Chapter 17: For the Children

There was a knock on the hotel room door just as Tiffany Martz pushed her eldest daughter, Elle, into the wardrobe after her sister Lizzy. The two little girls hugged each other close and looked at their mum with big scared eyes, but didn’t make a sound. Tiffany whispered an “I love you,” just in case, then quietly slid the door shut.

They had been sleeping soundly until about two minutes before when some errant sound – an elevator perhaps or too many footsteps for this time of night – had set every well-honed instinct in Tiffany’s body screaming in alarm. The girls had woken up without fuss and staggered over to the wardrobe in the dark, rubbing sleep out of their eyes but not complaining. They knew it wasn’t a game, knew what to do when mummy woke them up in the middle of the night.

Hide, don’t make a sound, don’t come out till mummy said you could.

There was another knock on the door, louder and more aggressive this time.

“Coming!” she yelled, trying to make her voice sound as groggy as possible (not hard since she was actually tired as fuck).

She switched one of the bedside lamps on and looked around the room. Two queen beds (but her and the girls had only been using one), bags packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice, beige curtains drawn and the walls and bedsheets coloured an oddly ugly shade of eggshell white. Her pistol was hidden beneath the pillow of the unused bed, and for a moment Tiffany considered tucking it into the waistband of her trackies then decided against it. Talking her way past whoever was on the other side of the door was always the best option, but that wouldn’t be possible if they spotted her ceramic handgun hanging out of her trousers.

Two deep breaths to calm her nerves and she opened the door. Just a crack, just someone who’s been woken in the middle of the night and wasn’t sure who could possibly be on the other side. Two women – one blonde and one redhead – and two men – both brunettes but one was quite tall and the other a bit of a short-arse. Christ, sounded like the start of a mildly sexist joke.

The taller of the two men had his hand raised to knock for a third time but stopped when he saw her peeking at him the gap between door and frame. He smiled at her, as did the three others. The kind of fake-arse smiles you saw on dead-eyed salespeople just going through the motions.

“Miss Platt?” he said through his too-good-to-be-true grin.

It was always odd to hear other people say the lies she told, as if it made them true somehow through the stranger’s belief. She nodded anyhow, gave them a meek smile and said, “Can I help you?”

“We work for the government, Missing Persons,” the knocker kept smiling as he produced a badge, the ADVENT sigil besides a Southern Cross, the Coalition’s local lapdogs. “Would you mind letting us in? We have some questions for you.”

“I would mind actually, it’s very late and-”

“We know what time it is, and we’re going to have to insist Miss Platt,” he was still smiling but there was an edge to his voice now.

Not much choice then. Tiffany nodded and opened the door wide, stepping out of the way as the knocker and redhead walked past.

“Thankyou,” knocker’s voice was all sweetness and love again, “Y’see we’re looking for some missing-”

Tiffany swung the door as hard as she could into the short-arse’s face as he tried to follow his friends in. It bounced off the bastard and back into her hand. He staggered back into the blonde and Tiffany hurled the door back into its frame, slammed, shut, locked.

The knocker stared at her, open-mouthed and wide-eyed as her open palm crunched against his nose. Redhead was faster, pulling a mean-looking pistol from a holster that had been well-hidden within the lines of her suit. There was an even meaner looking suppressor fitted over its barrel, probably so they wouldn’t bother the other hotel guests. Tiffany grabbed the redhead’s hand before she could draw a bead, twisting it to the side while grabbing her hair and pulling her head back, making her screech.

You don’t hesitate when you’re fighting for your life. Doesn’t matter how unpleasant a thing you have to do is, you fucking well do it without blinking. You hesitate and you die.

Tiffany came in close and bit down on redhead’s bare neck. Redhead’s screech became a choked gurgle. Hot blood filled Tiffany’s mouth, poured down her chin, her chest. She ground them in deeper, deeper, pulled, tore, ripped back with skin and whatever else clamped between her teeth. Redhead clutched her neck, shock written across her face, blood spurting between her fingers. Then she fell backwards onto the bed.

