The Road to Mt. Dakun, Rebellion-Held Aviye
Zai
Zai was dying.
In her dream, she'd lost her legs. She was crawling towards... something. A well of light she didn't understand but wanted to. A patriotic song was sounding around her, but muted, like it was playing underwater, the battlefield of her mind strewn with foxholes and sandbags and broken, twisted metal, but no bodies.
She crawled with her hands, the ground beneath her vibrating and grumbling as if in protest. Suddenly someone seized her and flipped her, a heavy boot stepping on her chest. Her first thought staring into the darkness of the man's face was to wonder what he was doing here. Her second was to reach for her field knife, but no matter how she stabbed his leg, he wouldn't so much as flinch.
Instead, his mouth moved silently, drowned out by the rumble of the world around her, yet still she knew what he was saying...
"Zai!"
She started awake right before the slap hit her cheek. "Ow! I'm up. What's happening?" When her vision cleared she saw Kalee, the chief's niece, and the canvas cover of a military truck freshly stolen from the now-dead Kingdom inspection team.
Zai also felt a glowing pain radiating from her leg, as well as lesser pains in her shoulders, elbows, and hips. "Old gods... everything hurts."
"You were moving so much... I didn't know what to do..." Kalee said.
"Serves you right, running your frame like that." A woman's voice said from further towards the back. Quynh was sitting with her back against the canvas wall, a cigarette between her fingers that she reached outside the truck bed to tap.
"Might I ask how you know that?" Zai asked as she pushed herself to a higher seating position, crossing her legs because it felt like otherwise she'd just slip back down.
"For one, you told me. For another... Sh'zi made sure I knew how to treat frame operator injuries. Said you would do something stupid one day, and if she wasn't around you'd just keep doing stupid things." She took another pull of her cigarette, finishing it before flicking it out the back.
"I'm sorry about Sh'zi..." Zai looked up as Kalee retreated to a seat. Looking up, Zai saw her frame slouched against the truck, bound against it by straps that led down to the bed of the truck. A trio of villagers sat on one leg of the frame, another four in front of them, five when Kalee joined. Zai realized that she and her frame were taking up one entire side. Only Quynh sat near, close enough to monitor her, and beyond her the other truck was following behind. "Were you close?"
Quynh sighed out the last puff of smoke. "We were. When she realized herself, I helped her make her teas... Found the right food for her to eat so she would feel more at home in her body. Not at fancy as city medicine, but it worked enough... Now she's dead." Quynh looked over at Zai, her face stoic and unreadable. It was from her tone that Zai felt something close to hatred.
"I'm sorry she's dead..." Zai lowered her head, "I did my best to keep everyone safe, but..."
"Stop it. I'm not mad at you... I'm mad at her. Stubborn fool." Quynh reached down, picked up a pack of cigarettes and looked inside for a long moment before she pulled one out. A lighter came out of her pocket, and soon she was smoking again.
"The way you talk, it sounds like you hate me though." Zai chuckled, grimacing as a large bump in the road made her aches flare up.
Quynh sighed out a cloud of smoke. "I'll be clear. I do hate you. But I don't hate what you stand for..." she paused, searching her thoughts. "For all the evil that soldiers do, you're still human. And fighting for us... that gave Sh'zi something I couldn't."
Zai nodded. "It's still too soon, I think, for both of us. I haven't had time to mourn her..."
Quynh scowled. "What do you soldiers say? With respect?"
"With all due respect," Zai answered, wondering where she was going with this.
"With all due respect, please shut up. Let me mourn her my way."
Silence weighed on the back of the truck from that moment on.
Looking out, Zai saw the dirt road had started running next to a river. If memory served her right, it was the river Rhosi, which cut through the mountains from the northwest on its way to the Ocean of Dawn.
The mountains even further north formed a natural barrier between Aviye and Graeyka. Thanks to those mountains and rivers, Aviye was most easily invaded from the west by land.
In the last war against the Hegemons a century ago, however, they'd invaded by both land and sea and so the mountains of the east had become fortresses for dissidents and rebels ever since.
She tried to reach to inspect her wound, but stopped when she realized that the bandages on her leg were fresh. Quynh's handiwork, no doubt. Even the small act hurt her shoulders, so she settled back, her mind searching for something to do while she waited, vaguely recalling that they were headed towards Lutis village.
Eventually, she settled on the meditation lessons Amri had taught her. Closing her eyes, Zai first concentrated on her breathing, slowing her breath until she was counting eight, four, and eight to inhale, pause, and exhale.
Pain kept her aware of her body as she struggled to push against it while remembering everything Amri had said. Thoughts and sensation kept coming up, and she tried to resist letting them get to her. Worry for her squad. Guilt over those she'd failed to save... couldn't have saved even though she badly wanted to. It took her a long time to remember that Amri had said, 'Don't resist thinking. Just have your thoughts and then let them run their course... damming a river won't stop it from flowing, but if you let it drain without trying to refill it, then you'll become empty far faster than if you resist.'
Zai didn't know when she slipped into the calm silence of her internal void. All she knew was that it felt like she'd gone from being in a rumbling truck to being nowhere.
