chapters 2 and 3
Annaliese tossed her backpack on the couch as she came through the door of her apartment. She turned and locked the door behind her before making her way to the fireplace. It was electric, which made taking care of business a good deal faster than when she had a wood burning fireplace. Making the switch had been a no-brainer. The faster evidence got disposed of, the better. Once the fire was lit, she went to her backpack and pulled out the file folder. She opened it to double check that it was all there. Once she was satisfied that she hadn’t left anything behind, she held the folder over the flames and watched as they licked the edges of the paper. When the file was properly on fire and turning to ash, she dropped it into the fireplace. Annaliese never turned away from evidence being destroyed until it was completely gone. Something about watching to make sure every last bit of evidence was disposed of gave her a sense of accomplishment and eased that last bit of tension from finishing a mission.
As soon as the paper was nothing but ash, she turned the fireplace off and stretched. Looking at the clock above the mantle, she saw that it was past four in the morning. She looked around the room and thought about trying to tidy up a bit before going to bed. The living room was small, but for as often as she was home, it was more than enough. A small couch stood in the middle of the room as a sort of divider between the living room space and the kitchen/dining room. She had a small coffee table that was currently covered in newspapers that were days old, a few dishes from dinner and her coffee cup from that morning (afternoon?). Looking into her tiny kitchen, the scene wasn’t much better. Really, she should clean up after herself as she cooked instead of leaving all the dishes until she just couldn’t stand the mess anymore. She sighed and chose to skip the tidying. It’s waited this long, it can wait until I’ve had some sleep.
Annaliese double checked the lock on the front door before heading to the bedroom. Her bedroom was the only other room in the house. It was just as small as the living room, but since it was just her and Cat, what did it matter how big her bedroom was? The one bathroom was only accessible through the bedroom. If she’d been a normal person, with a normal life and friends, that might have bothered her. But since no one came to her house to visit, she didn’t mind the bathroom being in the bedroom. She flipped on the light to find Cat sleeping in the middle of the bed. He was the only man in her life, and boy did he know it. He took up as much of the bed as possible every night. He blinked at her with a look that said, “How dare you turn on the light and disturb my sleep?”
“Sorry Cat, but I have to be able to see to change.”
Cat just gave her a look of pure haughty disdain and rolled over. Sometimes he was just a big orange ball of arrogance. Annaliese sighed and changed into her night shirt. She went into the bathroom to take care of her nightly beauty rituals before letting herself fall into bed. Looking into the mirror she took the long braid out of her dark brown hair and brushed it out. She hadn’t bothered to get it cut recently, so it was down below her shoulder blades. This was the longest she’d let her hair get in years. It was just easier to pull it back when she had to work, so she let it grow. She brushed her teeth and flossed, and turned out the light. She managed not to trip over the clothes she'd left lying in the floor as she made her way to the bed in the dark, and crawled in beside Cat. Her bed always felt like it was giving her a hug when she finally managed to lay down and breathe out the last of the air in her lungs. Her pillows never felt so good as when she came home from finishing a job. And her comforter never felt so soft and warm. Cat purred as she stroked his back in slow, lazy motions. It never ceased to amaze her that Cat could purr in his sleep. It made her feel so safe and comfortable to fall asleep with him purring into her side. Annaliese was asleep before she could finish that thought.
Annaliese threw the blankets aside and sat up in an instant. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might just break free from her chest. She’d been awakened by something making an awful buzzing noise, and it had scared her half to death. After a few seconds of listening for the buzzing sound to come again, she realized what it was that had pulled her so violently out of her sleep. The com-link was ringing. “It can’t be,” she said to no one in particular. Cat had already fled the bedroom after such a rude awakening. Annaliese sighed heavily and heaved herself out of bed, and made her way to the living room. She glanced at the clock and saw that she’d only been asleep for about two hours. Oh goody, a whole two hours of sleep. Annaliese sat down at the computer and flipped it on. The screen lit up and asked her to present her pass code. She leaned down towards the screen and it scanned her left eye, beeped, and opened the file sent from the President. Annaliese began to flip through the documents and information.
