she can then tell us what beverages they have, if any..."

Krika held up the bottle, which had only a quarter left. “Uh oh, running low…”

Nadia leaned against the edge of the bed. "I'll ask one of the Velkyans... after Mireille gets back."

"She's been gone a while... what else is she doing?" she added.

"Well it is a big ship, an aircraft carrier... This is the first time we have ever been on one... She’s probably lost or still trying to find the galley..."

Krika had polished off the bottle and was holding it up, looking through its mouth. "Oops, all gone."

Krika tossed the bottle onto the floor and put down her current hand of cards. "I win again," she squealed, "see, five Aces!"

Nadia might have been drunk, but now she KNEW the Amestrians were giving her shitty cards. "Krika, I may be blonde, but I'm not stupid. There are not five aces in anybody's deck, and I haven't gotten anything higher than a six. Someone here is trying to pull the wool over my eyes, and I'm sick of it."

Krika looked shocked. "Oh, you caught me... Very well, you can have everything... All the immense riches...yours...congratulations...”

She pushed the pile of change over to Nadia…

"A hint of advice," said Nadia, putting as much USD in her pockets as she could, leaving several dozen Amestrian coins out, probably five or six Gold Hobbes' worth. "If you'd had four aces and a King, I would have been suspicious about me not getting decent cards, but I wouldn't have had anything on you."

"Now what... we're out of booze, cards are out... I'll go for a walk on the ship, try to clear my head."

The look of concern returned to Krika's face. "Are you sure you can walk, it was only a little while ago you were about to pass out... And do you think it is safe for a tipsy woman to walk around a military vessel unescorted, what is your weight, 119?"

"115," said Nadia. "I'm not worried... there are plenty of soldiers milling about." She stood up, a little unsteady on her feet, and sat down on the bed.

"Stand up and touch your nose..."

Nadia struggled to stand up. She poked herself in the eye the first three tries before touching her nose.

"I need to clear my head. What do you have?"

"A pillow... Nadia, Nadia, Nadia... The only way to sober up is to sleep it off... Didn’t they teach you that in Secondary School Health Class...?” Krika spoke as if reciting from memory. "A shower only produces a clean drunk, coffee an alert drunk, there is no pill which can alter the amount of alcohol in ones blood stream, the only thing that makes one sober is time..."

Krika lay down on the bed and wrapped herself in the covers...

"I also think that wandering around the ship in a daze will not leave a good impression..."

Nadia had been told by those of her friends who were more habitual drinkers that exercise, such as walking, speeded up the metabolism and therefore the breakdown of alcohol in the body. Maybe they knew something, maybe they didn't. But she was in no mood to argue.

She lay her head back on the pillow. "At least if I go to sleep, I won't have to drink the pickle juice?"

"Mireille claims it reduces hangovers, it is widely used as a remedy in Eastern Amestria. I personally believe it has little effect, but I drink it to humor her... Part of a hangover is however due to dehydration. I suggest you have a glass of tap water before you turn in..."

Krika yawned. "I wonder what time it is..."

Nadia looked at her watch. She could convert military time to civilian in an instant. "10:30 PM." She left to get a drink from the nearest water fountain.

OOC: Just to say, military personnal onboard a Velkyan ship are not allowed to consume alcohol or drugs, should an enemy threat appear, we don't want our soldiers to be shitfaced. It's hard enough driving a car at 40 mph, imagine flying an aircraft going Mach 4. Narcotics are banned in Velkya, due to the fact that the drug trade destorys lives and drugs fuck you up real bad. Tobacco is close to being banned as well. Alchohol is free, and Velkyan sprites are considered to give you a better high then most narcotics.

OOC: Not related to the RP, but how do you get those numbers in your sig donoting your civil rights etc., Kahanistan?

After a couple minutes, Nadia came back into the cabin. One might have wondered if she had saved any for the fishies.

"Maybe we should get some sleep... I drank too much, I need to sleep it off," she said.

Krika had dosed off while Nadia had been getting a drink. She groaned as she was awakened by Nadia's loud reentrance.

"I was having the loveliest dream…”

Krika scooted over and made a space for Nadia to lie down.

Nadia lay down. "What about?" she asked lazily, laying on her side with her eyes closed, but still listening.

Krika sighed, her eyes closed. "Something sexual... That is after all what most lovely dreams are about... Don't you have fantasies Nadia?"

Sklenova frowned. "None that I'd care to discuss..." she said. The truth was that she did want someone... who cared about her, but had been screwed over in a pretty serious way before by someone she had thought cared for her.

Krika giggled. "Embarrassed are we...? Well then good night..."

Krika once again drifted off to sleep...

Nadia drifted off to sleep. For four or five hours, everything was fine... then Nadia found herself in an unfamiliar city...

Kravonika? She was armed with the LAR-10 given to her by the Velkyans before she boarded the ship, and was now evading the Capitol Police drones, this made the more difficult because she was leading several resistance fighters, armed with the same basic gear as an Imperial Marine, but considerably less trained.

A hunter-killer team stood in her path. Nadia blasted away at them with her LAR-10, shooting the heads as she was told to do, and had trained the rebels to do too. They fired their AK-74's and M-16 rifles into the heads of the Capitol Police...

The rebel squad held off the CP for what felt like hours, hiding behind walls and overturned military vehicles, some wearing captured CP armor moved in close... but blocks of C-12 brought down the walls on them. Nadia's weapon ran out of ammunition. She struggled to reload... found her ammunition pack was empty. She was shaking now... watching helplessly as a child of about six was callously shot in the head by one of the surviving Capitol Police.

Nadia's eyes filled with tears. She was now in a homicidal rage... she pulled out her combat knife and rushed the trooper. He was clearly not expecting this helpless, fragile young woman to attack him, the blade slipped into his neck, blood gushed over Nadia's face as she felt relief in the death of the vile capitalist beast. The two remaining Capitol Police grabbed her by the arms...

The terror came back to her. The next thing she knew, she was stripped naked, in the room she had seen on TV those months back... the one Xirnium Intelligence had broadcasted to the world... the birthing chamber. A grinning Sardaukar with a serrated bayonet at the end of his GPMG stabbed Nadia in the stomach, revealing organs the purpose of which she did not even know. She screamed in pain and anguish as her body was implanted with an innocent fetus who would be turned into the same abomination that was killing her now...

The sadistic animal put wires and tubes into her body to nourish the creature inside her. He then took the same bayonet that he had used to incise her and thrust it into her eye socket to lobotomize her. Blood and gore sprayed over the wicked man, who appeared unfazed. Despite being lobotomized, she continued to feel pain, but she was losing her mind... not even knowing who she was.

Nadia screamed again, for the last time. It would chill the bones of whoever heard it... then she woke up, in the cabin, at 3:30 AM, no longer naked but in the Hooters T-shirt and running shorts she had been wearing when she fell asleep. She was crying in anguish, her eyes filled with tears, knowing a fear no one should know.

“And I was just getting to the good part…” Krika groaned as Nadia’s cries awoke her. She sat up and glanced over at the women besides her. Instantly the look of tired irritation on her face turned to one of maternal concern.

“What is it Nadia, what’s wrong?” she asked as she rapped her arms around the poor women, caressing her, trying to comfort her…

“Was it a nightmare?”

"Yeah," Nadia said and nodded tearfully. "It's been happening to me a lot the past few weeks... I'm in battle, I get captured by the Capitol Police, I get taken to the birthing facility... they cut me up like a fish, stick all kinds of wires in my body..." She was crying pitifully, as if she were afraid to go back to sleep. "Where did my pills go?" She was looking for the pills Liscel had given her... the ones she had shown Krika while she was drunk.

Krika retrieved the bottle of Detachment from the floor.

"Are you sure you should take these so soon after drinking so many glasses of alcohol? How much alcohol do you think remains in your blood stream? Can you touch your nose? How is your head?"

"Let me think... I must have had nine or ten glasses... it's 3:30 AM, so I haven't had anything to drink since... 10, so..." She counted on her fingers. "11, 12, 1, 2, 3... 3:30, five and a half hours..."

"I can't go back to sleep now... it's probably not safe for me to take the DHC, I should probably go for a walk." And find the infirmary and see if they have anything for my head...

"I could give you a head and back massage. That always takes my mind off things. When I was going through Université I had a part time job in a massage parlor..."

Nadia nodded. "Fine," she said, not very enthusiastically. As long as she doesn't get too frisky... "I'll still need something for my head." She was having a very nasty headache, possibly from drinking far too much.

Krika handed Nadia some chewable aspirins. "Here take these... Now lay down on your back..." Her intentions seemed innocent enough.

Nadia lay down on her stomach and took the aspirins. "Thanks."

"Your welcome."

Krika began to gently massage Nadia's back. "It has been two decades, I am a little rusty..."

She was obviously being modest, as she gave Nadia a very soothing and pleasant massage.

"How does that feel...?"

Nadia closed her eyes and smiled. "Really nice, actually." She did not get the impression that Krika was doing anything less innocent than she claimed.

"Time for the head massage."

With that Krika began a soothing massage of Nadia's scalp, relieving the tension of the nightmare and headache.

"How does that feel?"

Not used to having her head rubbed, Nadia replied, "It feels... weird." Suddenly, an idea entered her head. Are these people trying to keep me here? They seem to not want me to leave the cabin...

"You look distracted, what were you thinking just now...?"

Sklenova's mind wandered. Should I tell her? "I... get the impression that you... have other intentions besides what you're letting on..."

"If you think I am attracted to you and that I am trying to seduce you...the answer is no. I am not attracted to you sexually... For someone who puts on such a show of innocence you sure do have a dirty mind..."

Krika shifted to massaging Nadia's back...

Nadia was clearly irritated now. "No! That is NOT what I was thinking at all. I was thinking that the last two times I wanted to leave the cabin, you had some idea of why I shouldn't. Tell me that I'm not getting paranoid... I think you guys are... I don't know... spooks* of some sort."

*Basically, a slang term for intelligence or other covert operatives. She knows that they're Amestrian Intelligence, but she doesn't know their real orders. She thinks they might have been sent to spy on her, and Mireille's getting her drunk doesn't exactly dispel that notion.

"Or course we are spooks, we work for the Amestrian Secret Service. What do you think the Secret Service is?"

Krika sat back and laughed.

"I am afraid I am going to have to tell you that yes, you are becoming paranoid Nadia. The door is right there and if you want to leave this room for any reason feel free... I also advised you to get a drink of water and suggested that you not take Detachment until more of the alcohol is out of your system... Ok, you got me. We are secretly spying on you as you are your countries most important military officer. Having a drink with us was a pretext to get you into the cabin where we could activate a force field and interrogate you at will. The drink of water you had earlier introduced mind control devices into your system... Of course our whole plan will fail if you take Detachment or go for a walk..."

Krika grinned.

"Please..."

"Well, I do intend to go out of here for a while... I've left half my stuff in the locker room, hopefully nobody took it from there... my uniform, my sidearm, a lot of really important documents and personal items are in there. I'll also ask the Velkyans if they bothered to assign me a cabin."

She smiled at the Amestrians. "Well... you want to get ahold of me, I'm sure there's an intercom here."

"Yes I'm sure there is..."

Krika flopped back down and pulled up the covers. "Back to my dream...where was I...yes the tongue on my (undecipherable mumbling)."

She closed her eyes.

More than I wanted to know. Nadia left Krika to her dreams about tongues on her whatever and went to the locker room to find her bag with all of her stuff in it. Luckily, nobody had swiped it while she was getting wasted and pumped for info by the Amestrians.

She went off to ask the Velkyans if they had bothered to assign her a cabin. It was 4 AM and she was tired.

Sion, walking out of the locker room in his flight suit, passed Nadia. She looked quite bugged and tired, but regardless, he stopped her.

"Hey, you look bummed, what's up?"

Nadia smiled. "I feel like crap today... I was just in a cabin with two Amestrians who got me drunk and talked my head off... it's..." she looked at her watch, "4:15 AM."

"Plus, I had another nightmare. On top of it, I don't even know if the crew bothered to assign me a cabin. Anyway, how much longer does this ship have to get to Kraven?"

Sion opened his shoulder pocket and procured a few tablets. He handed them to Nadia.

"Here ya go, it should take the hangover and beat the shit out of it. About your question, we aren't even out the Mediterranean yet, and we are docking in Velkya to procure supplies and extra aircraft, so we're about 4 days away, barring any foreign "intervention". Anyhow, I'm about to go on a CAP mission, but I'm sure we can take a detour to the purser, can we?"

Nadia took the pills. "Thanks." She washed them down, luckily her canteen was with her uniform in the bag.

"Yes, good idea."

Sion motioned for her to come with him. As they were walking to the office, he turned to her and asked:

"So, you could have procured a cabin when you got out of the briefing, what stopped you?"

"On Kahanistan ships, officers are assigned a cabin by the captain's staff." Nadia walked alongside Sion, now in uniform and carrying her bag.

"I assumed that Velkyan ships were run pretty much the same way, like all the allies' ships I've been on before."

Sion laughed. "Well, you've obviously never been on a Velkyan ship before."

Mireille walked past the duo as they headed for the office. She seemed bored and had a bottle of pickle juice under her arm. She noticed Nadia and walked over, a good-natured smile on her face.

"Feeling better are we my dear?"

She eyed Sion suspiciously. "Who is this?"

Sion grinned at Nadia and turned to the newcomer.

"We're not a people person, are we? I'm Lt. Davenport, Naval Air Arm, this lovely young woman and I go way back. Yourself?"

"It is late..." Go way back?!

"So I assume you two have served together before... I am Mireille Bouguet of the Amestrian Secret Service. I am here to assist the Lt. Colonel in her operations and I assume I will be serving along side you as well...?"

