A female had also made quite an impression on Corporal Reugus at that meeting, too. Major Daklar Dormalock was a renound field commander of a special forces detachment. She was the center of attention. Reugus couldn't deny it. Any time the Sector Commander asked for something from his briefcase, Reugus almost got shot for not being able to take his eyes off her. Chin-yo was notably upset with his new, nieve intern.
Reugus was so very taken with her commanding presence, he still couldn't speak. After five minutes in the limosine, he had completely forgotten the trauma of the meeting. He attempted speach. He said, "Um..." followed by an uncomfortable squiming silence. This very minute attempt at expression cought the immediate attention of Chin-yo.
"You like her, don't you?" the Sector Commander said. "You know how many people she's killed on spying missions? How many men she's seduced to assassinate?" He followed with a small laugh.
Reugus was startled by the unsolicited frankness of his commander. Was this a stab from Chin-yo to embarrass him? To assertain some facet to casually expoit? Reugus could only respond with a dry, "Sir..."
Chin-yo shook his head slightly. The limo was exiting the gates of the embassy; it had picked up an escort of troops on hover sleds to make way for its trip towards the spaceport. It was going to be a 45 minute ride to the spaceport, and then they would be heading away from the planet Mirv, which was only about 300 parsecs from Sector 23. Sector Commander Chin-yo didn't want to be this close to Sector Commander Darksun's backyard. He was anxious to get off planet, to get back to his office on the planet Loomi.
"I was, uh, impressed by the meeting, sir. I mean..." Reugus was feebly looking for a sysnonym, "intimidated by--" Chin-yo interupted him by sharply raising his hand.
"Corporal, that was nothing. That was just someone's bad idea that they tried to pawn off on us to finish up on. I have too much to deal with in this sector than to think about Daklar's wild schemes. She has an increasing sway with the High Councel lately."
Reugus was silent, poised to be talked to by his commander. Being in the same city as a
Sector Commander was a priveldge to anyone. To get to take shit from one was as close to a
divine grant as one in the military could get to. Reugus still contimplated how he was selected for
this year-long internship. He knew he was bright, he knew he was above average, but he could
think of no possible way how he could be selected for an honor like this.
But being an intern to a Sector Commander wasn't always a priveldege, especially if you
were a soldier in a different sector. Sector Commanders like Darksun and Panaka were notorious
for being as harsh and abusive to thier staffs as they were to the enemy. Chin-yo was proud to
despise this type of behaviour and insisted on treating his troops with respect.
The city blocks passed quickly. Hovering and wheeled traffic was upheld for the Sector
Commander's limosine where ever it went, but even in cities, progress and traffic were slow.
Chin-yo spoke up. "I actually know that girl pretty well, you know."
Being shocked by his new position as bootlicker to a Sector Commander was not quite as
shocking as such an unregimented statement as this. "I suppose you'd like to hear about her,
wouldn't you?" Reugus gave a polite, regimented, single nod.
"Major Daklar started off like you did. An intern. She was an intern to Commander
Darksun, in fact. That's why she tried to get me aligned with her plan to give a no confidence
vote to the subcomitte today about his attack on Maxell. I don't care about a small neutral planet
like that getting subjugated. The Empire has been doing that for a long time. You realize that
she's just trying to inflate the politics of the situation. She wants to do anything she can to alienate
Darksun from the High Council.
"Daklar was an amazing up and comming trainee, when she started off about eleven years
ago in sector 23. She was taken straight out of her secondary school class one day and plopped
into the fast-track basic training when the Empire graded her aptitude tests. Is that how they got
you?"
Reugus shook his head to the beat of a no'.
"Well, Daklar had amazing intelligence for being off some fairly recently conquered world.
When the selection committee saw that the computers had flagged her as being an orphan, they
really snapped her up. She went through her one-through-four basics, and then skipped the officer
orientation to go straight into officer training. She was still uncybernated by this time, which is
almost unheard of. She probably had the chanse many a time to upgrade her body, but she didn't
do that until much later."