She was aware of the world outside, the pain in her body, but it felt distant, the medium of her body set aside so that she could wander the spaces between thoughts, perceive herself, realize that even here she was connected, her entire being dependent on countless tiny connections...
A sense of victory rose up, and she felt herself drawn back as soon as she tried to hold onto it. She let it go, the smile on her face returning to an expressionless calm, realizing that what she wanted was just as distracting as what she didn't want.
She recalled more of Amri's advice. 'When I first found myself in the right state... it was like I didn't have to do anything... I just had to be.'
Amri sat with these words, thinking, then letting her thoughts pass. Existing. Being. Zai...
"Zai!" Quynh's voice and her slap brought Zai crashing back into her body, all sense of calm lost. Quynh and Kalee were both in front of her. "There's a plane. What do we do?"
Zai heard the buzz of the engine overhead, the sound lessening, the plane appearing behind the truck as it banked around. They'd already been spotted.
"Get everyone off the road!" she shouted, forcing her body to stand. Her pain felt lessened, but it still hurt quite a lot.
Kalee went to the back of the truck, waving an arm towards the forest-side trying to tell the truck behind them to veer off. She was barely in time, as fire and smoke spat from the twin machine guns on the front of the plane, spattering the road where the first truck had been moments before.
Zai moved to her frame, opening the cage and forcing her legs into their slots. "Help me strap in!" she shouted at Quynh, and the woman moved closer.
"What do I need to do?" she asked as Zai finished buckling.
"Pull the yellow tabs, make sure I'm tight." she said as she started flipping switches, "and get the straps off."
Quynh rushed to obey, and several villagers on the other side of them helped get the straps off of her frame as she stood fully, the top of her armor pushing up against the canvas until with the sound of snapping metal it broke free, flying off the truck. Zai had no time to adjust the settings on her frame as the plane looped around, honing in on them. She took up her rifle and tried to aim it, but couldn't get a good shot as the vibrations of the truck kept jostling her.
She fired anyways, hoping to make the pilot veer off course as it pointed its nose at the other truck, which had come to a stop, the villagers jumping out and running deeper into the woods. It took three shots to make the pilot pull up and away, the last one almost clipping the cockpit. A fourth pull of the trigger proved the magazine was empty, and she swore.
That bought Zai enough time to shout. "Get our driver to stop!" at Quynh, who started banging at the back panel behind Zai. It slid open and she shouted into it.
Zai wasn't ready when the driver slammed on the brakes, and she went backwards enough to smash the basket that had been seated next to her frame, her supplies spilling out into the truck bed. She needed the ammo, but the plane had completed its turn, closing in, hunting her now.
"Quynh, grab that and hand it to me," she shouted, pointing at a full magazine that had slid away towards her.
Quynh scrambled, picking it up and pushing off the floor, handing it to Zai... upside down.
The plane's guns lit up once more.
There was no time to correct the magazine.
No time to aim.
No time for her to fire.
No time for thought.
Zai's body moved automatically, her frame taking a single step towards the plane as she hefted her rifle, taking the barrel like the handle of an axe before she brought her arms up in a two-handed swing, letting the gun fly at the plane as she threw it with all the force her frame could muster.
It traveled end over end, smashing into the wing and sending debris into the rear propellor, which came off scything into the river. She almost imagined she heard the pilot screaming as the plane careened away from the truck, smashing into the cliff only a few meters above the river line on the opposite shore.
It was over.
Zai was panting. Despite the entire encounter taking only couple of minutes, she felt like she was ready to sleep for a week.
"Captain, your wound," Quynh's voice brought her back to the present. Her leg was bleeding where she'd been shot. Quynh was already unwrapping a new bandage. "Come out, I'll fix your bandage."
"It's fine, it's fine. We need to go help the others."
Quynh reached up and squeezed the leg, right on the bandage, making Zai cry out in pain and swear. "You're telling me that's fine? Get out of the frame now!"
Zai slid down along the bed of the truck, pulling herself out and giving her leg over to Quynh to inspect. "If you were a soldier... I could have you court-martialed for this treatment."
"Lucky I'm not a soldier, because I don't have to listen to you. And I get to call you an idiot for being an idiot." She tied off the new bandage. "Let the villagers help. We need you alive in case there's more trouble."
"Hate to say it, but I don't think my gun's going to work anymore." She held her hands open, a gesture that meant she was unarmed, at least to other soldiers. Chuckling, she watched as the other villagers jogged back towards the second truck.
"We'll load the truck up with rocks. You seem to have quite the throwing arm in that thing."
"That was luck more than anything else..." Zai trailed off as she started to wonder. Was it luck? In the moment she'd thrown the gun, she knew for certain that it would hit.
"Whatever it was... thank you." Quynh finished her work, dousing some alcohol on the new bandage to help it stay clean.
Zai nodded, accepting the pain as her reward for staying alive, for keeping the villagers alive. When the villagers brought her the mangled remains of her rifle, she laughed, and so did they.
It felt good to be alive.