The knocker was only just getting up. Tiffany spat the blood and whatever else onto the carpet (beige, like the curtains) and charged at him, using the second bed as a platform, leaping and bringing her knees together against his chest. She felt his ribs crunch as they came down together. He gasped, gasped again, and it sounded dangerously wet. Tiffany rolled off him and realised that short-arse and blonde were slamming their shoulders into the door, trying to break it down. She wondered why they didn’t have a key, decided that knocker or redhead must have had it.

The door began to splinter as Tiffany stomped on the knocker’s face, neck, neck again, felt the bone crack against her bare foot, keeping in time with the thumping against the door. The knocker finally stopped trying to breath though his feet were still twitching. Satisfied she looked around for redhead’s gun, couldn’t see it, realised that the knocker was probably armed as well, then remembered her own gun was two steps away beneath her pillow.

Too late. The door finally gave way with an angry creak and short-arse and blonde charged in behind it, an ugly bruise on short-arse’s furious face, guns out but down, not having had time to process their dead mates.

You don’t hesitate in a fight.

Tiffany charged, crossing the tiny distance before her two new dance partners had time to react. She went low, hooking an arm between short-arse’s legs and lifting up so that his own momentum helped carry him over her shoulder and onto the floor. Then she was slamming into blonde, shoving her hard against the doorframe and driving the wind out of her. Cracked blonde’s head against the painted wood once, twice, threw her aside and turned back on short-arse.

He was on his hands and knees, pistol up. Fired a shot, the suppressor reducing the sound to a still-loud hissing pop instead of its normal roar.

Tiffany was already charging forward, the bullet missing her by a wide mark as she kicked him in the head with a snarl. Short-arse rolled backwards, gun still in hand. She jumped on top of him, grabbed at the pistol. He punched her, she punched back, writhing on the floor, growling, swinging, trying to get leverage on the pistol. They rolled and short-arse was on top, using his weight to twist the barrel of the gun slowly towards Tiffany’s face. She snarled again, kicked him between the legs, then again, then a third time, snarled once more.

You don’t hesitate in a fight.

Tiffany threw her head up and bit into his cheek, felt new, fresh blood stream into her mouth and nearly gagged this time. The gun went off beside her head, grazing and deafening her left ear. Short-arse screamed and pulled back, a ragged chunk of skin hanging off his face. Tiffany twisted the gun up, her finger finding his over the trigger. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Short-arse shuddered, then collapsed limply on top of her.

No time to stop. There was one still breathing. Tiffany rolled the corpse off of her and stood up on shaky but still strong legs just in time to see the blonde crawling out the door. Couldn’t have that now. She walked up behind the fleeing woman, grabbed her by the hair (bloody from where Tiffany had smashed her head against the doorframe) and dragged her back inside the bloody hotel room.

“No! No, no. Please! Please no!” The blonde was whimpering, crying, begging.

Tiffany kicked her in the head, laying her flat. She rolled blonde onto her stomach and straddled her back.

“N-No! P-p-please! I have children too!”

One hand on the blonde’s jaw, the other on her crown.

“Please I have children t-too!”

“Then you shouldn’t have come after mine.”

Jaw and crown, twist and lift. Tiffany felt the crunch of vertebrae, the body shudder, the legs continuing to kick for what felt like a long time before finally going completely still.

Two deep breaths to calm herself.

Tiffany grabbed one of the lapdogs’ pistols and tucked it into the waistband of her trackies, fished out two spare magazines from within the blonde’s suit. Then her wallet, then the others. She grabbed her own pistol and dropped it into the backpack sitting with the other already packed bags and zipped it up tight.

Only then did she step over to the wardrobe and slide the door open.

The girls looked up into her face and rushed forward, wrapping their arms around her and sobbing quietly as she clutched them back, clutched them like a drowning woman grabbing onto a piece of driftwood in a storm. They didn’t care that their was blood on her face, her chest, up her arms, splattered across her legs, in her hair, in her teeth, surrounded by the corpses she had just made. She was alive, she had won, and they loved her.