The Sector Commander paused to gaze out his window at some passing trees for a
moment. "On the planet of Antorcha, where one of the standard training facilities for that sub-sector is, she really made a name for herself, mostly by passing tests with high marks, and also
becoming notorious for outwitting the field instructors. Not only completely outmanuevering the
training troops she was pitted against, but practical jokes too. She got demoted for doing
something with a can of shaving lather which some of my troops talked about way out here, in
fact."
Chin-yo scratched a thinly haired sideburn on his thin asian decended face. His slightly
olive skin was pale with age, and an artificial vein was visible at the corner of his chin. "She was
shuffled around for a while, and it eventually made it into my sector report that she made intern.
This was actually disconcerting to many, because we had much hope for her possible transfer out
of the Darksun sector."
Reugus had heard of some of the atrocities that Sector Commander Darksun had been
responsible for in the past, but they had all been about what he did to the enemy. There were the
occcasional rumors of revolts in his sectors being pacified by combinations of interrigations and
public executions, after shock troops had set fire to such towns. Reugus heard these from the
occasional transport-crew that folded in from sector 23. Otherwise, sector 23 was nearly absent of
non-official Orisian news, since there was a standing law in that Orisian space to arrest media
reporters. Reugus also heard that most of the cybernations in the troops for that sector were
chemical, which was a nightmarish concept. The only affordable cybernetic drugs in that sector
were very harmful, and historically used only for front-line combat. Being part of the Darksun
Sector Military didn't sound like much fun from outside the Darksun sector.
Sector Commander Chin-yo continued, "Daklar didn't last long under the reigns of
Commander Darksun." Chin-yo paused for a moment as the limo sped beneath an overpass. "He
apparently starts his interns off with a heavy amount of paperwork which is only supposed to be
done by either computer or the Sector Commander himself. With no previous experience to that
task, it was only the first of the ways she was embarrassed and humiliated. At meetings, she
would be asked to take charge of an agenda, to which Darksun would suddenly and predictably
oppose, and berate her for it. He would finish off his verbal lashing by inviting the other officers at
his meetings to berate her as well. There was no way she could escape it. Occasionally, he'd let up
on her so she could do her work. But he insisted it done without fail or mistake, which takes
serious effort. His interns are always subjected to long paperwork-runs where they use all thier
expensively honed talents to stay up for days to complete his humiliating tasks.
"And the drugs...the high council once tried to forbid his use of potassium-adrenaline
compounds on his interns, but he has never heeded any council's wish for a second. Once his
troops are good and tired from their jobs, they are immediately given a series of K-ad' doses
during their next assignment, which is a revolt repression...or something else equally gruelling."
Reugus shifted in the back seat of the limo. Some of his muscle stimulators were having a
bad reaction to all the coffee from the meeting. He needed to burn off some energy. He twiched
slightly for a few seconds. He flexed his hands and lapsed back into listening.
"So these interns he tires out with paperwork, gets them lazy for a few weeks, then he
amps them, and gives them a spontaneous command with green troops. Most get washed out
right there, when they return from their task having killed off half their troops. Daklar pulled it off
like a police chief, and wasted none of her soldier's lives in the revolt supression she was
assigned. But when she came back she was found later in her quarters commotose and
unresponsive from the amount of tension she had been put through.
"Darksun was apparently quite ammused by this, but kept her on. This was just about as
far as most of his interns got, some got much farther, but they turned out to be sadists who
aspired to the monstrous disposition of Darksun himself.
"He refused her hospitalization, and rather broke a lamp in her room, and shocked her
repeatedly until she struggled to her feet. He then ordered her as lewdly as he could to get
presentable for a polite dinner with the sub-sector four Orisian military commanders. Needless to
say, she attended the function looking like she would just about die. At just about this point,
Sector Commander Darksun was pretty sure he had broken her will.
"But at this dinner, Darksun raised two toasts. The first was for the successful capture of
Sector Commander Ambus's one hundredth planet, and the up comming Centennius celebration
to be celebrated across the empire in a few days. The second toast was to Daklar for
destinguishing herself as a brilliant commanding officer and her honored invitation to the
Centenius Pavillion as Darksun's distinguished guest.