"I'm a pilot, as you can plainly see," as he held his helmet up, the word 'Reaper' emblazoned on it, "so, below me, would be more appropriate. At any rate, I'm taking the Lt. Colonel here to the pursers to procure a cabin for her before I got up on patrol."

Nadia looked at Sion. She was a pilot, too, but she wasn't going to blow the lid off Sion's gag here yet. Sion did not even know that, how could he have claimed to go way back with her?

"I'm sure we will be working together, Mireille."

Sion added to it, "Indeed, we will." He took Nadia and gently pushed her forward, yelling back at the Amestrian, "She's still got to get a cabin and I have to get in the air before Vartis chews my head off, we'll chat later!"

Mireille cut them off and stepped in front of them, blocking their path. "Liar," Mireille motioned to Nadia, "this girl here is useless when it comes to deception, even when it is simply substantiating the lies of others with her body language. You two have just met..."

Mireille gave Nadia an all-knowing smile. "The Deputy Vice Minister, this Gentleman... For you my dear they certainly come out of the wood work..."

Mireille held out for Nadia the bottle of pickle juice she was carrying. "Here, pickle juice; one should drink it after such a night. Helps with hangovers."

Sion looked rather peeved. "Well Miss Know-it-all, we both really have to leave, and from what I hear, she's had just about enough interrogating for one night, so it's best to let her have a good night's sleep."

The remark irked Mireille. "If by interrogation you mean a night of drunken revelry, then yes, she certainly has had enough...hence the pickle juice."

Nadia took the bottle of pickle juice to be polite. With the pills Sion had given her, she did not feel she needed it.

"Thanks, Mireille," she said. She turned to Sion.

"Are Velkyan planes two-seaters?"

As they walked onward, Sion began to explain.

"I fly a MR-4 Ixiom, so, yes, it's a two seat plane. Are you implying that you would like to fly with me?"

Nadia nodded. "It's not like I have much else to do... I can't sleep. There's not that much else to do on a carrier, is there?"

She put the bottle of pickle juice in her bag. "As soon as I get a cabin, I can drop this thing in there. It weighs a ton."

Sion smiled. "Well, my RIO isn't going to be very happy about it, but I'm sure he'd rather sleep anyhow."

They walked a bit more, before coming upon a door that read [I No. 3562[/I]. Sion passed the retinal scan, and wallked inside, turning the light on. The cabin was fairly small, about 7x4 feet, with a pull-down bed and a metal dresser/desk. On the desk sat various models of Velkyan planes, and a small computer. He motioned for Nadia to sit on the bed.

"Just dump your crap in here, I'll get you a flight suit, I think Davidson left one that should fit you."

Nadia put her bag in the corner and sat down on the bed. Somehow she didn't think that this Davidson would have left a flight suit that would fit her. "Thanks. I sometimes wish I could grab a few extra hours of sleep when I need to be on duty. I'm sure he will too."

She looked around and waited for Sion to bring her the flight suit. "I think I'll do as good a job as he does, I've been piloting since I was 21."

Sion pulled a black flight suit from the rack inside the small closet, and passed it to Nadia, as he rescued her a spare helmet from the bowels of the closet.

"Don't worry, Davidson's a pretty small guy, it'll fit. Anyhow, I'd put the suit over your current clothes, it get's pretty cold up at 120,000 feet."

Nadia saw no reason to retreat into the closet to change, after all she wasn't taking anything off. Of course her equipment belt, which held things like a compass, canteens, lighter, and her sidearm would have to go over her flight suit, though. She pulled the flight suit on over her uniform, pulled her hair back so it wouldn't get in her face when she was in the air, and smiled.

"Got a mirror?" True, she was eager to try out this Ixion, but she also wanted to see how she looked in this new flight suit.

Sighing, Sion flipped his computer screen to mirror mode, directed Nadia to it, leaning against the wall.

Girls will be girls.

Nadia looked into the mirror. The flight suit was a little baggier than she was used to, but that was OK. Most of her hair was covered in the helmet or pulled back behind her head, so all that could be seen was her face. She smiled softly, turned to Sion, and said, "Let's go."

Sion lead Nadia out of the room. After navigating the labyrinth of Hull B, they came across the bridge section between hulls. The majestic sight of two being between two massive hulls as they cut through the water wowed any first-timer, but Sion and most of the crew were used to it. The darkening sky still made the rushing water visable, and he turned to Nadia.

"That's the trench, how do you like it?"

Nadia had had little to no experience actually on an aircraft carrier. She might have landed on one occasionally, but she never took the time to admire the trench or the hulls.

She decided to be polite, though. "I never really thought about it... it's rather interesting." But do we have time? Sion seemed to be in a hurry to get into the air...

(OOC: The trench is the area between the hulls, since the Eagle Class is a trimaran carrier. It's quite an impressive sight, espacially to new-comers, since it is so massive, the overlapping wakes make it look like a huge man-made river.)

IC:

Sion led her on, chuckling. "No need to suck up, if you hate it, you can tell me, I won't cry." They boarded a few more elevators until they reached the massive hanger. The door opened. Sion streched his arm out.

"Welcome to the Labyrinth."

Nadia shook her head. "It's not that I hate it, it's that I never bothered to look around when I land on an aircraft carrier. I'm usually just refueling, reloading, and heading back out. I might end up spending a night on a carrier if we're having a long mission and I'm flying for hours on end, but I never really admire the hulls and I've never been on a trimaran before..."

They entered the hangar area. "So this is the hangar..."

She was eager to get in and take off. The MiG-29's, 31's and 35's she was used to flying never went 120,000 feet high.

The hanger was truely massive, a testament to Velkyan naval engineering. Dozens of fighters lined the 400m long structure, as numerous ground crew scurried around, checking aircraft and loading weapons. The elevators brought aircraft up and down from the flight decks, as new craft prepared to launch.

"Over here!"

A crew chief ran over to the pair. "Sion, welcome back, your plane's fueled up and ready to go!" Sion yelled over the din, "Always on top of things, ah, Mack?" The man smirked as they trio moved towards Sion's Ixiom. "Hey, Sion, if I wasn't, you would have been dead long before this! And, hey who's your lady friend, she's quite a looker." Sion patted him on the back a bit too hard for friends, before saying, "Just a friend, you horny bastard."

With that, he surveyed the craft, checking the weapons and opening the bays to inspect if they were intact. Sion emerged from the bottom and gave the thumbs up. He strapped his helmet on and slid the canopy open, climbing into the jet black fighter. He extended his hand to Nadia. "Come on, you got shotgun for this one."

http://homepage2.nifty.com/sparrow2/aircraft/ffr31mr11.jpg

Nadia's gray eyes lit up like those of a child about to open her Christmas presents. She smiled widely and climbed into the co-pilot's seat. "Who was that?"

The controls appeared more complicated than the relatively simple ones in Nadia's MiG. She sat down and waited for Sion to show her what she would be doing. This warplane is incredibly advanced, no wonder the Amestrians wanted it.

She buckled up. "Will this feel any different than the planes I'm used to?" she asked.

"That was my Crew Chief, he's responsible for directing the maintenence of my sqaudron." Sion then reached back and handed her a small brown bag. It read For Emergencies. "Oh yes, it will be very different."

A barf bag... not that I'll need it. Nadia held the barf bag over her face anyway. As a Kahanistan officer she was used to doing things that didn't seem necessary, like wearing NBC gear and full body armor in flight. A few months earlier Kahanistan pilots did not wear body armor and she had been forced to eject and wounded in descent. She was thankful for that reform.

"What will I be doing?" she asked through the bag over her face. Luckily she had had few opportunities to eat, with the Amestrians getting her plastered to pump her for information about Liscel, and then meeting Sion again, she had only managed to eat a squished MRE in the locker room when getting her bag. It wasn't filling, but it was nutritious and she wouldn't lose it as easily as she would a seven-course meal.

A small carrier-transit tow vehicle began to drag the aircraft through the hanger to the elevator. As the aircraft settled onto the platform, Sion looked back. "You'll be moinitering the high power RADAR systems," as he pointed to a high resolution RADAR scope in front of Nadia, "Of the plane. If you see any red signals on the scope, tell me." He then pointed towards a LCD screen and several buttons, including a small joystick. "Don't ever touch those, ok?"

The elevator began to move upwards. Next to the MR-4 was a ISF-2N Sea Valkyrie, probably from Headhunter Sqaudron by the twin spears on the tail fins.

Nadia nodded. Her own MiG had radar, she was used to it. As a military officer, she also knew that when told not to touch something, she shouldn't let her curiosity get the better of her. "Let me guess... the joystick is the ejection and the buttons are for the phasers?"

The plane certainly looked more advanced than anything she'd been in, and Kahanistan had briefly experimented with high-tech energy weapons before deciding they were too expensive to maintain. It certainly seemed possible to her that the MR-4 had phasers.

"Red signals are Kraven, right?"

As they taxied to the catapult, Sion began to arm the "phasers". "Any IFF signal that belongs to an enemy nation is displayed in red, neutral in yellow, and friendly in green, with Velkyans in blue. And no, the buttons are for the death rays, not the phasers, you silly little girl. The phaser controls are up by me."

So the red signals in these parts probably ARE Kraven. "So this plane is pretty advanced, then..."

Sklenova looked intently at the radar, waiting for the plane to take off. "Are there a lot of hostiles in these areas?" she asked.

She had always wanted to kill a Kraven soldier. While she did not normally have such feelings of hate and bloodlust, she absolutely hated Kraven. Anyone who knew her at all knew that she was often driven to tears when she heard of Kraven's latest atrocity, or especially the Freekish atrocities that had been carried out against her people and now Kraven civilians.

She sat back as the plane moved toward the catapult, preparing to take off... hoping to add a Kraven skull to her belt, so to speak.

Vice Minister of Defense Sara Liscel paced around her apartments living room, she liked to pace at times, though not as much as her sister. Sara was talking to Ninon de l’Enclos, the women who had replaced her as Deputy Vice Minister after her promotion by speakerphone.

“I see… My guess is that the AOA’s command structure in BC broke down under the strain of the quarantine, combat conditions, and the communication blackout. That would explain why there were no official records and why the Military does not seem to have been fully aware of the situation. The real question this raises is under whose authority was that ghost order issued…?”

As Liscel spoke, Aela entered the apartment with several classified files requested from the Ministry of Records. Sara motioned for Aela to remain silent.

“The Military Intelligence Division…?”

“It sounds like there’s still more to this story. Once you get back to Central, put together your report.”

“Yes Vice Minister.”

Deputy Vice Minister of Defense Ninon l’Enclos hung up. Aela stared disdainfully at the phone.

“She is just one of your unwitting puppets, someone you put in place so you could control both offices.”

“Aela, she is quite competent and more then qualified for her position… Did you get those documents from Records that I asked for?”

“Yes Vice Minister.”

“Now we are sure that these are the only official copies, we are sure that there are not hard copies in a file cabinet or copies backed up on a data disk or hard drive somewhere?”

“Both the Secret Service and Military Intelligence assured me that those are the originals and that there are no copies left upon this Earth…” Aela smiled. “…and they further informed me that the originals had been lost or accidentally destroyed.”

Liscel opened the folders and looked the files over… She scanned the titles of the first two documents. She did not bother to read any more as she already knew what was written in them.


State Secret
Omit Signatures, Office, and Official Seal from all copies
Burn all Copies

On Maintaining a Successful Quarantine

From the Office of Deputy Vice Minister of Defense Sara Liscel


State Secret
Omit Signatures, Office, and Official Seal from all copies
Burn all Copies

On Countering the Threat of Biological Suicide Bombers

From the Office of Deputy Vice Minister of Defense Sara Liscel


The last document was an Amestrian Military Order. Liscel read it in its entirety.


State Secret
Omit Signatures, Office, and Official Seal from all copies
Burn all Copies

From the Office of General of the Armies Basque Gran, Supreme Commander of the Amestrian Occupation Authority

Top Secret Message from the Amestrian Occupation Authority to the Kahanistan Military Command

It has come to our attention that the Kahanistan peacekeeping forces are taking insurgents prisoner... These insurgents are still dangerous after capture, as they may be infected with the virus. Furthermore, as traitors they would be hanged shortly after capture anyway. Are first priority is to prevent new outbreaks of the disease. Execute all insurgents captured, burn the bodies, and bury them in a secret location. Be discrete. If questioned by members of the public or media, deny we are taking such actions.

[signed]
General of the Armies Basque Gran, Supreme Commander of the Amestrian Occupation Authority


“Very few eyes have seen any of these documents Aela… Have the smoke detectors been temporarily disabled…?”

“Yes Vice Minister.”

Liscel took out her lighter and set the documents alight. She tossed the flaming remnants into a glass cylinder and watched them burn. With there consumption there was no longer any evidence that proved an Official Policy of summery execution had ever been established…and if the Military did its job right no more graves would ever be found.

“Aela, history is written by those in power, remember that.”

Sion began to flip switches for which Nadia did not know the purpose of, as he answered Nadia's questions.

"Your so full of wonder, it's scary. My dear, there's about as much a chance of Kraven fighters being here as a Cap Policeman lovingly stroking a puppy and picking flowers in a field."

The Ixiom traveled to the catapult, and the aircraft jolted downward, as the EMC magnetized. Sion lifted a plastic box up, exposing a switch colored bright red. It read "Catapult Activator"

"And yes, this plane is more advanced than you can imagine."

Nadia sat back in her seat and smiled. "So do you ever see any real action on CAP missions?" She watched the radar intently, impressed with the sheer technical superiority of the MR-4 over the MiG-35. We have so many enemies in the world... that so much needs to go to defense rather than social programs is a travesty.

"None at all, but Naval Command stills insists on this immense waste of fuel anyways." As Sion spoke, the headsets of both pilots echoed with the voice of tower control. "Delta 03, cleared for takeoff on Cat 5." Sion activated the launch restraints, which significantly tightened the straps on Nadia and himself.