That was the only thing in this whole fucked up world that could make Tiffany Martz cry.

***

Michelle King tilted her head against the cold metal of the skyranger’s hull and shut her eyes, just for the moment. Shit, she was tired. Her armour felt like it weighed a tonne (almost as much as her eyelids) and every movement tiny movement made her muscles ache.

There was a clank and clunk of armour being readjusted and Michelle felt a head lay itself on her shoulder, hair tickling her cheek.

“Are you alright Bull Rush?” she heard Li Ming Cheng ask softly over the hum of the engines through the hull.

The big Chinese woman couldn’t see her smile, but smile she did. Michelle liked the nickname. The others had started using it after she’d organised a game, right before Gerry O’Neill had been smashed into bloody pulp by a half-dead andy.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” Michelle’s voice sounded unconvincing in her own ears, “just feeling a little burnt at the moment.”

She felt Li nod at that, “Perhaps it’s time for a holiday?”

Michelle snorted back a laugh at that, “Go kick up our heels on a beach somewhere?”

“Swim in the ocean. I haven’t swum in a long time.” There was something in Li’s voice as she said it, something beneath the casual, offhand tone she usually used, that made Michelle wonder if Li Ming was actually being serious.

“Beaches in West Australia are the best in the world.”

“Are they?”

“I only went to the west coast once, on a job before I got locked up, but shit, I fucking loved it. Met this guy. We went to this beach a few hours out of Perth. Purest, whitest sand I’ve ever seen. Clearest water.”

“That sounds nice,” Li sighed, “do you think the aliens would let us lay on a pure white beach for a week?”

“You can ask them.”

Li laughed at that, “You’re the one who’s good at talking.”

That earned a gentle punch to the arm, which Li responded to with an elbow beneath the ribs.

There was an adorable squeak that was probably Emily being tended to by James. She’d been grazed by a muton’s plasma rifle. Unfortunately, when it came to energy weapons, “grazed” usually at the very least meant “severe burns.” Still, she was breathing and upright, as was Gerard Dekker whose leg had been sliced open pretty bad. The Dutchman had endured James’ patch-job in stoic silence, face barely betraying any of the pain that he was no doubt in. Only ’cause there were ladies present, mind you. He didn’t want them to think less of him by admitting that getting your leg cut up and then bandaged back together hurt. James had told Michelle that when there was nobody else within earshot he moaned and groaned like the best of them. Fucking idiot.

Dekker was actually a good guy. Dependable too. But he cared a little too much about what the opposite sex thought of him, and he had some pretty backwards ideas when it came to the subject. Macho shit. A bit stupid when the biggest, hardest bastard in the room was the person right now laying her head on Michelle’s shoulder and talking about going to the beach.

“Are you alright Artillery?”

“I’m a bit burned out as well,” she said and then added offhandedly, “I’d stopped making friends before I joined X-Com.”

“Hmm?”

“I had… I had trouble trusting new people, and so many old friends were killed or left the movement,” there was regret in the quaver of her voice as she said, “I can’t think of a single friend I had left before Central recruited me.”

Well, shit, what do you say to that?

“Wanna watch ‘Die Hard’ when we get back to the Avenger?”

Probably not that.

“No, not tonight.” Li Ming chuckled gently and didn’t remove her head, so it actually might have been.

Emily squeaked again, even more fucking adorably, and Michelle heard James call her a big baby. Li and Michelle both began to shake with laughter. It might have been the mental exhaustion, but right then and there everything seemed fucking hilarious.

***

The day after Gabriella Navarro died a handful of the Avenger’s crew gathered on the rear observation deck, which was outside but protected from the wind and gave them a clear view of the sun sinking over the treetops to the west. Cesar Vargas brought a bottle of Mezcal that he’d been saving for the right occasion. Li Ming Cheng brought the dead woman’s tobacco pouch. Emily Adams, Lily Shen, Thierry Leroy and Gerty Wilders brought themselves and a few stories worth sharing.