"Apparently dinner didn't last long. One of the subsector fleet commanders happened to
ask why Daklar looked like...shit,' which instantly chagrined Commander Darksun. The
Commander snapped his fingers, and the fleet commander was tackled by Darksun's personal
gaurds and was subjected to a harsh beating. The others at the table were told to leave, but Daklar
was asked at gunpoint to stay sitting at the table right where she was. Darksun relieved his
pounding gaurds, and picked up the fleet commander and threw him on the dinner table. Before
Darksun's victim was able to move, the Sector Commander pinned him to the table by forking a
large candelabra around one of his arms."
Sector Commander Chin-yo only hesitated briefly when he turned his gaze right at Reugus
and continued the story. "Darksun took a knife out of his boot and swiped a deep cut into the
helpless fleet commander's arm, which started gushing blood. Darksun then got up onto the table,
one knee on his victim, and grabbed Daklar's goblet, in which he started to pour the man's blood.
He became enraged that it didn't pour fast enough, so he broke the fleet commander's upper arm
and twisted the limb to drain it better into the goblet.
"Daklar pushed her chair back in shock, about to run away. Darksun then stepped off the
table, and grabbed Daklar by the back of the neck and held the bloody cup up to her face. This is
price of an insult to you, Daklar!' Darksun said. Drink, so that you might be repaid of this insult.'
Daklar was frightened and refused, Darksun angered and forced her head back and poured the
blood into her mouth, smashed the glass across her face, and shoved her across the room.
Leave!' Darksun said. LEAVE!'"
Chin-yo took a breath and paused. Reugus was stone still. No one heard of these atrocities
in the corps; no wonder there were no Orisian news reporters in Darksun's patch of the Orisian
Empire. As Reugus was about to turn his head to look out the window to look at the spaceport
growing on the horizon, the Sector Commander began again.
"At the Centenius Pavillion, where representatives of the nearly three-hundred Orisian
systems had gathered to be the heart of the celebration for Commander Ambus's centenial
conquering, Daklar was only briefly seen. He had told her not to talk, just to look proud. He said
that if anyone asked about your wounds, ask them it was from how you kept the planets in the
Darksun sector in line. He took Daklar from diplomatic table to table, where the Sector
Commanders were having thier buffets, and ingratiously hobnobbed and showed off his little dog,
Daklar. This was the first time I had seen her. She would have been beautiful if she had not been
so badly exhausted and spiritually broken. She had about as much life in her a pencil. She stood at
attention next to Darksun's side, and nodded in greeting, but couldn't concentrate in a
conversation for more than a few moments before she glazed over. I was truly appalled, but I was
powerless to comment about it. When they left my presence, I asked my administrative officer to
find out where they were staying. I wanted to actually get to talk to Daklar in person. I figured
that when the actual ceremony started, I'd be able to find her.
"As the celebration waxed, so did Commander Darksun's insufferable ego. You could
hear him spouting his twisted politics and views from all points in the Pavillion. The people
around him truly had a hard time tolerating him, and would probably wished that the Orisian
Empire would have stopped expanding just so they wouldn't have to see him at one of these
Centenius's again. Soon the expositional speaches begain, and the crowds listened. I went to find
Daklar.
"At the hotel where Darksun's enterage was posted, I easily traced my way up to
Darksun's floor. On my way into the elevator up there, I was passed by Sector Commander
Darksun, who paused smartly and quickly in front of me, and saluted me. The Empire Long and
True!' he quoted like some proud ass cadet, and promptly rushed past me. At the penthouse floor,
I was allowed past the gaurds (owing to the fact that I was a Sector Commander) and went to the
appartment where Daklar was staying. The door was ajar. I entered, and called out for Daklar.
Silence. I surveyed the penthouse apartment, and there was no sign of her. Her bags hadn't even
been unpacked. There was a spare uniform on a chair, that was it. Where could she be?
"I went out into the hallway and asked one of the sentries if they knew where Intern
Daklar Dormalock was. One of them nervously replied that she might still be in the Sector
Commander's penthouse, sir!' I boldly went into Darksun's penthouse, and called, Intern
Daklar!' ...to which there was only silence. I wandered into the sleeping room, and saw it was
sacked...it was trashed! A lamp was broken, the mattress was shoved off the bed, a dresser was
tipped over. There were bloody hand prints on the door jam, and I rushed into the next room, the
bathroom.