"Hang on, this is a real fuckin' dosey."

He flipped the switch back, and the linear accelarator took hold of the plane, pulling it down the tarmac at intense speeds. The enorumous G-Forces were evident, as even Sion, a seasoned pilot, cringed as his plane careened off the flight deck. The twin engines of the Ixiom kicked in fully, sending the plane past the sound barrier in milliseconds. Sion then placed his mask on, and motioned for Nadia to do the same. The controller then spoke again.

"Delta 03, this is Carrier Command, good hunting."

Sion levelled the plane, reducing speed to 400 knots as he approached 10,000feet.

Nadia was caught off guard, but still managed to get her mask on in time. She screamed as the plane accelerated much faster than she had ever gone in a MiG. This was even scarier than the time when she was nine and wet herself on the new rocket-powered roller coaster when it careened down the tracks at over two hundred kilometers per hour. Luckily, she had had very little to drink before boarding the plane.

"I've been flying for ten years and never felt anything like this," she said. "But it's fun... almost like when I first flew a MiG, but faster. Scary, too..." She looked down at the radar. Nothing.

Looking back at the shaken women in the rear seat, Sion couldn't help but say, "Your quite a screamer, aren't you?"

Nadia gave Sion a look. What is he getting at? "It's... exciting." She smiled widely and gripped the seat. "I've never been on anything this fast before, I was caught off guard."

"So, what do you usually do up here? You said you never get action on CAP missions... what do you do to pass the time up here for an hour a day?"

Suddenly, she remembered something important. "Does this ship have a postal service? A way I could write a letter to a friend?" Liscel just HAD to hear about Nadia's experience in an MR-4. Also, Nadia wanted to know what was going on at home and abroad since she left.

"I occupy myself by flying in broad circles around the fleet, waiting for some idiot to get close enough and begin firing at me. And yes, there's a postal service, and we can send a datalink to a postal computer on the mainland if you want."

The MR-4 began to pick up a incoming blue signal. A radio broadcast from Carrier Command came through.

"Reaper, come in, Reaper!"

Sion looked puzzled. This can't be good... "This is Reaper, go ahead." The upstart radio operator answered, "Reaper, we have an bogey inbound, our onstation AWACs will brief you."

Another aircraft came into view, this one a Velkyan AWACs aircraft. The aged voice that rang through on the radio belonged to AWACs Olka Neiva 06, (SkyEye in Selkan).

"Welcome to the party, Reaper. Here's the situation. We have a transport aircraft of unknown origin, a small Learjet-type private plane, approaching the CAP radius of the fleet. Behind them we've made out twin fighters, looks like old X-29s. One of them has fired upon the jet and it is losing rapidly altitude. Fleet Command has authorized an intercept of the twin fighter aircraft, and have dispatched yourself and Zulu to investigate the disturbance and Mariner 03 to rescue survivors if the liner crashes. Good luck, and good hunting."

Sion sighed and knocked his head back in his seat. "Looks like we'll be seeing some action after all."

OOC: Kahanistan, TG.

The plane radioed the Velkyan carrier and its fighter escort on all frequencies.

"Velkyan warship, this is civilian Flight 239 heading for Najaster, Kahanistan, we are carrying several dozen refugees, we are under fire from unknown aircraft, we have no defenses, we've sustained damage to our left wing and engine. We're rapidly losing altitude, we require immediate assistance. Over."

On the Velkyan plane, Nadia heard the distress signal. Something about attacking defenseless people really got to her. OK, let's shoot these bastards down. She looked outside the plane, her pretty gray eyes flashing. Nadia's face took on a serious expression, one of grim determination.

The civilian plane was now less than 1,000 meters above sea level and plummeting...

The MR-4 climbed to 30,000 feet, and another plane came along side. It was the same plane that they had seen on the carrier elevator. A obviously black man's voice came on the headset. "Hey hey hey, Reaper, look's like we got company." Sion looked at his own short-ranged radio scope. Incoming...
"Roger that, Zulu, I call the one on the right." He answered, "Haha, alright, let's show these motherfuckers not to mess with the Bash Brothers." Sion smiled. "Fuck yeah, Zulu, let's bag us some kills."

The aircraft split apart at high speed, both higher than any existing aircraft yet, as the voice of Carrier Command came on the radio. "Roger that, CF 289, we have a sortie en route to intercept the attackers. Hold your altitude up until we can splash the bandits." Meanwhile, the twin enemy fighter pilots carried a mindless expression on their faces, as they readied another missile salvo to bring the jet down. "Enemy fighters, they are enemies of the Order, bring them down." The fighters then broke off and began to make a beeline towards the two Velkyan fighters.

The civilian liner's captain had somehow managed to slow the plane's descent, it was about 700 meters and descending slowly, but it would still only be a minute or so before it would crash-land in the water. He repeated his distress call to the Velkyans.

Meanwhile, Nadia smiled grimly, waiting for Sion to either fire on the fighters or tell her that the buttons she'd been told not to touch were for weapons she could fire. She looked at the civilian plane, barely airborne.

"That guy's good, but he still needs help," she said. Who the hell are these guys? She looked at the radar. "One of them's heading right for us!"

Sion watched his own RADAR intentely.

Idiot's got no idea what's about to hit him...

The radio then crackled with the voice of an unknown man.

"Leave now, you capitalist whores, this is none of your business."

With that, Sion's missile warnings began to flar, as his RADAR detected twin AIM-120s. Calmly and cooly, Sion answered the man. "I'm makin' it my business." He pulled a swift turn, watching the primitive missiles streak right by his plane and detonate a few meteres behind him. "Hang on, you might need that barf-bag." Sion then triggered the plane's SCRAM jets, listening to them suck in air before they ignited in a blaze of fire. "YYEEAAAAAAAHH!" was the only sound on the radio as the plane hit mach five, the nose pushing up, pointing towards the rising sun. A loud sonic boom filled the air as the plane reached 100,000 feet in mere seconds.

The funny thing was, the enemy plane has followed him.

It was dead.

Capitalist whores? Nadia was certainly neither, but the battlefield was not the place to be thinking about political alignment. She held the barf bag to her face and screamed very loudly into it as the G-forces pushed her into her seat like an elephant stomping on her stomach. Having had little to eat, she was not going to be throwing up in it.

She looked into her radar at the enemy and civilian. "They're still following us... and the guys we're trying to save are going to crash."

As she spoke, the civilian plane crash-landed into the sea, its radio was still repeating its distress call, and the survivors were hastily climbing into the sea with whatever would float. The distress call would continue until the plane actually sank or its radio died...

The transport plane hit the surface qutie hard, from what the Mariner dropship crew could detirmine. It jetted over, it's Marine sqaud ready to unload if an enemy fighter got close. It hovered over the crash, as divers jumped off to try and save those who were drowning. Survivors who were afloat began to gather on the hovering ship, pulled aboard by the burly marines as the two pairs of planes fought above them.

The plane that was tailing Delta 03 came into view, and began unloading with it's cannon, the 20mm rounds pinging off the alloyed exterior of the MR-4. Sion waited for it to get close, and then it a flourish, slammed the airbrake back and pointed the nose downward. The enemy plane had no time to react as it flew straight by the Ixiom. It began to lose it's momentum, and pitched downward. Sion knew what would happen next. The enemy craft narrowly crossed over him, and Sion barrel-rolled, his twin 30mm cannons roaring as their tungsten tipped shells pierced through the thin-skinned aircraft. It exploded in a brilliant fireball of burning fuel and metal, as Sion began a almost vertical dive to the deck.

"Delta 03, splash one!"

The transport captain and crew climbed aboard the dropship. The captain asked the Velkyan Marines who were pulling him aboard what was going on. "Who was that? We're refugees, we chartered this plane from some corporation... don't remember the name of it, but they leased us this plane, and the next thing we know, right when we're about to land in Kahanistan, we get shot down by these fighters."

On the MR-4, Nadia let out a sigh of relief and smiled softly. "Now, that's something I've never seen before in 10 years of flying. Usually, the enemy's planes are as fast as mine. The only really fancy stuff I've done is fly extremely low under enemy radar to sneak by them. I'll leave a present, usually a guided missile or a three and a half ton bomb."

"Anyway, want to check out those passengers... find out what went on? And who those guys were that wanted to kill them?"

"Sure, we'll take a look."

He brought his plane down, and watched Zulu eliminate the other plane with a QMAAM to the engine. He formed up alongside Zulu as they passed the hovering dropship. The AWACs came back online.

"Good job boys and girls, RADAR confirms both enemies splashed. Golf 09 is en route to investiagte the crash sites. Mariner reports all survivors accounted for, they are returning to the carrier. All in all, good work, return to base immediatly, aircraft are en route to replenish you."

The voice of Zulu came on.

"You know Sion, that's my forth kill."

"Nice job, I'm sure we'll have a welcoming paty back on the Claw." With that, the two planes proceeded to fly back to their base.

Nadia sat back, waiting for the plane to land. "I haven't flown a CAP mission in seven years," she said. "This was the most eventful one in my entire experience as an officer."

She was eager to get back on the carrier and write to Liscel. This was going to be a long letter.

An Amestrian Philosopher named Michel de Jaspar once said, "rêver est quand nous essayons de nous échapper du monde et d'échouer.*”

(*“Dreaming is when we try to escape from the world and fail.”)


It was a warm summer evening and Sara was playing by the stream. The sloped bank and knotted trees in the orange light of the slowly fading sun seemed almost mystical. Sara was tossing stones into the stream, sometimes trying to skip them, other times simply attempting to make as large a splash as was possible. Mr. La Mettrie sat perched on a rock gazing upon her with its unseeing eyes.

SPLASH!

“Did you see how far I tossed that one Mr. La Mettrie?”

Mr. La Mettrie remained unresponsive, but Sara’s imagination compensated.

“That was a good throw… You sank the enemy fleet and saved the Manor from being ravaged.”

“Then that means I’m a hero!” she cried in delight.

“Look out, more enemy ships are coming!”

Sara immediately began to search for another rock that was just right for throwing. The whole country was counting on her. About thirty feet away stood the women in black. She wore dark glasses and had something in her ear attached to some string. Sara and Mr. La Mettrie paid the women in black no mind, father had told her not to bother that women and “let her do her job.” She was there to “protect her,” always watching and alert, never interacting. Liscel had gotten used to the women in black being there in the background whenever she went outside.

Sara scurried back and forth, the perfect stone eluding her. She would normally have been on her hands and knees, but she did not want to get her nice white dress all dirty. Finally, she found a stone to her liking, one that fit perfectly in her little hand. With a mighty throw, the stone sailed through the air and sank the enemy’s battleship.

“Sara!”

Sara turned around to see her sister Kasumi standing behind her. She was wearing her blue military overcoat. Kasumi’s face was expressionless. Suddenly the air seemed chilled.

“Ena!” Sara cried out in delight.

Kasumi spoke, her voice without emotion. “Sara, mothers dead.”

Silence. Sara did not know how to react; she did not know what to say. She knew her mother had been sick; she had visited her in the hospital, but the doctors had always reassured her that her mother would be fine. “She is being cared for by the nation’s finest doctors…” that is what her father had said. And mother, she had always had a smile on her face, “I’ll be fine” is what she would say.

Not knowing what else to do, Sara turned to flee. As she turned she tripped. The ground came rushing up and then there was blackness.


Sara shuddered in her sleep and was suddenly awake. For some reason whenever she dreamed of falling she always awoke with a start. Sara sat up. A past memory.

Sara looked around. It was still dark and her bedroom clock said 2:19 am. She was dressed in her white night gown and was tightly clutching Mr. La Mettrie. That was when I was four…

Sara decided to get something to drink. A little milk and brandy should help me sleep.

She got up to go to the kitchen. “What’s that Mr. La Mettrie, you want to come to?”

A little while later Liscel was sitting out in the living room with her teddy bear, sipping milk mixed with some brandy. She looked out the apartment window, her thoughts slowly returning to her dream and the memories it brought forth.


Tears, she had lain there on the ground, sobbing. Kasumi had rushed to her side. Her older sister showered her with affection, hugging her, kissing her, whispering between tears that it was “going to be okay.” Both sobbed uncontrollably. Kasumi then picked Sara up and took her back inside…just as the sun was starting to set. Kasumi dried Sara’s tears and got her ready for bed, dressing her in her little white nightgown and making sure she had Mr. La Mettrie to hold.

That night they had slept next to each other for the very first time. Kasumi wrapped her arms around Sara, holding her little sister tightly against her. Her big sisters embrace had been so soft, warm and comforting. The cold world outside Kasumi’s arms seemed to vanish and the tears stopped. Gradually Sara’s grief gave way to an entirely new feeling. As she lay there, enveloped by her sister, she felt…flushed and frustrated. Her breathing quickened, she felt hot, and there was a growing wetness between her legs. She wanted something from her sister but she did not know what… She wanted to touch herself but did not for fear of waking Kasumi. Sara just lay there; too excited to fall asleep, unable to understand what it was she wanted from her sister…

Eventually Sara became too tired to remain awake and so drifted off. The next day she masturbated to the memory of Kasumi holding her. From that night on Sara used every reason she could think of to sleep next to her sister, grief, loneliness, fear of the dark, fear of monsters under the bed (fears she had overcome at age three, but now found useful to reacquaint herself with). Sleeping in the same bed soon became normal for both of them whenever they were under the same roof, be it at the Manor, the Presidential Residence, or whatever temporary place they had to stay at while moving around the country.


Liscel shook her head. Ten years before I worked up the courage to act on my feelings… She got up, it was late and she had a meeting at 11:00 am before the Parliamentary Defense Committee on the construction of the new Air Defense Grid. She could not afford to be tired.