“One Captain Rhys Hansen. Six foot two. Two hundred twenty pounds. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Military combat training from Omicron Ceti. Current mission: unknown.” Somehow she wasn’t surprised to see yet another player from Omicron Ceti. She had known that Dalloway wouldn’t be the only one to have information about her president. Annaliese continued to flip through the documents. “Ok, Mr. President, what will it be this time? Document recovery, mind wipe --” Annaliese gasped as she read through her instructions. She couldn’t believe what she was reading. She read them again, this time more slowly and with great care. She hadn’t read it wrong the first time. It said what she thought it said.
Annaliese grabbed her phone out of her backpack where she’d left it last night. She flipped it open, hit speed dial and waited for the ringing to stop.
“You can’t be serious, Mr. President.”
“Of course I’m serious, Nedal. Why else would I have chosen you for this mission?”
“Mr. President, I have never killed anyone in the line of duty. Not even as a means of protecting my own life.”
“There’s always a first time for everything, Nedal.”
“But, Mr. President --”
“Are you refusing a direct order, soldier?”
Annaliese froze. She closed her eyes and took the deepest breath she could manage with her heart beating to a rhythm she couldn’t control. Her whole body shook with the effort not to accept this job out of a sense of duty to her president. Never before had her job clashed with her ideas of right and wrong, but this one felt wrong. She had never she been faced with such a decision.
“Soldier? I asked you a question. Are you refusing a direct order? Choose your words carefully before answering.”
With another deep breath, Annaliese answered. “Yes. I am refusing a direct order,” and flipped her phone closed.
Chapter 3:
Throwing her phone back into her backpack, Annaliese darted into her bedroom. She grabbed the first clothes she saw, and tore into the bathroom. Throwing more toiletries into the floor than into her arms, she snatched up as much as she could and ran back into the living room. Stuffing the things into her backpack, she scanned the room for anything else she might need to bring with her. Her eyes fell on Cat, huddled under the coffee table like he was the one about to be killed for disobeying an order. “Shit!” Annaliese whirled and ran back to the bedroom. Cat’s carrier was buried in the back of her closet because they’d never needed it much. Cat didn’t go anywhere; he was a homebody. Well, not anymore he wasn’t. Annaliese rooted through the mass of clothes and finally came up with the crate. Dashing back to the living room, Annaliese opened the crate as she went. “Cat, I’m so sorry about this, but you’re going to have to get in or be left behind. And I really don’t want to leave you behind.” Cat looked from Annaliese to the crate and back again. He seemed to understand the gravity of the situation because he didn’t hesitate long before crawling out from underneath the coffee table. “Thank you for understanding.” Annaliese put Cat into the crate as gently as possible and closed the latch. After throwing on some pants and her favorite boots, she pulled her hair back and grabbed her backpack. Clasping it around her waist to keep it from jostling around too much, she picked up Cat’s carrier. Taking one last look around the room, she went for the door. She knew better than to throw it open. MaDej may have men in her building already, waiting for her to make her escape. She stopped and took a deep breath. Rushing will only get me killed. Be patient, be methodical.
Annaliese listened at the door. She closed her eyes to focus more on her keenest sense. She could hear the pounding of her own heart, which threatened to drown out any other sounds, she could hear Cat’s quiet breathing, the windows rattling from the wind outside, the kitchen sink dripping from the slow leak she kept meaning to have fixed, but nothing from the hallway beyond her front door. With a sigh of relief, Annaliese opened her eyes and unlocked her door. Opening it slowly, she peered out to be sure she hadn’t been mistaken. No sign of any one in the hallway, not even neighbors leaving for work. With luck, she would make it to the hangar bay without meeting anyone. MaDej’s soldiers would try to kill her, and her neighbors might stall her by asking where she was going with Cat in such a hurry. Neither seemed like a good idea.