"A bed sheet red with blood was on the floor of this huge bathroom, and blood drops led
beyond a glass door to the hugest jacuzzi bath I'd ever seen. Bursting through the door, I was
shocked to see the jacuzzi turned off, but dark red with blood, and the naked body of Intern
Daklar Dormalock slumped under the water, eyes open." Chin-yo shifted in his seat, his righ hand
nervously fiddled the door handle in the limo.
"I never did anything so fast that wasn't in battle. She had gashed her wrists and
submerged herself in water so they wouldn't coagulate. I pulled her out of the tub, laid her on the
floor, and drove some three liters of blood red water out of her lungs. I flipped her over, started
CPR, and tried driving breath into her lungs. GAURDS!' I yelled. The had no problem hearing
me, and they rushed in. One of them passed out upon entering the bathroom. From the other one I
grabbed a communicator from and radioed my A/O to get a medivac here and to do it fast. I
continued the CPR, and finally got her hear started again. I tore up the sheet and bandaged her
wrists. Getting her breathing was another thing, too." Sector Commander Chin-yo paused. He
gave a tensesigh.
The light went dark from the windows as the limosine glided into a parking facility and
soon halted. Before as Reugus and Chin-yo exited the limosine into the cold, flourescent-lit
parking chamber, the Sector Commander continued talking over the din of the other cars and
hover sleds of his enterage. "I didn't even know the woman. A soldier...beaten. Darksun had
broken her harder, raped her more brutally than he had any soldier-dog of his before. Flayed her
of her humanity, and left her shattered. What I found was what was left of a sterling recruit which
showed so much promise, Darksun had her kept in his own sector. So many other Sector
Commanders wanted her themselves...even the High Council would have wanted her in a year or
two."
They entered the reception area of the spaceport. Chin-yo kept talking. "But--I got her
transported without much fuss to a neutral-world hospital where she could recover out of the
grasp of the Orisian Empire. When she was stable, I had her transported back to Loomi to my
own home base, where I could help her recover as best I. The hardest part was keeping Darksun
from finding out. He did--after a while; by then he couldn't do much about it. "
Without any undo effort, and little wait, the ship to take them back to Loomi docked, and
the Chin-yo group boarded. It was a specialized destroyer with bold diplomatic and military
markings on it. The ship would take them from Merv to Loomi in a matter of a about ten hours,
comfortably sheltering them from the bureaucratic hubbub of command. Seated in the diplomat's
lounge on the destroyer, Sector Commander and his intern Reuger were greeted by Chin-yo's
Administrative Officer Tempo Corpus, who reported that there's nothing too pressing in the
news, and that the Sector Commander could deal with it later. Over drinks mixed by Tempo, the
three of them reclined on the Destroyer as it headed into orbit.
"Tempo here helped me out enormously in my rescue of Daklar. I dont' know where she'd
be without him." Chin-yo raised his glass in a small toast to Tempo.
"Recounting the Dormalock tale, eh, Commander?"
Chin-yo nodded. Reugus looked at Tempo and sipped his drink as Tempo began to talk.
"Daklar was an amazing case. I'd been in field hospitals and triage wards before I became and
officer and never saw someone come out of the suicide slump so vigorously as Daklar did.
Amazing." Tempo sipped his drink.
The Sector Commander began. "She really did. In fact, after many long, drawn out
discussions we had with her, she suddenly found a reason to live again." The tone of Chin-yo's
voice was hard to decipher, he was unsure as to how to explain what he had witnessed.
"Daklar...came to the realization that...she had been given a second chance, and that if anyone had
to die a horrible death, it would have to be Darksun himself. I've never seen someone moved so
surely by the motivation of revenge."
"Well," Tempo butted in, raising an eyebrow to try and lighten the mood, "what she did
from then on really impressed us. Impressed the sector, in fact--and she didn't stop, either."
Turning more towards Reugus, Tempo continued after another sip.