“Come on Mr. La Mettrie, let’s go back to bed.”

As Liscel returned to bed and tucked herself back in, her mind drifted to Nadia. Whenever Nadia had held her, it had reminded her of that night with her sister. Nadia’s embrace had been so comforting, so caring, so sensual, so overwhelming… It had made her feel completely at peace even as it tortured her, even as it had played with her desires. Liscel curled up with Mr. La Mettrie. I wish she was here right now holding me…

"It's all ho-hum, I assure you."

The sleek fighter approached the multi-hull carrier, shooting for the left-most deck.

"Delta 03, you are cleared to land on Deck A, over."

Sion responded, "Roger that, control, I'm on the 8-Ball, over."

The plane pitched downward, hitting the tarmac of the carrier as a magnetic arrestor plat captured the plane and stopped it, hurling the two pilots against their tightened straps. Sion taxied the plane over to a waiting sea spot between two parked MR-4s, each sporting the cherveron symbol of Delta sqaudron. The canopy opened, and Sion turned back to Nadia.

"Ladies first."

Nadia crawled out of the plane. "Can you show me where the post is on this ship? I was going to write a friend."

She stood on the deck and waited for Sion to exit. Well, that was fun... nearly got my guts squeezed out but we got to help people in need.

She looked out to sea, at the dropship that had rescued the crash survivors...

The dropship, laden with the Marines and survivors, picked up and shot off towards the carrier, as a larger Carry-All began to fly towards the crash site of one of the downed X-29s.

"Sure, but-"

Sion was cut off as a influx of flight crew and fellow pilots began to crowd him, Nadia, and his plane, cheering. Zulu, a six-foot tall dark pilot, walked over, and Sion and him engaged in a odd "handshake" beforehe threw Sion a stencil and a spray-paint can. Sion laughed and put the stencil up to the edge of the canopy. The shape was that of a delta, and it proceeded 28 other symbols as he sprayed the krimson skull on to his plane.

"Another victory for the dogs of the Claw!"

The flight crew and pilots erupted into thunderous applause and cheers as the dropship touched down on the carrier, the doors opening.

Nadia looked at the symbol. These people are cheering death. I, on the other hand, would like to see the lives we saved.

"I'll check on the survivors, I'll be back." She smiled lightly at Sion as she left.

She walked over to the dropship that had landed. The refugees would probably be more comfortable with a Kahanistan officer...

The small Pelican dropship, normally used for deploying a sqaud of troops into a hostile zone, touched down, as the remaining marines escorted the survivors off the dropship. Medical workers rushed forward with blankets and medical supplies. Carrier-taxies rushed foward, pulling away seriously injured to the ship's infirmiries. A older Marine of Selkan descent stood by, his LAR-10slung on his shoulder, watching the survivors make their way off the dropship.

Those poor people, they shouldn't have to suffer with this shit...

He turned back, taking a peek at the little celebration that had erupted by Sion's plane.

Crazy-ass pilots.

He smiled, before he noticed a pilot walking towards the landed dropship. He then noticed several...features...about the pilot.

Is that Davidson's uniform?!

He called out to her, yelling, "Здравствулте!, потребность что-то?"

(Hey, need something?)

OOC: Even if Nadia knows Russian, Selkan is a far off-derivative of it, and I highly doubt she knows it.

"да?"* asked Nadia. The language sounded like Russian, in fact, she was able to piece together some of the vocabulary, but not much. Maybe this is a rare dialect.

She smiled at the older man. "Вы говорите по-английские?"** She hoped that the Selkan would understand her when she spoke Russian.

"Я не понимаю."***

* "Yes?"
** "Do you speak English?"
*** "I don't understand."

"Oops...haha, sorry, young lady, I speak English as well."

The man walked over to the young pilot, extending his free gloved hand to her.

"I am Senior Marine Commander Roranov, how may I be of service to you?"

OOC: He's around fifty years of age, but well built for his age.

Nadia took the man's hand. "Lieutenant Colonel Nadia Sklenova, Kahanistan Republic Guard. I'd like to see the survivors, find out who they are, why they were attacked, and if any of the attacking air crew survived, I'd like to interrogate them."

Nadia's eyes went back over to the dropship, then out to where the wrecked X-29 lay afloat, the Carry-All approaching it.

"While you're here, do you know where I could get a layout of the ship? This is my first time aboard such a large vessel. Basically, where my cabin is, where the mess hall is, where the postal service here is... I have some personal business I need to attend to after I've debriefed these people."

The large black Carry-All touched down on Deck A, softly dropping the destroyed aircraft onto the polymer deck. The aircrew celebrating it's destruction gathered, viewing the craft with caution. One younger "red" (a crewman who loads arms onto the planes) said, "That's the first time I've actually seen one of these things up close." A few agreed with him. Sion made his way to the front.

"No fucking way..."

A crewman turned to him. "What?"

Sion shook his head. "That's no fucking X-29, that's an air force MR-1!"

A few men also had noticed the changes, but it was too late. Two figures, wearing darkened camoflauge, strolled over to the plane. "This aircraft is now property of the Office of Naval Intelligence. We request that you return to your posts while we conduct an investigation." The crowd began to disperse, as more aircraft took off and landed. Sion waltzed over to the Nadia and Roranov. The Marine began to speak to Nadia, and procured a a small data-pad.

"This contains a layout of the ship, and will allow you to dock with the various terminals around the ship. I'm sure our friend Sion will be able to direct you with it's use. Now, if you will excuse me, I must take my leave."

He walked off, joining a sqaud of marines, yelling at them to get in formation.

Sion turned to Nadia. "Grandpa Rorie, haha, he's quite a character."

Nadia took the data-pad. She had seen them before. Can't be that different from my Palm Pilot or half the new cell phones out there...

After about ten minutes, she had located the postal service and her cabin. She wrote a letter to Liscel.

Sara,

I'm aboard a Velkyan warship bound for Kraven. I should be there in two or three days. The lieutenant that we met who was pulled from his plane is on this ship, too. We even flew together in a MR-4 Ixiom and saved several dozen people in a civilian liner who had been shot down trying to get to Kahanistan.

There are some Amestrian secret agents on the ship. They got me very drunk and tried to cheat me in poker. But no matter how much I drink, no deck has five Aces. They also talked to me a lot about my personal life. I've been reading the Amestrian 101 book I got on the ship we were on, but I'm still weak there. I could make out a little of what they said to each other, though. Not much.

The nightmares are still coming to me, I'm saving the DHC for when I'm in Kraven, I'll need it there. I'm in battle in these nightmares, the Kraven soldiers capture me, take me to the birthing chambers and cut me up like a fish. I always wake up scared, crying, and humiliated, I'm an officer and I've seen battle before, but this is over the top.

But enough about me. How are things in the world outside this ship? There are supposed to be elections soon in both Kahanistan and Amestria, how are they going? What's going on in Al-Bahr, where my home is? How is the Torontian conflict going? Is Kahanistan finally at peace?

Your friend,
Nadia

Nadia took the letter to the post office. "Do you deliver to Amestria?"

The younger officer pulled the letter from her, nodding, "Yes, we do." She took it to a back room, and blacked out the first paragraph for security reasons. She then scanned it, and sent it, encyrpted, to the Velkyan embassy in Amestria, which would relay it the the postal service.

She returned to the counter. "Thank you, your letter should arrive within 1 to 2 days."

Sion, who was waiting outside the room, began to hum a song he had heard while in Kahanistan.

Catchy ass beat, I like that...

Nadia smiled, unaware that the postal worker had censored her letter. "Thank you." Hopefully Sara can write back to me before I get dropped off...

She left the room and came face to face with Sion. "Hi." She wasn't expecting to see him there.

"So, shall we debrief the survivors, interrogate the MR-1 pilots, et cetera...?" She didn't know if they had already been debriefed or not, or even if the MR-1 pilots had survived.

"Good luck, ONI's most likely all over it. I don't know a damn thing."

Sion put his hand up to his face and yawned.

"I'm beat, I'm headin' out to bed."

Nadia was tired too. After walking the floors of the ship for over two hours looking for a vending machine with beer in it and finding none, she gave up, returned to her quarters, and fell asleep. It was about 1 AM before she drifted off uneasily.

She had the same nightmare (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=10169100&postcount=546) that she'd been having for weeks. Only this time, she woke up... next to Liscel. She was dressed in the loose black chemise she was wearing in the photograph she had sent Nadia. She was holding Nadia, started to stroke her, to calm her...

Liscel's hand moved toward Nadia's breast. "No..." What is going on here? Nadia took Liscel's hand, but did not push her away...

---

Nadia sat up in bed with a start. The clock read 0535. Now this is just weird. There was no sign at all of Liscel. It took Nadia a few seconds to realize that she was aboard the Velkyan warship, and that Liscel was probably in her apartment in Central.

Am I becoming a lesbian? Nadia pushed the thought from her mind for now. What if she were? She was educated, liberal, had decided there was nothing wrong with being a lesbian... but had never thought of herself as one, in fact, it was the main reason she had resisted Liscel's advances, besides the obvious fact she was somewhat repressed sexually. She had never really thought of women that way.

But I actually liked it... but I also liked the men who were in my life, while I was dating them anyway... Convinced that she was not a lesbian, and that it was a weird dream, she got up, showered, and dressed for the pool, hoping there was one on this ship. She put on her uniform over her bathing suit, in case there wasn't a pool, she didn't want half the crew to make catcalls at her or try to invite her into their quarters for some early morning fun.

She needed to cool off, seriously. She asked the nearest Marine if the ship had a pool.

"There's a Olympic sized one down at the R&R Center on Hull B, if you would like to go for a swim."

"Thanks," said Nadia. She used the data-pad to locate Hull B. After fifteen minutes, she had found the pool and nearby locker room.

Nadia slid into the cool water, hoping to deal with her stress...

Amestria City (Central)

It had been another long day at the Ministry for Liscel. Torontia was not going exactly according to the scenario, but that was to be expected with so many variables. The scenario would simply have to be rewritten.

Sara entered her apartment building, the armed guard at the entranceway standing at attention…as he always did.

“Minister!”

Liscel checked her post box before she got on the elevator. It was mostly empty. Inside was a her subscription to the Economist, a week late as usual, a report from Deputy Vice Minister of Defense Ninon de l’Enclos and a letter from the Velkyan Embassy. Sara stuffed the magazine and the report into her bag. She then picked up the letter from the Embassy.

“It’s probably a complaint from the Velkyans about Military Intelligence still holding their people in protective custody. This won’t take very long; I’ll just send it up the ladder, have Gagnaire deal with it.”

Sara took the elevator up to her floor and entered her apartment. She threw her bag across the living room coffee table, took off her constrictive suit, kicked off her kitten heels and took a nice long relaxing hot bath. Upon drying off Sara threw on some slacks, a loose shirt, had a glass of red wine and sat down to read the Velkyan letter. Whatever their complaint I will have Aela type up a letter passing the decision on to Degas, who will in turn pass it on higher away from me. She opened it up and unfolded the piece of paper inside.


Sara,


Sara blinked and sat up. It’s not a official message, it’s a letter from Nadia. Her heart began to pound. She then noticed that the first paragraph was blacked out. Those bastards, they blacked out the first paragraph of her letter! I assume the first paragraph said something about the ship and they decided it was a security risk. The Secret Service has two agents on board the Eagles Claw; they have a laptop connected to our global positioning system…we already know where they are… What if it was something important that Nadia wanted to tell me? Oh well, I will find out what she wrote…

Sara read the rest of Nadia’s letter in its entirety. ‘It is so awful that she is having nightmares… Maybe I can give her some advice on how to avoid such nightmares…[/I]

Sara gently set Nadia’s letter down on the coffee table and began scheming how to achieve uncensored communication with her.

The next day she sent her reply to the Velkyan Embassy.

Nadia,

Go to the friends who attempted to cheat you at poker and ask to use their laptop. Go to (a web address), the password is the name of your teddy bear.

♥Love♥
♥Your Good Friend Sara Liscel♥

Deeming the letter safe, the embassy beamed it to the Eagle's Claw, which in turn sent it to Nadia's cabin computer.

At any rate, Sion was enjoying his time off, walking over to the exercise wing dressed in a SSU (Southport State University) hoodie and warm-ups.

Man, I'm bored...I wonder where that girl went...hmm...better focuse...

He walked into a firing range, picking up his custom pistol from the armorer. Hitting the button on the range, a paper target, shaped like Stalin this time, appeared in Sion's view.

Hehe...bye bye, fucko.

The bark of a .50 pistol echoed through the range as Sion opened fire on the dictator, sending HE rounds through the cardboard, creating large charred holes in the paper on it's head.

Haha, Father, you're next.

Nadia was sitting at the pool, sipping her lemonade. She'd been in the water for over an hour, she needed to get back to the cabin. She went to the locker room, cleaned up, and put on her uniform.

At her cabin, she received Liscel's letter. While she had her own laptop in her luggage, she doubted the Amestrian agents would have seen it. She decided there was a reason Liscel had specified their laptop.

Going to Krika's cabin, she knocked on the door (it was about 7 AM) and asked to use her laptop.

The door opened and Nadia was confronted with a sleepy (and grumpy looking) Mireille. “Ah, le docile.*”

Mireille took out a lighter and lit a cigarette. “Do you have any idea what time it is? What do you want?”

(*"Oh, the submissive.")

"Is your laptop available?" Nadia asked nervously. She had gotten the impression Mireille didn't like her. Krika, on the other hand, seemed quite nice.

She was hoping to go to the site that Liscel had given her, and she hoped Mireille wasn't going to get in her way on this.

"It's important... the one in my cabin got a virus, 'DEAT.exe.' The computer just doesn't work, it has no connection, no operating system, no... anything. It just shut down on me." She hoped Mireille had no sophisticated knowledge of computers, or she was royally fucked.