She chose to take the stairs, since she only needed to go up two flights to get to the hangar, and the elevator just seemed too enclosed for her current state of mind. Annaliese tried to be as quiet about tromping up the metal stairs as possible, but her boots just were not interested in cooperating. By the time she reached the top floor, her level of anxiety had hit an all-time high. She was sure she was going to have to stop and hyperventilate at some point, but now was not that time. Determined to be on her ship and as far away from Sadalsuud as possible, as fast as possible, Annaliese pushed herself forward.
The small courier ship that Annaliese refused to upgrade sat in middle of the hangar bay. President MaDej had been trying to get her to trade it in for a larger vessel for some time now, because he wanted her to be able to take missions further away from home. She had steadfastly refused because she knew her ship backwards and forwards, and knew that it could get her out of scrapes a larger ship could never hope to avoid. Thankful she had stuck by her ship, she began disengaging the locks set up to keep her settled firmly in the bay. A larger ship would have more locks, and would have taken longer to prepare for departure. She was so grateful, she half wanted to give her ship a hug.
With the locks disengaged, and the hangar door opened, Annaliese climbed aboard with her one passenger. Taking the extra time to ensure Cat was fastened in properly was a risk she was willing to take. Cat wasn’t just the only man in her life, he was the only family she had left. She would protect his life just as fervently as she would protect her own. “We’ll be off soon, Cat, and then we can relax a little.” I hope. Annaliese turned and began switching on her ships engines and consoles. She hated that she didn’t have time for a full inspection before taking off. A good pilot always ran a full inspection herself before even turning on a ship, but Annaliese didn’t have that kind of time. MaDej would already have sent troops after her; he wouldn’t let a slight like hers go unpunished. Annaliese buckled herself in, checked all her gauges, and hit the switch to close the hatch. “Alright, Cat, hang on to something.”
It didn’t take long for her ship to be flagged by air control, as fast as she was going and without a flight log at that. Sighing, Annaliese ignored the controller’s requests for her to land immediately. Instead, she switched off her com and sped up. If she’d had her own ship, she may have gotten out of the atmosphere without being picked up on the scanners. She had never wanted a non-military issue ship before, but as MaDej had said, there was a first time for everything. However, she did have a real advantage over the larger, armored warrior ships. Her ship was the fastest her military made. Even if she couldn’t fight the ships that would come after her, she could out run them, and that was her plan.
Surprised to have made it out of the gravitational pull of Sadalsuud without being attacked, Annaliese was afraid to let herself relax. She switched the com back on to listen for any communications meant either for her, or about her, but was greeted with radio silence. She switched channels, listening for any kind of broadcast, but came up with nothing. “Maybe the com is fried,” she pondered aloud as she looked over at Cat. He seemed to be thinking the same thing as she was, “Yeah, not likely, huh?” Great. Annaliese kept checking other channels and she tried to decide what her destination should be. That hadn’t even crossed her mind as she had thrown things into her bag and rushed out the door. Her ship wasn’t meant for long range travel. MaDej would know that and would search any planet or space port in her range. She was just beginning to develop a plan that involved ditching her ship and hiring a new one when her ship’s sensors begin screaming at her that she was in the vicinity of another ship. Before she could even figure out what was happening, she saw the enormous ship glide into her view screen. She didn’t have time to think about maneuvering, her ship had already made contact. The last thing she saw was the dark gray metal of the armored ship’s hull before she careened forward and smashed her head on the console.
From here...I was hoping to get your (YES, YOU!) opinion on point-of-view. From here, I can skip to Annaliese waking up on this much larger ship, or I can switch POV to Captain Rhys and see her rescue from the crash until she wakes up. Which would you prefer? Do you want to see the rescue? Would you like more info on Rhys before Annaliese meets him? Or would you rather meet him with Annaliese?