"Daklar was after all this, still a patriot. An estranged patriot at best, though. Even though
the Empire had conquered her homeworld and slaughtered her parents when she was in elementry
school, she didn't want to leave it. What burned her early in life didn't seem to matter much to
her. Well...it at one point it did. One of the ways that Com--," Tempo decided to drop the
honored formality out of his disgust for the following name, "Darksun...Darksun had broken her
was during her infamous revolt-suppression while she was a cadet. She had to attack her
homeworld, where ther revolt was, and ended up finding out that some of her old schoolmates
were at the head of the rebellion. It really shook her to the bone."
Chin-yo spoke up. "But the whole idea of revolt-suppression had become a strange
facination to her. She did it well, along with other espionage and covert missions. When we were
getting her back into shape, she insisted on having more military training. Training she could use
against Darksun, especially. Self defense, intelligence gathering, stealth...some of the harder
subjects she really drove herself to try and master. Soon, she did."
"Soon, she convinced us to get her back into the military, too." Said Tempo.
"...and we gave her a squad to command, to explore new planets," explained Commander
Chin-yo. "When she wanted real assignments, which she would come to us with ideas for, we'd
grant them to her. Soon she ended up with a hand picked team of specialists which pulled off
amazing assignments. She's gained us five planets, you know."
Reugus finished his drink in a large gulp after that tidbit. He let his amazement continue.
Tempo spoke. "Dormalock soon became mobile across the Chin-yo sector. She solved
problems for us, and pretty soon other sectors were asking about her. Fleet commanders would
contract her out for special assults in thier subsectors, and eventually even Sector Commander
Dukow asked her to run a special mission, too." Reugus sat up at the mention of the most
powerful of the Orisian Sector Commanders. Sector Commander Dukow was so powerful that
even Darksun fears him openly--but not because of Dukow's base character. Dukow has openly
expressed distaste at the existence of Sector Commander Darksun. "That incident really exposed
us...us being the ones that were protecting Daklar from Darksun. Darksun found out about
Daklar's return to power, and set up an ambush in OUR sector to kill Daklar. Daklar fought her
way out of it, but the Orisian High Council nearly shat a planet when they heard of this. They
threatened Darksun openly with a demolition of power and deposement. They then granted
Daklar the use of her own Mother Ship to cruise around the Empire in--to work for the High
Council Police."
Commander Chin-yo gave a chuckle when he heard that phrase. He spoke now, "No
doubt. Darksun doesn't like us, and he doesn't like the High Council now, either. They keep him
in power just because the Triconians and the Cyrans are getting to be too big a problem for
anyone else to handle. If there's anything fortunate about that, it's that Darksun is brutal enough
to take care of those Cyrans without the batting of an eyebrow."
Reugus nodded. He got up to get another drink. "Sirs?" he asked them, lifting up his glass,
wondering if he could pour another drink for them. Chin-yo accepted.
"Don't piss off Daklar...ever. She'll make your military courreer very difficult, that's for
sure." Tempo said.
Commander Chin-yo took his refill and spoke, "When she was presented her own ship, she
put it to good use. The first thing that she did with it was travel to some nearby neutral systems,
and hire mercenaries to scare Sector Commander Darksun. She had them do all manner of
frightening stunts, too. Darksun, two or three years ago was in three or four near-fatal car-accidents. He wouldn't have died anyhow, but at every one, there was a some hint that Daklar
was the root of the collision. Word has it that Darksun is actually scared of Daklar now. He's also
paid for assassins to take her out..."
"But they failed!" Interjected Tempo, "one of them even had his ship stolen buy a Daklar
operative, and it got folded right into the path of Darksun's flagship, the Hemoscar. Crashed right
into the merc's ship...destroyed it."
Reugus, having a second drink in him was now bold enough to ask a question. "I heard
that she has some new weapons on her Mother Ship. Biogenetic stuff, perhaps?"
The Sector Commander and his administrative officer nodded an affirmation. "Tempo, tell
the kid that that's confidential information."
"Kid...Reugus...that's confidential information."
"Before I get to work," started Chin-yo, "I'll pose an idea to you...if you do good work
for me, I might just be able to set you up on the Pseudoleuris with commander Dormalock. How
does that sound?
Tempo laughed. Reugus blushed, and said, "Why--yes SIR!"
The end, man. The Empire Long and True!