"You are hopeless." Mireille inhaled then exhaled on her cigarette. "How many times do I have to tell you...? You cannot lie. You are an open book. Now what do you want our laptop for?"

Suddenly Krika’s sleepy voice intruded. “Mireille what’s going on?”

Nadia was prepared for this contingency, she had printed off a copy of Liscel's letter, figuring it didn't contain anything that could be considered private.

"It's something important, from Sara Liscel. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be secret if she couldn't just tell me in a letter."

Mireille just looked at Nadia for a minute, and then she turned her head, apparently to address Krika. "le ministre a envoyé à son jouet un E-mail...Et apparemment elle s'attend à ce que nous remettent notre gouvernement du dernier cri possédé ordinateur portatif pour sa communication personnelle.*"

Krika sighed, “si Sie refusez-la Sie aliénera le futur ministre de La défense et Sie savez ce que cela pourrait signifier...Élasticité juste Nadia l'ordinateur portatif ; I voulez obtenir de nouveau au sommeil.**"

Mireille grunted and went to retrieve the laptop. Through the door, Nadia could make out several rifles and machine guns on the floor in various stages of disassembly.

Mireille returned with a compact black laptop. "It has a three hour battery; you are to recharge it once you are done. I expect it back in the next three hours."

Mireille handed the laptop to Nadia.

*"The Minister has sent her toy an E-mail... And apparently she expects us to hand over our state-of-the-art government owned laptop for her personal communication."

**"If you refuse her you will alienate the future Minister of Defense and you know what that could mean... Just give Nadia the laptop; I want to get back to sleep."

What's with the guns? Are they going to give those to the Kraven rebels?

Nadia smiled and took the laptop. "Thanks. I'll have it charged and back on your desk fairly soon."

She went back to her cabin and accessed the site, using the password Liscel had given her.

The site Sara had told Nadia to log onto was a super secure E-mail account in Nadia’s name. The inbox had one message.

Nadia opened the message from Liscel. What could be so secret that Sara couldn't just send it to me in a normal letter?

Dear Nadia,

The Velkyans blacked out the first paragraph of your letter, removing what I can only assume was information on the Eagles Claw and its location. It stands to reason they would also monitor and record all our correspondence. Communicating through E-mail by Amestrian communication satellites will give us some privacy. L'amour est à son plus romantique une fois chuchoté, non crié.*

Apparently Sara had attached pictures taken with a digital camera to the letter.

Image 1: A picture of Nadia’s censored letter on Sara’s coffee table.

The letter continued…

(OOC: *Love is at its most romantic when whispered, not shouted.)

(OOC: I am going to post the letter piecemeal so you can post Nadia’s differing reactions to each section.)

Nadia frowned. Why would they do this? They must know about the Amestrian Intelligence officers on the ship. This makes no sense to me. I'm sure they know most of what I told Sara. Unless something fishy is going on with those refugees...

She opened another window and related the gist of what had been censored.

Sara,

As I said in the last letter, I'm aboard a ship heading for Kraven, I should be landing soon. I have my own laptop now, hopefully we can communicate while I'm in Kraven.

The young man we met on the ship who was pulled from his plane is on this ship. He is very friendly, and we even flew together in a CAP mission. It was quite interesting, we saved a few dozen people who appeared to be Kahanistanians. Their transport was fired on by some rogues, we know little of them, Velkyan Naval Intelligence wouldn't let anyone near them.

She would continue her response as she read the rest of the letter.

The letter continued...

I have very unfortunate news concerning Kahanistan. Shortly after you left there were allegations of 307 illegal killings ordered by our Military in BC… Those allegations turned out to be complete lies, there has been an internal investigation of the Defense Ministry, which I participated in, and we found no evidence of such an order ever having been issued. We are still trying to figure out what happened… The event sparked protests in Kahanistan which a demagogic General by the name of al-Ghazi exploited to bring about riots in an attempt to destabilize the Government in preparation for his own run for the Presidency on the Fascist ticket… There were massive riots throughout Kahanistan targeting our citizens, thousands of Amestrian, Kahanistanian civilians were killed, and our Embassy was attacked… The Kahanistan State proved itself weak and ineffective in dealing with the riots… This is no surprise because in Kahanistan anyone can own a military grade assault weapon!

Then a civil war broke out in ViZion when President Villian attempted to dissolve Congress and establish a personal dictatorship. The nations of MassPwnage and Doomingsland supported President Villian and a coalition was formed to support the Congressional forces. The Kahanistan government foolishly decided to jump in and support the Congressional coalition to prove itself… They were apparently hoping for a great victory that would cleanse Kahanistan psychologically of its past shame of defeat at the hands of AMF… What followed for Kahanistan was an utter disaster… The Kahanistanian military proved no match for the military might of MassPwnage and Doomingsland. The entire Kahanistanian fleet was annihilated and from what we can tell so was the majority of the Kahanistanian air force. Kahanistan is now under siege and is suffering constant bombardment; the death toll is estimated in the millions... I believe defeat is likely for your nation’s military...

It is ironic in a way, now it seems fortunate that you were chosen for duty in the Kraven Theater, for if you had remained a MIG pilot in Kahanistan you most likely would not have survived.

Nadia, I want you know that I love you dearly and that if you ever need help I am here for you.

Attachment: Documents for which one can request the Amestrian Government for refugee status or asylum.

I have sent you these in case you are ever in need of them… I suggest that if you find this all too sudden and heavy, and who would not, that you try the Detachment early.

The letter continued…

Nadia read on. She knew who General al-Ghazi was, a controversial right-wing general who had commanded Kahanistan's defense forces during the Freekish war, and who was nicknamed "General Gas." She had heard rumors about Torontia, but believed everything Liscel had told her, that there were no war crimes. Her friend was no war criminal. She felt vaguely relieved, until she read about the riots in Kahanistan.

If General al-Ghazi were campaigning, it would be just like him to pour fuel on the flames. Nadia's eyes watered as she read on. She knew what Doomingsland did to POW's and civilians, they interrogated them, impaled people to extract information from others, killed civilians... And now it's happening at home... She thought about her parents, who still lived in Al-Bahr. Are they all right? My friends, my neighbors, who is still alive over there?

Nadia printed off the e-mail and the attached documents, tears streaming down her face. She filled in the documents, though she wasn't sure she would send them. If Kahanistan were occupied when she got back... what would she do? Would she move to Amestria? What life is there for me? My career... my family, my friends...

Nadia continued responding to Liscel's letter, crying softly.

It seems just like General al-Ghazi to do something like this. That man is very dangerous, he is insane. Who is winning the elections? General al-Ghazi should be thrown in prison.

Doomingsland is merciless to people who surrender, it views them as weak, what hope does Kahanistan have? What is Amestria doing in this situation? ViZion is right next to it, a dictatorship there wouldn't be good at all for them.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can disagree with you about us losing. Doomingslandian fighters and especially Pwnage fighters are as good as MiG-35's if not better. And MassPwnage has several super dreadnaughts and Kahanistan only has one, and probably not even that anymore.

Thank you for thinking of me. The refugee documents can be useful if the war is still on when I get back, if I get back.

The floodgates opened, her eyes watered, her face was getting wet and her throat constricted. She sat down on her bed, crying her eyes out. Nadia let out an anguished wail, then pulled out her 9mm M9 Beretta sidearm, holding it to her forehead.

There is nothing left for me... my country's been wrecked once, and Doomingsland is far less merciful...

Nadia then remembered what Liscel had said to her. "I suggest that if you find this all too sudden and heavy, and who would not, that you try the Detachment early."

She put down her weapon, then opened her bag and popped two DHC pills, washing them down with water from her canteen.

Immediately, she felt much better. She read on...

I am so sorry for not being there for you at this time. I want to be there with you, I want to lie next to you, I want to hold you tightly against me, and I want to comfort you, protect you... I love you Nadia...

In your letter you wrote about your nightmare of being gutted in Kraven... I doubt the darkness of your dreams will brighten anytime soon. I will tell you of a method I have at times used, with some success, to combat the fears of the subconscious. Instead of being passive as you dream, letting your subconscious decide for you, try to be active; try to dream about that which makes you happy, that which gives you pleasure... Focus on that which leaves you grateful for your existence as a conscious being.

The universe must seem very forbidding to you at present, with all the destruction so far away, yet so close... No matter what happens on far away battlefields you can survive, you can move forward. A poem comes to mind...

Just as a cruel angel inflicts deep wounds that makes you bleed,
A cold wind, as blue as the sea,
Tears open the doors of your heart,
Past moments of kindness seem a distant dream,
Your innocent eyes as yet have no idea,
Of the path your destiny will now follow,
You look up at the red sky,
Singing silent tears of mud,
When from ones wounds wings emerge,
Your new wings that are for seeking out a new future,
That only you can search for,
The cruel angle…
Do not let it destroy you,
Embrace the Universe like a blazing star!

♥Love♥
♥Your Good Friend Sara Liscel♥


(OOC: Nadia is not going to just feel better, Detachments full effects will kick in shortly...

Drug Details
Name: Detachment from the Human Condition
Type of Drug: Pain killer/mood elevator
Produced: In Amestria by the pharmaceutical company VersaLife with government oversight.
Uses: Used medically in situations of grave injury or severe pain. In Amestria, it is possible to get a proscription to treat depression or for recreational use.
Effects: Shortly after taking it, the individual will experience an elated mood and very positive attitude. The individual will no longer experience physical pain or physiological unease. The drug also maximizes the body’s pleasure receptors, the amount of pleasurable experiences felt by the individual increases dramatically. For example, food tastes better (not that those experiencing the high tend to eat much, see below).
Personal Effects upon User Behavior: A person on this drug will become, for lack of a better description, rather loopy/ditsy. It is not uncommon for an individual on this drug to blurt out what is on their mind without thinking it over first. It is advisable while under the effects of this drug not to attempt any long drawn out or severely complicated activities.
Noticeable Physical Effects: Physically the user’s eyes become glazed over.
Side Effects: Highly addictive (big surprise), however medication exists to prevent cravings. The drug acts as an appetite suppressor, unless the individual is starving they will feel no urge to eat (this can have both positive or negative implications).
Dose: The effects of one dose (one pill) will last for about an hour.

The effects of the double dose of DHC kicked in very hard, making Nadia stoned. Without thinking, she replied to the rest of Sara's letter.

Yeah, I'll try to think about how great it feels to be stoned off my ass. Dieses ist tres bonne merde, I think I got the Amestrian right. This is really good shit. Unfortunately, the infirmary here doesn't stock any more, so I'll have to make this last while I'm in Kraven.

Let me think... When I was with you, that made me feel happy. We get along real good. If I screwed up the Amestrian, tell me.

I'll come back after I've finished stomping Kraven ass.

Stonedly,
Nadia

She hit the send key. Liscel would notice the change in mood in the middle of her letter and know that Nadia had taken the pills. Nadia then charged up the computer and changed into her Hooters T-shirt and jeans. She lay back on the bed, absently looking at the cracks in the ceiling and laughing giddily. She wondered where Sion was, she got out of the cabin and proceeded to wander aimlessly through the ship.

She forgot to lock her cabin. Oh well. Mireille or Krika would probably come looking for the computer in Nadia's cabin when the three hours were up and find it fully charged.

As Nadia walked the narrow halls of the carrier, Sion himself grew restless. He decided to walk back to the locker room, where he exchanged his flight suit for his street clothes, a pair of very baggy jeans and a flight jack that read NAF-1283 Delta, with the red triangle that was the symbol of Delta sqaudron placed on a embroidered patch on his right arm.

It has been two days since they had left the waters of Kahanistan, and it would be another three before they would reach their homeland, after nearly a year of deployment. Their hometown of Southport was a sight that was sorely missed. Sion had plently to miss, too. All his old college buddies, his band-mates, all his family, everyone. They probably thought he was dead. Hell, if they saw him now, they would probably dismiss him as an imposter. He had left his home an immature rocker, joined the military, ready to go "kick some ass".

His first taste of combat had forced all that of his system. Over Concremo's City 17 was the vicious airbattles of the First Kraven War. With the exception of his sqaudron leader, Lt. Commander Garret M. Beagle, a older veteran of the NAF, and a few trainees that were on the ground that day, was wiped out by enemy fighters and airships. He paused, recalling that horrid day in his mind, like he did every night.

Airspace over City 17, 11 months ago

"Missile evaded!"

Sion's plane shook as he turned at high speed, the enemy missile slamming past him and detonating. It was a fiasco, a massive airbattle of nearly two hundred planes. A enemy fighter, a JSF, was tailing his Valkyrie, tearing into him with it's cannons. He felt Death breathing down his neck, as the enemy acheived a missile lock on him, loosing another missile. There would be no escape this time. Sion closed his eyes as the missile drew closer to his mauled aircraft.

See ya soon, God.

Then, a voice.

"NOT A CHANCE."

Sion turned, and watched in horror, as his close friend, Jack Lucan, steered his plane into path of the missile. He, his plane, and the missile exploded into a massive fireball, nearly engulfing Sion as well. Sion clenched his fist, cursing into his helmet.

-End Flashback-

"Damn it, why the fuck did you do that..."

He opened his eyes. Sterile metal corridors and a certain slender girl greeted him. He was still on the Claw.

Nadia smiled widely, revealing a set of clean white teeth. Still reeling from the effects of the DHC, she went over to Sion. "There you are," she said. "I've been looking all over for you."

Her eyes were visibly glazed over from the drug. "Where were you all day?" she asked.

Sion shook the bad memory from his head, and smiled a bit. "Around." He then grabbed Nadia's shoulders, steadying her, looking into her eyes.

"DHC?"

Nadia looked back into Sion's eyes. "Yeah, I got some in my cabin, from Amestria. It makes it all go away... want to come in?"

