Like justice, it doesn't exist except for whatever we can carve out for ourselves and our own.
Makeda was on top, rocking rhythmically as Adam's hands clasped her small breasts almost-but not quite- painfully hard. Without interrupting the motion, she used her own hands to guide the boy's thumbs and fingers to her nipples. 'Pinch them,' she gasped. 'Hard. I like it.'
It would be incorrect to say that the girl had never taken any pleasure in sex before. But, if she had, it had always been tempered by the knowledge that she was legally not much more than an animal; that, and the feeling of being worthless dirt that always came afterwards. This, though? He said I was free! she thought as she changed her pattern of movement from rocking her hips to spiraling them. He said I had a choice! That must be why this feels as it never has before.
She reverted from spiraling back to rocking, at the same time lowering her torso down almost to rest on Adam's. He was mindless now, thrusting upwards hard, bouncing her toward the ceiling. His fingers, too, of their own accord, pinched her nipples fiercely enough to cause pain, though even that, mixed with the sensations coming from between her legs, was pleasurable.
She began to moan, then, a mindless animal sound. Her rocking ceased, changing to a reverse thrusting to meet Adam's own. She began to see little specks of light dancing before her eyes. Her moan changed to a long scream, then to a coral-shaking shriek, and finally to a loud, repetitive, 'guh . . . guh . . . . guh . . .' which grew softer as she collapsed onto him, shuddering and quaking.
One guard, his rifle placed against the wall, had both hands cupped over his mouth and nose, trying to stifle a laugh. The other, Delmar, was of sterner stuff. He suppressed his own laughter by a sheer act of will. He did say to Labaan, face all smiles, 'I grow to like that boy more and more as time passes.'
'I know,' Labaan agreed. 'He's a good boy. Pity he's not one of us.'
'Then it would be somebody else's son we'd have taken, since without an heir Khalid couldn't have been chief. And that son or heir would probably be no different from this one. No, Labaan, it's just the world in which we live. We didn't make it. We don't even have to approve of it. We just have to do the best we can in it, for our own.'
I hate being owned, Makeda thought, as she lay, still awake, and staring at the ceiling. It's why I've always faked pleasure, and never let myself feel any of it I could avoid feeling. At least then, inside myself, I had control over myself, I owned that one small part of me.
So why let myself go this one time? Maybe I'm a foolish girl, but when Adam said he would free me if he could, and that it was my choice if we were to continue to bed . . . well . . . I suppose I believed him. No, I know I believe him. He's a good boy, a decent boy, a kind boy.
And he's also my only chance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Like myself, they have mixed the worship of
the God of love and the God of battles.
But unlike myself, they have adequate symbols
of this double devotion. The little cross on the
shoulder is the symbol of their Christian faith.
The uniform itself is the symbol of their devotion
to the God of battles. It is the uniform and not
the cross which impresses me and others.
-Reinhold Niebuhr,
'Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic'
D-99, Airfield, Assembly Area Alpha-Base Camp,
Amazonia, Brazil
Recruiting had been done in a rough pyramid, so to speak, with Stauer calling in a score of his own friends, for commanders and staff, and these each bringing in anything from a few to half a dozen to a couple of score, and these bringing in one or two or three or four each. A certain number, too, had been recruited by ransacking the databases of such corporations as Triple Canopy and MPRI, once Lox hacked into those.
Picking the chaplain Stauer had taken on as a personal job. Most chaplains he thought worthless, but there had been a couple . . .
The flight hadn't been that long, really, from Georgetown to an unknown and unnamed strip in Brazil's Amazon, just a few hours of mile after mile of green jungle and brown water.
On the other hand, flying in a tightly cramped aircraft with an unknown pilot, surrounded by nine big, burly and surly bastards that Chaplain (retired) James Wilson just knew had to be special operations types, was, at best, awkward and uncomfortable. There just wasn't a lot in common between green beanie and clerical collar, despite both having served in the same Army. They were almost all taller than his modest five feet, eight inches. They were all, even the ones he pegged as senior non-coms, much younger than his fifty-eight years. He had more hair than a couple of them, but his was steel gray while the eldest of theirs was at worst salt and pepper. They all looked like trained killers while he . . . Well . . . I look like a man of the cloth. Even without the collar I would.
Point of fact, really, they're a different army, Wilson thought. We just got paid, mostly, from the same accounts and wore, mostly, the same uniforms and answered, mostly, to the same legal system. Mostly.
And I suppose they're really not that surly, he thought, just really, really tired looking and, if smell in anything to go on, badly hungover.
In any case, neither chaplain nor team paid much attention to each other, beyond Welch having introduced himself as they boarded the plane. Of small talk, once aboard, though, there'd been none.
So Wilson spent the flight looking out the small window at the trees passing below. Not that they're all that far below, he mused. I wonder why the pilots are . . .
The thought was interrupted as the plane took a sudden, violent dip downward, causing Wilson's stomach to lurch upward. He barely contained his bile. The special operations types, most of whom had been dozing, awakened with sudden startled cries. Wilson gulped even while thinking, Nice to know they're human after all.
