Arms and the Woman
- The Cave Meeting
Well, there I was waiting for some help. Hanging around holed up in some mountains on this planet of ours: Talos. I think of it as home and I wished the Xarans would leave, but they were not going to anytime quickly, so I thought we’d best keep on trying to force them off. This time we - the resistance - had persuaded ourselves that we could destroy one of their communications relays with impunity. If only it were that simple, because they had ways of making such an enterprise difficult. Anyway, the high command, that is the guys from Earth, said they’d send a combat team to help. And thus I awaited said help, apparently lost somewhere else in the mountains of Talos.
It was some time in the morning of the third day after I was told they’d come that I decided to start looking around for them. It was a tough decision, but they needed to be found, otherwise the operation was off. Sneaking along a rough sort of pathway that led to a particularly bleak cliff area, I thought I espied movement in one of the cave mouths way above my head. About two hours later I was up there, hoping that I wasn’t dreaming. I peered into the cliff mouth, dark and cold, and called out, perhaps rather naively but hopefully, ‘hello! Anyone there?’ There was a curious metallic whirring sound, then a scrape, and then a distinctively female voice called out, ‘yeah, I’m here. What yo’ want?’ I hadn’t expected a female voice, that was if this was actually part of the combat team. But needs must, so I responded ‘I’m Puffin. Who are you?’ There was more faint whirring, then in the gloom I saw movement, and light shining on something. Gradually a figure appeared in the darkness, slowly moving forward into the half-light. It looked tall and vaguely human, being as that was what it mostly consisted of.
It, or more properly she, strode out of the gloom toward me, and I was more than shocked for a long moment as I took in her appearance: she was wearing a suit of powered armour, mottled in camouflage colours and stained bits of with mud and grass, and slightly damaged in small sections, as though she had been in a fight of some sort, but not enough to seriously damage the dull plastic-metal compound it was made of. The large metal feet of this arrangement added something like three or four inches, boosting her height from a little over average for a woman to a couple of inches shorter than I, about 5'9", and gave her an imposing posture. The armoured plates covered her curves somewhat accurately, but with regard to protection rather than fashion. On each side of her helmet was a weapon, on the left, an autocannon that would fire heavy slugs to medium range, and on the right, a heavy laser. Thanks to the motive power of the suit, neither seemed to encumber her at all.
Between these two, nestled in her helmet, was her face, seemingly unexpectedly and incongruously pretty. A little jet-black hair peeped from around the margins of it, but did not begin to conceal her dark-skinned face. She wasn’t like the people of Talos at all, not in skin colour, anyway: more like dark coffee colour than our whitish-pink. And then, well, there were her glasses, making everything else seem slightly more normal than perhaps it ought. Her dark, almost black eyes seemed lost behind her thick lenses, peeping out from behind them like two coins dropped far down two deep and adjacent wells. I couldn’t tell how thick they were, as she was looking straight at me with a faintly bored air, but I found her shrunken gaze oddly appealing despite its evident strangeness. Her eyes blinked, and spoke plainly, ‘well, suh, don’t yo’ be wearin’ your eyes out staring at me.’
I was snatched away from this vision, and looked away quickly as if I was guilty of something. I gathered myself and asked again, ‘who are you?’ ‘Private Cook, 542nd Regiment at your service, suh.’ I immediately noticed the odd-sounding slur to her voice. I wondered what part of Earth she’d come from, to end up speaking like that? I then asked the obvious question, ‘so, where is everyone else? The rest of the combat team?’
She looked slightly uncomfortable about that, and said, ‘well, suh, dey don’t done make it this far. They got demselves killed by de slimers, dey dropped de bomb and now, deys all dead.’ ‘So, how did you escape?’ ‘Me, I was at de back, way behind, suh. Dis here suit, it’s de ahr-tillery unit, see suh?’ She pointed at the heavy laser covering the right shoulder of the suit. That made some sense: she wouldn’t have been in the front line. If her comrades had bought it, then she ought to have survived.
But something bothered me about this: not that she wore thick glasses, although to me that was unusual enough. It was the damage to her suit. Didn’t some of it look like laser damage? Not bomb damage? How could that have happened if they’d simply had a bomb dropped on them? Perhaps the Slimers had shot them up a bit before dropping it, I surmised. She looked at me curiously, her thick lenses flashing flatly at me as her head moved, and asked me, ‘you’s alright, suh?’ ‘Yes, yes. Come on then. I suppose I’d better help you get back to your pickup point so you can get going.’ ‘No, suh, I came to do de job, and that’s what I aim to do.’ ‘On your own?’ I looked and sounded disbelieving, perhaps with some justification, ‘well, suh, either dat or you can help me.’ I mused for a long moment, and then said, ‘well, OK then, perhaps I could take you to my comrades and then onto the communications relay, perhaps then that might persuade you that it might not be a good idea. That’s if I can persuade them to help us, and if I can’t, then we might as well forget the whole thing.’ ‘Well, suh, dat’s up to you now. Come now, you take me to see your buddies?’ ‘Yes, come on then, lets go.’