She was clearly off her rocker, unused to the effects of Detachment from the Human Condition.

Sion's brow furrowed.

"Sure..."

Better keep an eye on this one, make sure she doesn't jump off or step in front of a plane...

Nadia's glazed eyes lit up and she took Sion by the hand. "Great!" She led him to her quarters.

The room was neat for the most part, but the Amestrian computer was left for anyone to see. Luckily, there was no inkling it held anything secret. The e-mail Liscel had sent was printed off and a copy sat next to the computer, on the bed.

Nadia's uniform was lying on the floor where she had changed into civvies. Her weapon lay on the bed, where she would have ended it all if not for the DHC, which sat in a pill bottle on the bed near her weapon.

She picked up the bottle, still stoned. "It makes everything go away," she said. Nadia pushed the clutter to the side to clear a space for Sion to sit next to her.

Sion sat down, looking at Nadia.

"No, it doesn't..."

"I was so depressed before..." said Nadia. She picked up the letter Liscel had sent her. "There were huge anti-Amestrian riots at home, a crazy fascist general's trying to take over, and MassPwnage and Doomingsland are running amok. The Kahanistan Navy and most of the Air Force are kaput. Millions of my people are dying over there. I was going to end it all if it weren't for the DHC." Nadia nodded in the direction of her sidearm, laying on the bed, with a full 15-round clip of nine-millimeter ammunition in it.

She put the bottle in Sion's lap. "This is really good shit. You should try some." She made direct eye contact with Sion, her gray eyes widening. She smiled happily at the younger man.

OOC:

Sion shook his head silently. He put an arm around Nadia. "No thanks." Sion then leaned over, and picked up the sidearm. He flicked the safety off, and ejected the mag, sliding that into a jacket pocket. He then forced the round out of the chamber, holding it up to his eyes. His own yellow orbs scanned the shell closely.

9mm FMJ, jesus, she woulda blown her brains out...

He then looked into Nadia's grey eyes, speaking softely, yet sounding detirmined. "Look, the shit that's in that bottle, the stuff that's swimming around your veins, it's no cure-all, you understand. I figured it out the hard way when I was young, I don't want to see you making my stupid-ass mistakes, ok? Your problems are going to come back full-force once you lose your high, you need to know that. No pill on God's green earth is going to solve your problems for you. You need to stand up, give them the finger, and fix them."

He squeezed tighter. "Understand me, mi bambina?"

The dose of DHC only lasted for an hour, but she had doubled up, not carefully reading the label and most drug warnings were written for the average 150-pound adult. Nadia was just 115. Her body would take longer to metabolize it, and she had more of it in her system for her body to deal with.

She squeezed back and nodded. "How?"

As she had said, most of what was going on was in Kahanistan. She did, however, have something closer to her.

"Also, I haven't been getting a lot of sleep, I've been having nightmares about being used in the Kraven birthing labs. It's always so vivid, in those vats, they cut me up and put tubes and a fetus in my body."

Birthing centers..jesus

Even Sion, battle-hardened by firsthand experiences in Kraven, grimaced at the thought.

"That's fucking terrible, I'm sorry, though I'm aware that a simple word doesn't do anything to help them go away..."

Sion rubbed her shoulder a bit, then smiled. "Need a hug?"

Nadia nodded and let Sion hold her. The drug stimulated her pleasure centers, so that physical intimacy felt more pleasurable while she was under the influence. She wrapped her arms around him and smiled. It felt like when she was a child being held by her mother.

It was now about 9:30 AM, the Amestrians would likely be coming for the computer any time, but Nadia wasn't thinking about that.

"Sion... do you have nightmares? Depression about homeland invasions? Fear about going into battle?" If she was interpreting what he had said to her about drugs correctly, he had taken them too... how did he deal without them?

"What do you do?"

"Hell yeah, I'm scared shitless sometimes, but I saddle up anyways. I signed the little waiver at the recruitment office, and I can't disappoint them, can I? I've had nightmares, sure. It's all stress, and both of us can vouch that being pilots is a stressful job, you know?"

Sion looked to the ceiling.

"You're way too stressed out, I think you need to chill," Sion looked at the DHC bottle, "without the drugs, ok? How about...hmmm...you and me go out once we arrive in Southport, the fleet will be in port for a day while we load it with troops and planes. Gives us plently of time to, you know, explore the city. What'd ya say?"

Mireille walked down the corridor in a rotten mood, she had spent the last twenty minutes trying to find Nadia’s cabin. Figures; her time is up and she decides to let me come and get it! Ah, here it is…what is with the door? Mireille walked into the cabin through the wide open door.

“Nadia, times up, I would like my comput…”

She stared at the sight before her. Nadia was obviously high on something and she had her arms rapped around that pilot from earlier. “Que s'est produit?”

Her harsh gaze fixed upon Sion. “Explain yourself!”

Ohhhh...not this one again...hehe, this should be fun...

"Damn, you caught me, I was just about to take advantage of her!" Sion winked at Nadia, signalling it was a joke.

"Go out? Like a date?" Nadia asked. She looked Sion over. Assuming Kahanistan and Velkya used the same ranking system, he was four ranks lower than her, and probably considerably younger than her.

"I'm older than your mother," she said. While this was certainly an exaggeration, she was almost certainly older than he was. But a night on the town would be nice, a break before she would go into battle again.

"But that's OK. When do we land?"

---

Then Mireille entered. Nadia smiled knowingly at Sion, certain that if he were going to take advantage of her, he wouldn't say it to the Amestrian. She looked blankly at Mireille.

The Vice Minister would not appreciate it if Nadia got herself raped while under our protection.

Mireille took out her pistol, pointed it at Sion and said in a very calm manner. “Get away from her or I’ll kill you.”

She clearly meant it.

Nadia went for her own weapon, figuring Mireille wouldn't notice Sion had unloaded it. She also gambled that Mireille would not shoot her, after all she seemed to think she was protecting her.

Damn it.

Sion lifted his hands up slowly. In an equally calm manner, said,

"You're not the joking type, are you?"

As he said that, Sion slightly bent his knees, nearly unnoticable to the naked eye. In a burst of speed, he sprang from the bed, grabing hold of the weapon, placing it on safety as he ejected the mag unto the floor, listening to it clatter on the metal. As it hit the floor, he tore the gun from the Amestrian's hand, rolling through the open doorway.

He stood there, gun in one hand, his arms crossed. That one action had taken little over a second. Breathing a bit heavily, he managed to crack a smile.

"We need to work on your people skills, sheesh."

For his smile, Sion got a karate chop in the neck and a knee in the groin from the seasoned agent trained in several methods of unarmed hand-to-hand combat. Sion toppled over stunned.

OUCH.

Luckily, Sion was wearing a PFJ-32N jacket, infused with protective materials such as Kelvar, so much of the blow's kinetic energy were absorbed into the neck sleves. Still a bit fazed from the kick between the legs, Sion managed to gain some room, saying,

"Calm the hell down, Lord Almightly, I try to help out and I get a gun pointed at my head and a knee on my balls...ask Nadia...ow..."

Nadia let go of her weapon. "What did you do that for?"

She looked at Sion, making sure he was OK.

"Here's the computer," she said, picking up the computer and handing it to Mireille.

Sion straightened himself up.

Fleet-Sec must be laughing their asses off right now.

Leaning against a wall, he looked at Mireille and smiled a bit.

"You Amestrians are about as funny as a case of herpes..."

OOC: Nice save, Kahani.

Mireille shot Sion a poisonous glare. "I'm sure herpes is something you are familiar with..."

Mireille refused to take the computer from Nadia, preferring to keep her hands free. She leaned back against the left doorframe... "And you Velkyans are coarse, as coarse as a bootstrap."

Mireille glanced around the cabin, keeping one eye on Sion. She noticed the bottle of DHC lying on the bed. It figures. She refocused her glare upon Nadia.

"Jouet, you are only supposed to take one, how many did you take?"

"I'm chock full of sores, lemme tell you..."

Sion stood off, shaking off the obvious pain in his groin.

What a bitch, man...

"Did you actually think I would hurt her. Come on, we may be coarse, but we are very honorable."

"Two," said Nadia. She hadn't read the label clearly. "I was really depressed," she said, putting the computer down next to her service pistol. "I wasn't paying attention to the label."

She put the weapon into her holster, still attached to her uniform on the floor.

Mireille once again glared at Sion. "That is enough out of you paysan!" She took out a cigarette, lit it, inhaled deeply and then exhaled. Calm down, calm down.

Mireille turned to face Nadia. Her face softened. "Why were you so depressed?"

Looks like I'm not wanted, haha.

"Later, Nadia."

He turned, and began to walk towards an elevator. He muttered under his breath "Ostinato Puta", directed at Mirielle.

Note: That means stubborn BITCH, not whore.

Nadia picked up the letter she'd printed off. "I've been unable to sleep for a good eight hours for weeks because of the nightmares, a maniac General started riots all over Kahanistan, and now MassPwnage and Doomingsland are invading, millions of civilians are dying... and the things that I've heard Doomingsland does to their prisoners..."

She was still under the effects of the DHC, but it was starting to wear off.

"My home is probably going to be destroyed, like it was in the Freekish war. Doomingsland is even more unscrupulous..."

Mireille took a puff on her cigarette and shrugged her shoulders. "These things happen; it is the way of the world. I suggest you do not take it out on yourself, it is after all your idiot leaders who have led Kahanistan into another unwinnable war...it is they who should be geprügelt avec des chaînes. Pas prügeln Sie vous-même.*"

(*OOC: flogged with chains. Do not flog yourself.)

The way of the world... The way of the world had nearly led Nadia to blow her head off.

"Be that as it may, I won't have a home to go back to if we lose over there, and I went through so much to rebuild." It had cost her a lot to refurnish her rebuilt apartment, but that was not all she meant. It had taken a serious psychological toll on her to arrive home and find almost nothing of what she had left behind.

But she didn't much like having her country disparaged. "I don't think the Supreme Soviet should be chained up," she said, imperfectly understanding the Amestrian. "Anyway... what should I do? I can't be popping pills for the rest of my life..."

"Sure you can pop pills for the rest of your life, although it would most likely be a rather short life... If I were you I would take account of what I had left, prepare for the possibility of a life as a refugee, and look for a replacement home."

Mireille took another puff on her cigarette. "As for your leaders, they are the ones who squandered your home, and countless lives, on the altar of arrogance and pride... Trust me, you owe your foolish government nothing, you should be thinking of yourself. What will you be when that uniform means nothing, when you are legally a vagrant, unwelcome in your home country yet belonging nowhere else?"

The effects of the DHC had totally worn off by now. "My government... went in to try to prevent a powerful nation... that it has had good relations with... from falling under the grip of a dictator... who would likely be hostile to Kahanistan," Nadia said through clenched teeth. This was the second time the Amestrian had derided the Kahanistanian Government. As far as she was concerned, arrogance or pride had nothing to do with it. It was defense of an ally.

"What do I have left? Just what's in my luggage with me, really. Not enough to start a new life. Sara sent me documents I can use to request asylum in Amestria, if the situation in Kahanistan gets bad enough before my duty in Kraven is finished, but..." Nadia's voice shook. "I... I don't know if I can go on," she said.

For 31 years she had lived a fairly comfortable middle-class existence, although Republic Guard facilities, even for officers, were by far inferior to civilian housing. They were, however, equally superior to life in refugee camps. She was not thrilled about the idea of living in Amestria, either. While millions of Kahanistanian citizens did reside there, her life as she knew it would be over. Her career, the one she had had for the last 10 years of her life, would be over.

However, the question of what she would do was moot until she got back from Kraven, and she wasn't sure that she would get back from there. "But... for now I'll have to concentrate on the task at hand." She may have been emotional, but she was still a soldier. "There is plenty of time for me to decide what to do. Mireille... what's the Amestrian government's view on this situation? From what Sara said, millions are dead already."

Nadia opened her own laptop, preparing to check her mail while she waited for Mireille's response.

Mireille shrugged. "What is the alternative to going on? Are you just going to lie down and die? Are you going to take that gun and make a mess for someone to clean up? My dear, you are going to die anyway, you might as well try to go on, and you might as well roll the dice."

Mireille again puffed upon her cigarette. "As for what my superiors back in Central think of the ViZion mess...they of course hope the Congressionalist win, but the conflict has escalated to that of a major war... They will not wish to entangle Amestria in a destructive unwinnable war... As for their specific plans of action, I do not know."

Make a mess for someone to clean up?! Nadia had never thought of it that way. But then again, she could always OD on the DHC, and Sara had said alcohol with it was very dangerous...

She was still severely depressed, but she was going to do what she had been sent to do in Kraven. "You're right, Mireille. I hope the Congressionalists win, too... for ViZion, and for Kahanistan." She sat across from Mireille, directly facing her.

She had entered her email on her laptop. This was the one she had brought with her from home, not the Amestrian computer. Still talking to Mireille, she asked, "Why did you run my friend off? We were just talking, and yes, he does have a certain vulgar sense of humor..."

She opened her email. There was a message in it from a long-time friend.

Hey, Nadia. I sent this to both your personal and military e-mail addresses, in case the military server went down, we're at war in Kahanistan if you didn't know already.

I'm in Torontia still, and Commander of the Military Assistance Command, Torontia. My predecessor is on trial as a war criminal, I hope we can get enough evidence on him to put him away for life. We're having a Constitutional Convention, and I met a couple of the people you told me about from Project Alpha. General Kitas seemed to like me, but he pulled a boneheaded move and got himself and the other Novans kicked out of the conference before it got started.

I have some very bad news about your friend, Sara Liscel. General Kitas warned me, but I took it with a grain of salt and I think she wants to kill me. Liscel is fucking crazy. She slammed me into the wall a couple of times and called me a pissant*, I got some nasty scrapes and bumps from it and where her nails dug into my neck. And all I did was tell her I wasn't scared of her when she basically told me she wasn't going to aid Kahanistan when it fell to MassPwnage if I said anything at the conference.

