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Or maybe I am hanging on to an impossible dream.
Earth Federation could find her. And if they do, they'll kill me like they killed my family.
Anna
One year ago - Approximately one week before deployment to Base Elysa:
Balancing a tray of drinks, I squint and try to find Clara in the bar. I meander through a crowd of shunned halfling soldiers before I find her sitting in a booth in the corner. Her face glows from the red light above her table, and it seems to have attracted a group of men trying to invade our girl's-night-out.
"Great," I whisper. "Just what we need. Jarheads looking for some pussy."
I nudge against their bulky bodies, inching my way through the booth. "Coming through," I say.
"What's your name, soldier?" One of the men asks.
He's tall with outlandish facial hair. He has tied his goatee with a tight blue thread, and some black and red beads hold it all together. Clara's eyes instantly light up.
Great. Now I have to be her wing-woman for the night.
A friend joins his side. "Well, well, well. What do we have here?"
I set the beers on the table, give Clara my best bitch face, and I quickly smile for the dumb men. "The name's Anna," I say.
"Julian," he mutters. "This here is Castro and Frank."
I take a sip of my beer before sitting. "Frank?" I ask. "Where you from, Frank?"
"Iowa," he says.
I try to hold it back, but I instantly laugh, spraying beer-foam across the table.
"You've come a long way from Iowa," I say. I scoot into the booth and tap the seat. "Go on. There's room."
"You sure?" Frank asks. "This table doesn't seem too inviting."
"Trust me, bud. I don’t have anything against Iowa. Plus, we weren't talking about anything important," I say.
Clara grabs a beer and leans back against the booth. "Nice one," she whispers.
"You owe me one," I whisper back.
Clara includes the men into the conversation. "We were just talking about the many Kurrek races," she says.
"And their wonderful cultures," I say, meaningfully. “Sex. Violence. Devotion to all things terrible.”
"Well, that's what we were arguing about," she says. "We're deploying at 0800 hours to a jungle called Elysa. Apparently there were hundreds of women found at a facility nearby, so now we have to patrol the area. Can you believe it?"
“Aliens taking their own,” I add. “It’s hard not to judge them for it.”
Julian, the man with the blue-threaded goatee, smirks, but his eyes look hollow. "Are you two new recruits?"
"Military brats," I joke. "I was practically born and raised in the barracks."
I expect the others to react, but when the men stop smiling, I know something is wrong.
"But you haven't deployed, yet. You're basically doing grunt patrol work," he says. "You haven't seen the battlegrounds. Meaning, you have no fucking idea what it's like out there. Yet, here you are, judging what you don’t know. Laying blame on an entire planet. For what?"
Castro puts his hand on his shoulder and grips down. "Come on, soldier. Let's just call it a night."