- Extra Thickness
We walked out of the cave mouth and down the winding cliffside trail, down to an area that gradually opened out into flatter territory. All the time I was sneaking glances at her: especially my view of her thick glasses. At first glance they seemed appallingly thick, over 3/4 of an inch and heading for the whole inch with little to stop them. The way the dully ground edges reflected light caught my eyes, and also that the grinding had attempted to produce an illusion of thinness - from that scale of thickness: it seemed an absurd attempt. Whenever she seemed to turn her head my way I looked away sharply, hoping she wouldn’t notice, but I needn’t have worried. I soon realised her field of vision wasn’t all it could have been. Either her lenses or her helmet got in the way, I wasn’t quite sure of the reason, but that also kept me thinking as I walked beside her.
Trying to relax, I asked, ‘so, what’s your name?’ She started to say “Private Cook”, but then realised I meant her first name. ‘My name’s Arabella. Yo’ kin call me Bella or somethin’, whatever yo’ like, suh.’ I was getting a little tired of the “Suh” business, so I asked her to stop calling me that and call me “Puffin” instead: it didn’t seem to bother her at all. After a moment, I asked ‘Arabella, how goes the war for you?’ Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have asked: she chattered on for quite some time explaining about the situation, mentioning places I’d barely heard of and things she and her unit had done. It all sounded quite impressive, until it was realised that there was an awful lot more of this sort of thing going on that she wasn’t involved in at all.
After a couple of hours of trekking and Arabella going on and on in, to me, meaningless detail about places I’d never heard of, we were more or less out of the mountainous area and into a pleasant area of woodland, fields and hedges. Hardly the sort of place you’d expect to find a resistance leader and some chatty black woman in a suit of powered armour, but there you go, that’s life. I suggested to Arabella that we rest for a while. She had to say that because of her suit she could go a lot longer without rest than I, but of course it didn’t absolve her of the need for food and sleep. For the former she opened a section of her armour and pulled out a two plastic cans of something that had a soft, crumbly texture and a taste like vegetables boiled far too long. She shrugged, and said, ‘you kinda get used to it.’ I doubted that I ever could, and after telling her so, she laughed gaily.
For a time I lay propped against a convenient tree. She sat in her armour - or was it the armour itself that sat and she just went along with it? - I couldn’t really be sure. Anyway, as I sat a few feet away, mostly looking in her direction as she or I talked amiably, I couldn’t help being strangely attracted by her glasses. No, it wasn’t just that: it was what they did to her face, and her eyes. I wondered what sort of vision someone needed to require that sort of drastic, seemingly extreme, and at first glance, ugly, correction? And I wondered what the world looked like for her. Surely not the same as I saw it? I hadn’t the inclination, or maybe courage to ask her about it. Her apparently tiny eyes blinked and met mine. I didn’t look away, which prompted her to ask, ‘what yo’ lookin’ at? Oh, I know…’ She looked a little perplexed by my interested gaze, then decided it was a ripe time to say something about the subject of her vision.
She touched her thick glasses with her gauntleted, armoured fingers and then said, ‘yeah, you’s lookin’ at me and my glasses.’ She dropped her arm and, after a slightly awkward pause she continued, ‘yeah, I’s one blind girl without ’em. I’m real missin’ dem when I take ’em off. Dey gives me much better vision, kinda like everybody else.’ For no good reason I thought she was about to take them off and let me have a look through them, but no, it wasn’t to be. Then she said, ‘but de thing is, see, they’s so darned thick… I’s needin’ so much of de thick to see, and den some more be-cause I’s needin’ dem to be tough too, so’s I can be a soldier. You’s understandin’ me, suh, I mean, Puffin?’
By now I was getting more used to her thick accent as well as her thick glasses, and I understood what she meant. Part of the apparent thickness was because the thinner types of lens weren’t up to the rigours of her soldierly life. If she depended on them to see as much as she claimed to, then making them from something tough seemed a good idea. Perhaps rather naively I asked, ‘but, Arabella, isn’t there some other way you can get clear vision, without wearing glasses like that?’ ‘Well, frankly no, suh. It’s like dis, my eyes, dey don’t like anythin’ else than glasses. So, I’s reckonin’ I’s stuck with ’em.’ I had other burning questions. I hesitated to ask, not sure what the reply would be ‘Arabella, how is it that the military allows people with such poor vision to fight?’ She sat and stared at me for a long moment, and looked rather more sour than she had since I’d met her: evidently I’d inadvertently struck a raw nerve. She gathered herself, then replied, ‘well, suh, I’s meanin’ Puffin, I’s thinkin’ dat dey need all the soldiers dey can get.’