They each rolled a cigarette – exactly how Gabby had taught them – and leaned against the railing, passing the bottle around and coughing up smoke, telling the stories about the Spanish woman that they felt were worth sharing. If they were being honest (and they were being honest), the only person who actually knew her well had been Gerry O’Neill, and they’d buried him a week before. But she had always been there taking another drag on her cigarette, a private individual who tried to keep herself surrounded by people.

They finished the bottle and tossed it and their cigarette butts into the trees trying to hide within the dark of the approaching night. They cheered at the sound of glass shattering somewhere out of sight.

***

The door to the Psionics Lab was going to need oiling soon. There was a slight squeak as it hissed open that’d only get worse if nothing was done. Neil Perry wondered if he should tell someone or even just do it himself when they next let him out of the chamber. Dr Tygen and his scientists weren’t the sorts who’d notice a squeaky door, and none of the engineering staff had been needed to maintain the machinery lately so they hadn’t been around to notice. It was probably part of the scheduled maintenance but maybe it needed moving up.

“This ain’t the armoury, is it.”

Neil looked up from his voice at the unfamiliar voice coming from the doorway, where an unfamiliar woman was smiling at him and Galina, who was in the other Psionic chamber.

“Hello.” Galina said cautiously,

“How’s it going?” The woman asked back, casual and relaxed, maybe even a little amused.

“Good, thankyou. How are you?” Neil could see that Galina’s reply was automatic, would’ve done the same if she hadn’t beaten him to it.

“I’m alright, thanks for asking.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And how are you darl?”

Neil realised she was looking at him and squawked out, “I’m good man, how about you?”

“I’m alright,” the woman was definitely enjoying herself.

She seemed to take their greetings as permission to enter and stepped through the door, staring about the place with sharp eyes. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties, on the taller side, with a wiry build, black hair tied back in a messy ponytail. A lot of laugh lines around her eyes, or maybe they were worry lines. Neil wasn’t sure why he thought that, but he did. There was something in her eyes, maybe, that made her look like she’d seen and done more than a lot. Something that made Neil feel like a little kid in comparison.

Galina turned to Neil and gave him a look that seemed to say, “should we be letting her in here?” Neil shrugged back a, “not sure.” He didn’t see how they could stop her from inside the psionic chambers. It weren’t like they were locked in, but there was a procedure for leaving outside of an emergency (like the ship being about to explode), ’cause of the unknown dangers of unshielded psionic energy to the rest of the crew (Neil’s and Galina’s heads hadn’t exploded yet, but that didn’t discount anybody else’s). If the stranger meant harm, there wasn’t much they could do to stop her in time.

“Call me Tiff,” the woman said, a bit absentmindedly with her attention focused on the machinery now.

“Tiff?” Sounded wrong for this lady. Too childish for this person with her old eyes.

“It’s short for Tiffany.”

“Oh,” Neil tried to think of something clever to say back, but thinking of clever things to say had never been a talent of his so he simply said, “you’re looking for the armoury?”

“Yeah. Just got here and a guy named Leroy was showing me the way, but he got called away to prep the infirmary or something. Pair of injured coming back from a mission or something. He gave me directions, but…” She shrugged and gestured around the room.

“Well you are on the wrong floor to start with,” Galina said, a little more relaxed after hearing Mr Leroy’s name but still suspicious since the Psionics Lab was pretty clearly marked. ‘Cause of the dangerous psionic energy that might make you bleed out of your eyes and ears. She also seemed far more interested in the machines than Neil had seen anyone else, most people keeping their distance from the strange blend of alien and human technology. ‘Cause of the dangerous energy that might make your head explode.

“The Armory’s up one level,” Neil continued when Miss Tiff didn’t reply to Galina, “on the far end of the ship.”

“Yeah, alright. Up and across. What’s your name darl?”

“Neil. Neil Perry.”

Miss Tiff nodded, “And you?”

“Galina.”

“You two are the ones who can float stuff around with your minds, right?”

“Yeah,” there was something off about the question, but no point in lying that Neil could see. Didn’t stop Galina from shooting him a look. He shrugged.

“Could you float stuff around before you came here, got put in those glass rooms?”