General al-Ghazi, who was running for President as a Fascist, went missing a few days ago, his ex-wives and his son have no clue where he is. His son thinks the Amestrians had him killed. He wrote a book that was published and released shortly after he disappeared. It's called On the Amestrians and their Lies. I had a copy of that book with me, I didn't expect Liscel to see it and she grabbed it right out of my bag and tore it to pieces, like an animal... she was feral.

Of course, I can't say I blame her, if some crackhead wrote a book that claimed my sister (if I had one) were a rapist, pedophile and sociopath, I'd probably react the same way. The things this book says about Kasumi or whatever her name is, they're not fit to print. The only reasons I got that book were A. I didn't look at the author's name and B. I wanted something to discredit the Amestrians at the conference, and On the Amestrians and their Lies sounded good. They killed several thousand Torontian POW's, enlisted Kahanistanians to help them, and are now trying to cover it all up.

Liscel actually told me that if I mentioned the Amestrian genocide at the conference she would "destroy" me. But it should be obvious to anyone... A young Republic Guard lieutenant named Grant Foster went public, there was a hunt for him, he escaped and gave information to the Xirniumites, and was recently pardoned and promoted to Captain. Now, if he were spreading lies, why pardon him, much less promote him and decorate him?

On top of it all, there were horrible riots in Kahanistan when Foster went public. Eight hundred thousand are dead and nine million wounded. Rioting in all major cities targeted Amestrian citizens living in Kahanistan, and pretty much any European was suspected of being Amestrian and beaten, raped, murdered... a lot of them were tortured too, it was horrible. Of course I was in Torontia at the time, but the mail is no longer censored here.

So now I'll probably be killed for speaking the truth. My aide has all the information I have, and General Kitas has some of the information, so hopefully Liscel won't kill me and open suspicions. It would look suspicious if I accuse her of genocide and then my plane blows up. The Xirniumites have guards trailing me, but I don't turn my back on them in case one of them is an Amestrian agent. Seriously, the way Liscel looked at me and said, "Goodbye, General," scared the hell out of me. I wouldn't put anything past her.

By the way, it goes without saying that I'm taking you into the utmost confidence. She did say that if I said anything to you that she would come down on me like a ton of bricks and it wouldn't be pleasant. Do not say anything about this to her, unless you hear about the genocide from another source. I don't know what she's planning but it's not good.

Later (hopefully),
Rachel

Attachment 1: An ad for bust-enhancing pills, the ones Nadia received in post 387 and mentioned in post 438. Now you know who sent her the pill ads.

Attachment 2: Links to Kahanistanian, Xirniumite, and St. Fedskian websites detailing the Amestrian atrocities in gory detail. These are not political extremist groups like the Kahanistan Nazi Party or al-Ghazi's Fascists, but mainstream organizations and human rights groups.

Attachment 3: A photograph of General Levitt in Capitol Police armor, the kind she wore in the AMF war when posing as a Kraven officer. She is too short for the armor to fit comfortably, and the chest and hips of the armor are way too tight. It looks very painful, but a men's mag catering to military personnel might like to get ahold of it.

Nadia then opened the other message. It was from her mother.

Nadia,

We are under siege now, MassPwnage dumped copper into our siege water supply. Civil Defense is giving out ROWPU's so they don't have to put engineers onto cleaning the water and getting bombed by the Pwnage Air Force, they're trying to starve us out.

Your father is working in the relief efforts, never tiring it seems. I find it hard sometimes to believe that he is 73. I thought I'd lost him when he joined al-Ghazi's volunteer guards in the Freekish war and he went missing for two weeks. He'd gotten separated from his squad in the confusion surrounding the Sardaukar turning on the Freeks, and we all thought he was dead. But every morning he takes a 100-liter container and wheels it to the watering hole, fills it up with filtered water from his ROWPU and the whole neighborhood has another day's worth of drinkable water.

Life is hard here, but so far we pull through. Civil Defense is training us with firearms for when the Pwnage troops move in to occupy us. Bands of guerrillas are already running around in the desert and in the canals, training, I suppose, for the invasion.

If you ever get depressed in Kraven, feel free to write me.

Always there,
Mom

Attachment 1: A photograph of the damaged city. Nadia's apartment is visible and still intact, so far.

Attachment 2: A photograph of Nadia's mother and father sitting on some rubble. Her father is smallish, about 5'9", fairly thin, and 73 years old. He is dressed in all blue and carrying a TAR-21 with an M-203 grenade launcher attached. Her mother is also small, 5'4", slim, and 69 years old. She is wearing a light gray dress and holding an AK-101.

* Levitt does not speak Amestrian, and she thought "paysan" sounded like "pissant" and that might have been what Liscel meant.

"Your friend," Mireille twisted the word with contempt, "is a small town...what's the English expression...bumpkin... And as for the two of you just talking, do you honestly believe that a young attractive women such as yourself can sit next to a man all doped up and vulnerable and that man not have predatory thoughts?"

Mireille dropped her cigarette on the floor and stomped it out. She walked over to where Nadia was sitting and attempted to peer at the laptop. "What you got there?"

There was no way in hell Nadia was letting a member of the Amestrian Secret Service see the letter. If Rachel's fears were justified, this could endanger her. If her fears were not justified, Nadia did not want the Amestrian to think she was hanging around with a paranoid lunatic.

"Just personal e-mail, from friends and family who don't have ministerial connections to enable personal communication on advanced government computers," she said, hastily opening another window, getting ready to erase her history and shut the computer down, with the computer half-closed this was difficult, but not impossible.

Hoping to distract Mireille further from intruding on her privacy, she switched the subject back to Sion. "I didn't say he wasn't attracted to me, frankly I don't know. But he hadn't tried anything with me." It should have been obvious to a retarded Great Dane that he was joking about wanting to take advantage of me.

Mireille seemed to lose interest in what was on Nadia's computer. She walked back to the door and once again leaned back upon it. She then lit another cigarette. “My dear, in the wild certain animals are passive, waiting for their prey to come to them… Then they strike. When I walked in you had your arms around him and a drugged up smile on your face…”

Mireille sighed. I overreacted, but still, that idiot should just have gotten up and left when I told him to.

Nadia had finished erasing her browser's history and shutting down her computer. She put it in her bag and stuffed it under her bed.

Figuring that when she was deployed to liberate the Kraven slaves, she would need to know how to shoot, she decided to go to the shooting range on the ship, taking her Beretta 9mm and her Velkyan LAR-10 carbine with her.

"I'll be off at the shooting range," she said, packing her weapons. "I'll need those skills on the ground." And clear my head about what I just found out. Hopefully Mireille has no reason to suspect that I got anything suspicious.

Mireille merely shrugged and took another puff of her cigarette. “Amusez-vous.*”

She then retrieved her computer and proceeded back to her cabin.

( *OOC: “Have fun.”)

Sklenova smiled, understanding the Amestrian well. "Amusez-vous, too," she said, leaving the cabin and heading for the rec deck and the firing range.

She asked the guy at the range if they had any targets with the images of the Great Leader Li of MassPwnage or Emperor Helldawg V of Doomingsland. If not, J.L. or Shah Khosru III would suffice. Shooban-abusing degenerates... She would be glad to have anything to pump a few pellets into.

"No, we don't, but we do have a picture of Newman from Seinfield, if that will do." With that, the operator pulled down a target in Lane Four, handing her a few LAR-10 clips.

Sklenova shrugged. "Newman will do." She sighted the postal worker between the eyes and fired single rounds between the eyes.

After about ten shots in the area between the eyes, she started to target the nose, eyes, mouth, ears, and other areas. After about thirty or forty shots the target resembled a drawing of Swiss cheese.

"Got any dictators?" she asked. Having little to do until Sion or one of the Amestrians found her, she was going to hang there for hours.

"Probably, some Marine put that Newman there as a joke, but-"

His small red phone then rang, and he picked it up, talking to the voice on the other line. He nodded, and hung up.

"The Admiral wants you to report to the briefing room immediatly."

Nadia's mind raced. What is it? Is Velkya moving to help Kahanistan? Did Kahanistan fall to Doomingsland? Did we arrive at Kraven already? What's happening?

She nodded, ran back to her quarters, hastily changed back into her uniform, and went to the briefing room, out of breath. "Lieutenant Colonel Nadia Sklenova, reporting as ordered," she said, eager to know what the Velkyan wanted her for.

The Admiral greeted the young Nadia at the door, saluting her.

"Lt. Colonel, this operation has ended. Kraven has surrendered, and all territories have been freed."

She returned the salute as she had been trained to do. So much was running through her mind... Kraven has surrendered...? It took a minute or so for the information to sink into Nadia's head. The people of Kraven are free. The people of Kraven are free. I won't have to worry about being taken to a birthing chamber ever again. Maybe these goddamned nightmares will stop.

"That's... great. Now what are we going to do?" asked Nadia. The ship couldn't take her back to Kahanistan through the Pwnage blockade, the ship was probably going to dock in Velkya... maybe repatriate the Amestrians, maybe she could be dropped off there and taken home from the Kahanistanian Embassy. Nadia still had a few things to do, research the Torontian conflict, confront Liscel if she found evidence, find out how she was going to get back home...

What will I do at home? Her home was under attack from some of the largest nations in the world. Liscel had said little about Kahanistan's allies moving to help, what was going to be left by the time Nadia got back in?

Now able to think back to her homeland, Nadia's eyes filled up with tears. She sat down across from the office. "Where are we going now?"

"This ship, and her escorts are returning the it's home port of Southport, Velkya for shore leave and resupply. Any foreign nationals will be sent back to their country of origin, with the exception of Kahanistanis such as yourself. It is too dangerous to repatriate you at this time. In fact, from what we can tell from the harbor reports, there are many of your people reaching OUR shores in a bid to escape. I'm afraid you'll be staying in Velkya for the forseeable future."

Another day, Nadia would have relished the idea of shore leave, but not when her homeland was under fire and her country needed her. The assurance she would be staying in Velkya did not help the feelings of helplessness and depression that washed over her, in fact, it made her feel even worse.

While I'm out with Sion, the rest of the Republic Guards are laying down their lives to protect Kahanistan... it isn't fair, I signed on to protect my country in its hour of need, not to go off on an allied ship in safety... but there is something I needed to do... go to Amestria to find Sara and learn the truth for myself.

That could wait, she would find a way back to Kahanistan, preferably at the head of an air force... While she felt she could easily convince Liscel to press for Amestrian military intervention in Kahanistan, she wasn't going to use her connections like that. If what she had heard was true, she might not have that connection much longer anyway.

She spent that night deep in thought, about how to broach the subject of Amestrian war crimes with Liscel. Many ideas would run through her mind, but one thing was certain, she would have to face her friend in person. She would also have to see the Amestrian agents before they left...

Suddenly, a younger rating appeared in the room.

"We're home! We're home! It's on the horizon!"

The other men in the breifing room began to cheer, as many rushed upstairs to the flight deck to view the home they hadn't seen in nearly a year. The Admiral then looked at Nadia and smiled.

"I must be off, we are going to be docking soon."

Later, near Nadia's cabin.

The sounds of a Velkyan celebration could be heard echoing through the hallways, as the Admiral allowed the consumption of alcohol for the only time during the trip. Cheering and whooping, followed by banging and what sounded like a bass guitar, we're louder than the din of hell itself, as the Velkyans welcomed their home with open arms.

Nadia woke up at 5:30 AM to the sound of celebrating drunk Velkyans. She was likely the only sober person on the ship. I hope the Amestrians aren't plastered too... I need to know something important.

She dressed quickly and conservatively, in thick winter civvies that she'd brought for mixing with the Kraven populace. The last thing she needed was to be hooted at by a bunch of drunks. She walked into the corridor toward the Amestrians' quarters, figuring they too had likely been awakened by the mob of rowdy partiers.

Mireille Bouquet stood outside her cabin door looking very tired, unhappy, and agitated. She was, as usual, smoking a cigarette... Bunch of low class trash. They can't enjoy their alcohol in quite dignity; they have to go about shouting at the top of their lungs so everyone knows how happy they feel... Drunken rabble...

Mireille dropped her cigarette on the ground and stomped it out. I should really cut back and get a patch; these things will kill me...

She noticed Nadia approach. "Guten Morgen Lieutenant Colonel Sklenova, I see you are unable to block out the din as well..."

Mireille glanced up and down Nadia's outfit. "I had no idea that Velkya was so cold this time of year... Kirika, unpack our heavy coats!"

Nadia smiled. "It's not that cold, I just didn't want a lot of drunks hooting at me. Anyway, I needed to know if there are any unusual procedures that have to be followed." She showed Krika the documents Liscel had given her, which she could use to request asylum in Amestria.

While she was going to stay in Velkya for a few days at least, she did hope to get to Amestria and then get home. The Kahanistan Republic Guard needed her, badly. She opened her heavy coat.

"So, do I just mail these in to the nearest Amestrian embassy or consulate, or do I have to go through any kinds of legal hoops that I don't know about...?"

Krika, who had just stepped out of the cabin, looked over the documents. "Just go the Amestrian Embassy in Velkya, if these are filled out correctly and you have all the relevant personal information then they will issue you a special passport without hassle. Once in Amestria present your passport to the Immigration Officials at the airport and they will accommodate you..."

Mireille interjected. "By personal information she means ID, identification papers, whatever records of your past life you have on you... If you have everything relevant getting a special passport at the Embassy will take no more then a few hours..."

Still somewhat depressed over the idea of losing her home again, Nadia smiled weakly, thanked the Amestrians, and joined the Velkyans who were boozing it up.

