blue ski mask off her face and undid her ponytail. The long, dark locks of hair fell loose about her shoulders as she shook her head about from side to side to relieve her stressed shoulders and neck.
'Ah, that's better,' she sighed and looked at the broken guest's chair scattered about. 'Better get somebody up here to clean up this mess.' Her desk chair creaked obtrusively as she leaned back in it. She gave herself a moment to prop her feet up on the light brown Queen Anne–style oak desk and rest her eyes. She had been plotting and scheming for
Oh, Sienna Madira had had family, two daughters and a son, a multitude of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. Sienna Madira had long since been dead and she would never know that part of her life again. Although a small few of them, a very select few, were in on the Separatist plan and helped her subtly from within the Sol System.
But Elle Ahmi had only had the one daughter, Sehera Ahmi Moore. Sehera grew up in hiding with her mother and father during the early years of the Separatist terrorist movement. She was in her early teens during the so-called 'thought police' era. Elle never thought history was fair to her for calling it that. She had only used a modern technology to find people within her fold who were disloyal to her. Of course, she had them thrown out into the Martian desert without an environment suit, but she had to protect the integrity of her terrorist-cell structure.
Elle had watched Sehera turn into a tough but beautiful woman before her eyes and hoped that she would be right there by her side all the way to the new, better, and truly free humanity. But that was all destroyed by one soldier. One really good soldier who had managed to survive the surprise offensive of the last Martian Desert Campaign and then withstand the Separatist torture camp, and had somehow managed to get under her daughter's skin. And that is when Sehera did the unthinkable and betrayed the Separatist movement, her father, and Elle herself for that one goddamned Marine. Sehera had helped him escape.
But that hadn't been good enough for that son of a bitch! Any sane man would have cut his losses and run, bounced, crawled, or whatever he could do across the Martian desert to the nearest American outpost. Any sane idiot would have bounced away from the very torture camp in which he had just spent years watching his fellow Americans tortured, wilting and dying around him, but not him. Hell, no, not Major Alexander Moore. Against all odds, that SOB spent five weeks inside his armored e-suit planning, plotting, and scheming just so he could come back to the torture camp and kill every last one of Elle's soldiers. He had been too late to save any other of his fellow prisoners, because Elle had killed them in a fit of rage following Moore's escape. When he returned there was nobody left for him to rescue, so he killed everybody. Everybody. He killed everybody in the encampment but Elle and Sehera. Elle would never forget that day as long as she drew breath. Had she shot her daughter for the treason of helping Moore escape—the way she had executed Sehera's father, Scotty—she wouldn't have had Moore to deal with all these years. It ended up in a big Mexican-style standoff. Moore had discovered Elle's secret identity, so there was no longer any alternative but to take him out of the picture. Elle was certain that he had to die, and then at the last moment Sehera stepped between her mother and the bloodied, enraged Marine. Sehera tried debating with them and pleading with them to cease, but Elle and Moore were each ready to die as long as they managed to kill the other one in the