“No.” Neil said, still not seeing a point to lying.

“How’d they know you’d be able to afterward then?”

“I don’t know. Miss Annette just did.”

Miss Tiff’s smile wavered slightly at that, quick as a blink but Neil still spotted it.

“Miss Annette,” smile back and perfectly friendly, “I’ve heard of her. The Night Witch. Yeah. Well, upstairs and far end of the ship. It was nice meeting you both.”

“Nice meeting you too.” Neil said, as automatically as Galina had earlier.

And then she was gone, waving as she walked through the door.

“That was fucking weird, yes?” Galina said in her hodgepodge accent.

“Yes,” Neil agreed, “that was damn weird.”

Damn, damn weird.

***

Michelle didn’t fall asleep on the skyranger, but she came fucking close to it. If it wasn’t for the fact that the technical crew had to unload all the supplies they’d nicked from the aliens’ train she might have stripped off her armour and left in a pile on top of her plasma cannon for someone else to carry back to the armoury. But they did, so she slung her big gatling gun over her shoulder and headed towards the hatch.

Managed to make it five steps before Li pointed out that someone should grab Emily’s gear, her long rifle and webbing, left behind in the skyranger. Michelle groaned and looked towards Dori and her brother James, both standing by the hatch waiting for them and pretending to have not heard Li, then at her Chinese friend who already had Dekker’s storm gun and blade hung over her shoulder by their straps.

“Guess it’s going to be me then.”

“Thank you Michelle.”

“Fuck you Li.”

Tired as she was, tired as they all were, everyone was in a good mood as they tromped down to the armoury. After two missions in a row that had ended with someone being buried or burned, it felt good to get through with only a couple of burns and bloody leg. They were chatting and joking and generally feeling pretty positive.

So none of them noticed the noise coming from the armoury until they were right outside the closed hatch and James asked, “Is that singing?”

They all paused then, listening. Someone was indeed singing inside, sweetly and a little off-key (just enough to notice). Not a voice from the Avenger’s crew, but Michelle knew it like a muggy Sydney morning. Judging by the look on his face, so did James.

Michelle shouldered past Dori and James as the Scotswoman opened the door and found a familiar face inside sitting on a bench, singing to herself as she fiddled with a familiar looking plasma lance. When the door opened she looked up and said, casual as if she was sitting in a cafe nursing a flat white, “Hey Michelle, how’s it going?”

“TIFF!” Michelle yelled and made a sound that she didn’t quite recognise as she rushed forward and scooped up Tiffany in a bear hug, her cannon and Emily’s lance falling to the deck behind her.

“Easy darl, you’re a bit jagged at the moment.” Tiff grinned, probably talking about Michelle’s armour. Michelle didn’t care.

“When did you get here?”

“‘Bout an hour ago. Sent a letter saying I was coming.”

“I didn’t get it.”

“Probably arrive in a week then. You gonna let go sometime soon?”

“Nope.”

“Seems like you haven’t changed much then,” Tiff waved over Michelle’s shoulder, “Hey Jimmy. Your parents send their love.”

“Hey Tiff, I’ll give you a hug when Shelly’s done.”

“You done yet Michelle?”

“No. Yes.” Michelle finally let go, “Did the girls get my last presents? How are they?”

“The necklaces made out of snake teeth?” Tiff rubbed her shoulders and neck but stayed within arms reach, “yeah, they got those. They’re doing good. Lizzy’s still reading everything she can get her greedy mitts on. Elle’s been moping around the camp like a proper teenager. Tash,” her voice became just a bit less casual for a moment, “is Tash. Misses you more and more every fucking day.”

“I miss her as well.” James would’ve definitely noticed the strain in Michelle’s voice, Li might have, “So much. She’s the reason I’m here. They’re all safe?”

“Yeah, nowhere safer than with your parents I reckon.”

“I reckon you’re right. It’s good to see you,” she wrapped her arm across Tiff’s shoulders, “C’mon let me introduce you to the others. Then we can talk about Tash and the girls.”

“Alright. I’ve already met a few people.”

“Yeah? Who?”