After a few drinks, she was feeling relaxed enough to dance, albeit wobbily. She pushed deeper into the crowd, deciding to try her hand at moshing. She may have been a little old for the mosh pit, but in her state she didn't care.

She was singing now, loudly and very off-key. "One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small..." Her accent would make her recognizable as a Kahanistanian, no matter how she was dressed.

"And the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all..."

Unfourtunatly, Nadia's voice was drowned out by the tons of other sailors, cheering and singing. Pushed by the crowd outside to the flight deck, a crowd of ground crew and pilots was visable, crowding around a MR-4, singing some song about how Jesus was a really cool guy. A few Velkyan flags were visible, waved by jubilant crew members.

Overhead, the full moon shown brightly, as the bright lights of Southport came into view. Many crewman silenced themselves, saluting the Velkyan flag hanging above the nearest island before resuming the party. Sion walked up to the drunk Nadia, himself holding a small bottle of Osean lager, but appearing more in control than most drunk people would be. He raised the glass container before speaking in a calm voice.

"Glad to see you're still alive."

"Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall." Nadia continued at the top of her voice until she noticed Sion approach her. "Yeah, I'm still alive, and proud of it!" she said loudly, obviously intoxicated.

She dropped her jacket and threw her arms around him. "So, about that date..." She smiled widely. "When do we land?"

She looked up at the MR-4. She would have liked to have a go at the stick, but she was not too drunk to know that she was too drunk to fly. Her gaze then fixed back on Sion. "Join me?"

"And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall..." she continued.

Oh no, last time I helped out I got a knee in the balls.

"Join you for what?"

Nadia grabbed Sion by the hand and pulled him up close to her. She seemed to think this was a karaoke joint. "Singing along, silly!" She continued as loud as she could. "Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call..." Nobody was going to knee anyone in the balls here, Nadia had left the Amestrians in their cabin.

It didn't seem to occur to her that he might not know the song. "Call Alice... when she was just small..." She clearly had no idea what it meant to stay on key.

Sion laughed a bit.

"Sorry to burst your bubble, princess, but this isn't a karyoke place."

Nadia pushed another drink down her throat, something she'd found on the Velkyan ship. "Well, everyone's dancing and singing and blasting guitars and drinking... Have some." She thrust a large bottle that contained some Velkyan stuff she'd never heard of before at Sion.

"When men on the chessboard get up and tell you where you go..."

100 proof Selken Vodka...probably one of the Marines...

Sion put a hand on on Nadia's shoulder. "Stand still for a sec."

Nadia stood still, letting Sion look at her, examining her or whatever his intentions were. She was still drunk as a skunk, but was no longer singing "White Rabbit." She smiled widely, her bottle still extended toward Sion.

"What are you doing?"

Sion couldn't help but laugh.

"There's in old saying in Southport, one tequila, two tequila, floor."

He looked into Nadia's eyes intently.

Glazed as a doughnut...

"Looks like you've had a wee bit too much Selkan."

"One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, four." Nadia's legs appeared to have trouble supporting her weight.

"I had the right amount," she said. "Enough to loosen up. Should we swim to shore?" She was clearly wasted if she was thinking of jumping off a trimaran carrier, but she could swim well enough. "I've even brought my suit, just in case." This was true, she had hit the ship's pool earlier.

Loose like a wet noodle...wait...that made no sense...

"Not Southport tequila."

Sion noticed Nadia's trembling legs, and in one fel swoop, picked her up off her feet, bridal style. A few of his squadmates cheered drunkenly before resuming their vodka fest.

"I'm not in much of a mood to swim, say we go to front of the ship?"

Nadia wasn't that heavy, so she was not that difficult to lift. "OK," she said. She seemed disappointed, she was eager to get into town.

"What do you like to do in town?"

"Town? Haha, haven't seen it in years. When I was a young, naive youngster, I used to hang out at the local clubs, and various shit along those lines."

In Nadia's drunken state, clubbing and shit seemed pretty good to her. "Want to go clubbing when we land? When do we land?"

She offered the bottle to Sion again. "Хотите некоторых?*" she asked, this time speaking Russian.

*"Want some?"

"No thanks, I'm drunk enough."

They descended through the carrier, until Sion opened a door. Instantly, they arrived at the front of the ship, a small V-shaped porch overlooking the rapidly flowing waves. Nothing was farther forward, and it gave the impression they were flying. The cool night air whipped at them, and Sion pulled two chairs. He sat down in the one closest to the water, seating Nadia in the one next to it.

He leaned back, smelling the salt air. He closed his eyes. Soon he'd be home.

"We'll be in port by morning, and sure, whatever you'd liked to do is cool."

Nadia pushed her chair very close to Sion's so the chairs were touching, sat down and put an arm around him. She nodded and finished off the bottle in four quick gulps.

"Yeah, that'll be fun," she said, her voice slurred. She wondered what else would be available in Southport. "What else do they have over there?"

Sion looked out to sea.

"Everything."

He then directed her to the bright lines on the horizon.

"See those?"

Nadia smiled weakly. "Yes... What are they?" She leaned her head against Sion's shoulder.

"That's my homeland. Haven't seen her in nearly four years. I miss it, and I miss everyone I left behind, you know?"

Nadia nodded. "You've seen mine." She pulled out her wallet and opened it to some photographs. "I left a lot of people behind, too. These are my mom and dad." She pulled out a photograph of an older man and woman in their late 60's or early 70's. They were about average height and thin, like Nadia. The man had the grizzled look of a war veteran, but was still robust. The woman was fit too, for her age.

She then flipped to a photograph of a mildly attractive woman in her late 30's. She was short, probably about 5'3" or 160 cm, a couple of inches shorter than Nadia. Her figure was diametrically opposing to Nadia's. This woman was short, stocky and full-chested, while Nadia was average height, slim and relatively small around. The older woman had short reddish-brown hair and a pretty smile. She was dressed in the uniform of a Colonel in the Imperial Marines.

Sion leaned in closer to get a good look at the figure.

"Who is that?"

"That's Rachel Levitt. She's a Brigadier General now, in Torontia. We've been friends for years, we live in the same city, served together in battle (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Battle_of_Xigrat) many times."

Nadia's voice slurred rapidly as her body began to absorb the Selken. "She pissed off Sara Liscel in Torontia, and now she thinks Sara will kill her. Rachel thinks that the Amestrians committed war crimes, and Sara says that's a bullshit lie."

"Rachel's crazy. She drinks like mad, goes into court (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=448344) dressing like a hooker, and walks around with a joint in her mouth because it looks rebellious. She doesn't smoke it, but she does it to be badass. But she's a nice girl and I love her."

"Sounds like quite a character."

Sion pulled a wallet out of his jacket pocket. Inside was a few dozen Velkyan Credits, a military ID card, and a wallet camera. He pulled the camera out, turning it on and flipping it to the display screen. "Here's my parents", he said, showing a picture of a tall , fit, man dressed in a militay dress uniform, and a shorter woman with long blonde hair and blue eyes. He then flipped to a picture of Sion, 21 years old shipping out to flight school. He grinned widely, and put his hands in a peace sign. He looked a bit less aged in this picture than in real life. "I'd like to present my younger, naive side." he said jokingly. He then flipped to a picture of a bunch of pilots and ground crew sitting between two ISF-2Ns. "That's Delta sqaudron right before the Kraven War. Most of those men are gone now..." Sion looked out to sea, trying to forget the intense loss he had felt during that God forsaken war.

Nadia noticed the sorrow in Sion's eyes, put away her wallet, and gently wrapped her arms around him. If she had not just finished off her bottle, she would have offered him some.

As isolated as she was, Nadia had lost few friends in the war, largely because she had few friends to lose. Her voice slurred even more than ever now. "We're drunk. Let's not talk about the war, let's talk about... more... pleasant... things..." she said.

Her grip around Sion loosened, the Selken in her body being too much for her. She was losing consciousness. Her head rested against the younger man and her eyes closed.

The door connecting the porch to the rest of the ship opened.

“So this is the very front of the ship, la tête*?" asked a female voice.

“Ummm…yes mam…” replied the voice of some Velkyan ship hand.

“Thank you for helping me find my way around.”

Krika bounded out to the porch rail and grasped it. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feelings of the cool breeze on her face. Krika was dressed in a light blue sundress and flowered beach hat. The five foot 36 year old women looked like a young child…

Krika heard Nadia and Scion behind her and turned around…her eyes gazing over the drunken pair... She frowned lightly.

"Nadia, this is the second time I have seen you tout à fait gaspillé**... Is something wrong...?" She is just too easy to manipulate...I wonder if he got her drunk.

Krika smiled politely at Sion. "You seem to be good friends with the Lieutenant Officer..." Krika paused in mid-sentence, waiting for Sion to give his name.

(*OOC: the head)

(**OOC: completely wasted)

(It's a pretty private place, Amestria, only crew really know how to acess it, since it's not on any of the schematics. But, whatever.)

"1st Lt. Sion Davenport, NMS 342 Delta."

Sion then looked over to Nadia, noticing her change in grip. He felt her pulse. It was barely readable.

Shit!

"Oh no...give me a hand here, we need to get her to a doctor!"

With that, Sion, picked her up, motioning for Krika to follow him.

(OOC: Krika had one of the crew show her how to get there... There is a festival going on and I take it that most non-esential personnel are drinking/wandering around the ship. I take it that they would not pass up the oppertunity to help a cute girl...)

Krika grabbed Nadia's unattended side, supporting her as best she could... Not that Krika could provide much support, she being only 95 pounds and quite petite.

"What the hell is wrong with her? Damnez-le, merde, Bâtard stupide!* Qu'avez-vous fait?**"

(*OOC: &%$#@%&)

(**OOC: "What did you make?" As in, what did you do?)

(OOC: Haha, well, hey, boys will be boys. And calling Sion a stupid bastard isn't going to help much either. :p )

Sion yelled back at Krika. "I found her drinking and partying with the crew up on the flight deck, and took her out to the patio to sober her up. She's got a weak spot for the bottle from what I can tell."

The walked into a infirmary, where a doctor was taking a coffee break.

"Evening Sion, what's...oh no..."

The doctor seated Nadia on one of the beds, ushering Sion and Krika out of the room. He then propped Nadia up to a sitting position, placing an IV-like needle in her arm. He then hooked her up to an EKG, and waiting for the liquid to pump into Nadia's bloodstream.

(OOC: Have Krika ask about Nadia's condition before allowing anyone else to burst in.)

Krika waited outside, nerviously pacing back and forth. Finally she peeked into the infirmry. "How's she doing Docter?"

"She'll be fine, she just needs rest. Keep an eye on her, I'll release her most likely by tommorow."

He disappared into the infirmary, leaving Sion and Nadia outside. Sion, who had leaned against the wall, lost in thought, looked up and spoke to Krika.

"Sorry about all this mess, I should have found her sooner, she's not too strong with this."

He watched as the serum trickled into Nadia's bloodstream.

"That's ADES, an anti-alcohol serum, it takes the alcohol in one's one and breaks it down into harmless elements. It'll take a while to spread through her bloodstream, it must be down slowly, or else she could be hurt."

In the infirmary, Nadia stirred, then opened her eyes slightly. She was still disoriented, not knowing where she was initially, or what had happened.

"Uhhhh..." Nadia raised her head weakly, then put it down again, still not fully conscious.

"Are you ok?" Krika softly asked as she approached Nadia. Krika took hold of Nadia's right hand with both of hers and sat down. "Did you really drink so much on your own volition? What possibly possessed you to commit such idiocy? Don’t you have any self control?"

Krika then glared at Sion. “And what’s with the 100% proof alchol? What kind of morons allow it to be so freely passed out and served without any form of supervision? Don’t you know how dangerous it is?!”

"I found her with this" Sion said, holding up the empty bottle (small, a little less than soda can size) "in her hand. Only officers Flight Captain (air force Lt. Col equivalent) and above are issued this, and in small amounts. She must have consumed several bottles in order to end up in such a state."

Sklenova turned her head weakly towards the Amestrian. "What happened? What's going on?" Her eyes were only half open, and she still was only semi-conscious.

She looked down and noticed that she was in a hospital bed. Damn. "Krika?"

(OOC: She isn't in a hospital gown, she's just being administered the anti-alkie fluid. She's only been in there for an hour or so.)

Sion also walked in. He held up the bottle.

"Alchohol poisoning. You passed out about an hour ago."

"Oh, lord." It all came back to her. She had been singing at the top of her lungs, drunk as a monkey, and they were on their way to town... then she sat next to Sion and the next thing she knew she was in the infirmary.

She struggled to sit upright. "I'll stick to Detachment." Since Nadia rarely drank, it had a far greater effect on her when she did, especially on an empty stomach, than it would on a veteran alcoholic. She couldn't hold her liquor very well.

Nadia fell back down on the hospital bed, still tired.

Sion breathed a sigh of relief.

She's alright...thank God...

Sion looked at her weakened form. He cringed, this was his fault. He knew Nadia's weakness to drugs, yet he let her alone.

"Do you need anything right now?" (The ADES has painkillers in it).

"No..." said Nadia. "I just need to rest. Will you stay here with me?" Nadia was in no condition to leave the infirmary at this point, but she didn't want to be left alone now, she wasn't feeling very well.

"I don't normally go so nuts with the alcohol... Blame CAD for it, not me." She was used to the prospect of losing friends in battle, she had been wounded in combat before, but she was not accustomed to having her enemy target civilian populations. Her mother and father lived in those buildings.

"I don't normally go so nuts with the alcohol... Blame CAD for it, not me."

Krika glared at Nadia. "You have no one to blame but yourself. You are free, you chose what actions you would take, and you chose poorly. Do not try to rationalize your responsibility away."

Krika's face softened. She squeezed Nadia's hand. "But don't worry, I'll stay here with you."