There was a brief pause, during which I started trying to look away, and also look at her at the same time. I ended up meeting her gaze again. There was something about her, or perhaps the combination of her and her glasses that was oddly appealing. Was it the strange juxtaposition of her obvious prettiness and the apparent ugliness of her glasses? She then said ‘I’s bettin’ your thinkin’ I’m sooo ugly in dese things, and you’d be right about dat too. Well, I’s bin called ugly before, and surely will be again, I’ve had people not wantin’ to look at me more’an’s they’s thinkin’ necessary, and dat’s without de armour. Some folks, dey treat me sooo darned badly because of it, too. I’s tellin’ you, suh, life sucks. But what in hell can I’s do about it? Ain’t like I gotta choice.’ At that point I felt like saying something like “you look pretty” or suchlike, but the words didn’t want to come out. Perhaps she might have felt consoled by it, or perhaps she’d have thought I was joking unkindly with her, which wouldn’t have helped things along at all. I collected myself in the brief silence that followed, and then said ‘I’m ready to go now.’ She got to her feet, and then we both started off together.
- Resistance is Useless
After a few more hours of Arabella clumping along in her armour, and me taking her the right direction, we came upon the village where we were supposed to meet the rest of the resistance group. And so they were, three of them coming to see me and meet Arabella. They all seemed to stare at her for a long moment, before greeting me and being introduced to her. Of course, they wanted to know where the rest of the combat team had got to, and were justifiably shocked and dismayed to hear that they were all goners. Only the bespectacled, chatty and pleasant Arabella remained.
One of then asked Arabella about what sort of weapons she carried. She explained the autocannon had about 40 shots in it, and would be like throwing a grenade about 100 yards or so, and the heavy laser would reach out about 400-500 yards, and she hoped she could hit stuff at that distance. That was perhaps an unfortunate thing to say, because he subsequently began to cast doubt on her abilities. At first he asked if he could wear her suit: that riled her, I could tell. Arabella told him, ‘dis here suit, it’s made for me. It wouldn’t fit you’s, suh.’ We had to have a little conference, and Arabella was disgusted to find she wasn’t included. It was a sort of “What do we do now?” Kind of discussion. There were all sorts of arguments put forward, mostly either suggesting that we call it off, from the one who had quizzed her about her weapons, and from me, suggestions as to how we might still just pull it off.
Eventually he felt prompted to say, ‘well, we can’t go with just one soldier in a power suit, especially one who’s half blind. Did you see those glasses? She can’t be very good with the distance sights and things like that. She’d probably hit us not the enemy. Whoever heard of such a thing?’ I sat staring at him, and shrugged. He did have a point, I thought. Or perhaps she had some way of dealing with it. but I couldn’t persuade him to help try. I went back outside to Arabella, who was busy eating another can of her odd-tasting pre-packed food, and saw the look on her face. She looked like thunder! My immediate thought was “Oh, shit!”
I said ‘Arabella?’ She nodded, and said, ‘yeah, OK. It’s no go?’ ‘Come over here. Come, and I’ll tell you.’ She clumped after me, slightly away from the village, and stood facing me, her face a mixture of expectation, anger and dismay. She seemed to know what I was going to say before I said it. ‘Arabella, we can’t go and do this. They won’t come and help us, not with just you to back them up. It’s too much of a risk. They say we’ll lose too many people in the attempt, and it’s a pointless risk.’ She threw the empty container of food to the ground and sighed, and said angrily, ‘it’s coz dey’s thinkin’ I can’t do it, isn’t it? Coz I’m just a half blind girl who’s needin’ de thick glasses to see, yeah?’ She stamped on the food container, for this unnecessarily assisted by her power armour, and crushed it flat. I couldn’t lie to her, but then I couldn’t confirm what she more than suspected. They just weren’t convinced she could do it. I doubted that if she hadn’t worn glasses they’d have agreed to try, but I think they were the clincher on the decision. After that I told her we’d make arrangements for her to be picked up. That was all we could do for her.
I lay in a hastily arranged bed for the night, trying to sleep, but every time I shut my eyes, I saw Arabella’s mysterious and much corrected gaze staring out from behind her thick lenses at me, those dark pools of life, and for me, strange and uncanny - attraction? I had to admit that for some strange reason, they had a pulling power that went against all preconceptions. Idly I wondered what she looked like without them on. I tried to see in my mind’s eye, but all I saw was the bespectacled version. On reflection, it became clear to me that she was extremely sensitive to slights to her abilities, and especially to doubts expressed about her vision. That struck me as a little unfair: she seemed quite a decent person really. She’d told me lots of things she’d done before and been involved in, and since she was still alive and kicking, I assumed she must be pretty good at this business: the same one as I was in, resisting the Slimers, otherwise she wouldn’t be around to tell me about them. Somehow I fell asleep soon after.
- Going it Alone
I woke early and went to find Arabella, lying in her armour in another hovel. I saw her pretty face framed by a little jet-black hair and rather more plastic-metal, her eyes shut behind those incredibly thick lenses. I rapped at her armour near the shoulder a couple of times, and her eyes drifted open. She said dreamily, ‘wha…?’ I addressed her quietly but firmly ‘Arabella, I’m going to take you to see that communications relay. Just to set your mind at rest and convince you it can’t be done.’ She looked just as exasperated as last night, so I consoled her, ‘maybe if you come back this way, you might bring reinforcements and we could have a proper go at it.’ That helped a little, and before long we were off, Arabella chatting away again as if nothing had happened. That seemed quite strange to me; that her mood could change so quickly from resigned despair to something like expectation. She said ‘I’s can’t wait to see dis place. Maybe I’s could convince you, instead?’ I shrugged, even though I doubted it, I was not quite willing commit myself.
It was a good few hours hiking to get to the communications relay: a sort of compound on a hill top with good views all around and a large antenna dish pointing skyward. There were all sorts of things there to prevent the likes of us getting in: guards, armoured cars, a barracks, a double wire fence and more besides. The Xaran guards in the watchtower looked in our direction. It was hard to get near the place without being seen, because the Xarans had been wise enough to largely strip the surrounding hills bare of trees and bushes. There wasn’t much cover to be had for a good half a mile around the place: just to make things hard for us, but hardly a surprise. Then there were the patrols: we would consider ourselves wise not to hang around here any more than absolutely necessary.
So, after some time spent creeping around the place, getting as near as I thought was wise, we lay hidden in the nearest bit of suitable bush to the station. I said to Arabella in a low whisper, ‘well, this is it, about as near as I want to get.’ Arabella lay on her belly - in as much as her armour would let her, and looked through her thick lenses at the place. For a moment I imagined that I saw her eyes narrow a little. Then she pushed them more firmly against her nose, and did so again. Noticing that I was watching her, she said, ‘darned glasses… never so good as dey should be.’ That seemed puzzling to me, so I asked rather dumbly, ‘aren’t they the right, er, thickness for you?’
The look she gave me confirmed it was a stupid question, but she humored me anyway. ‘Well, suh, it’s like dis: dey’s are de right thickness for me, but coz my eyes are kinda strange, that means dere is no glasses dat can make my eyes see quite right, like yours and everybody’s.’ I was rather taken aback by this admission. I asked, curious, ‘isn’t there some minimum vision requirement to be a soldier?’ ‘Why, yes suh, I mean Puffin, yes, dere is. I kin pass it, not so easy for me, but I kin do it. I has to be wearin’ my glasses, though.’ She gave an odd smile at that.
And as she had said, so it proved to be. I pulled out a small telescope, pulled it out and held it to my eye. I started examining the defences, just in case anything had changed. After a few minutes I asked, ‘do you see that? What’s he doing?’ Arabella gave an exasperated sound: I didn’t really expect to see what the Xarans were up to at this range; after all I couldn’t either. But I dropped the telescope eyepiece and glanced, then looked at her, with good reason. Sticking out the side of her helmet - obviously usually hidden and now not so because of some button pushed somewhere on her suit - was a sort of eyepiece, not unlike that at the small end of my telescope, on the end of a sort of stalk curving around to the side of her helmet. Against the eyepiece she quite forcefully pressed her thick right lens, seemingly only faintly aware of the possibility that she might break it. Her glasses pressed awkwardly against her face, and generally speaking the whole lot seemed quite a difficult and uncomfortable means to see what was going on the distance. Her lens seemed to stop her getting the eyepiece near to her eye, which to me meant hard to use.
After a moment she muttered, ‘how in hell am I supposed to see dat?’ She stopped trying to push her right lens out with the eyepiece, and her left eye opened, as it was previously shut, and she looked at me, and said, ‘hell of a job, eh? It’s just soo darn hard for me to use, suh. Dis here targetin’ sight is what I’s using to see in de distance like you, but for me it’s not so easy. I has to jam my glasses against it, hope it don’t push my lens out, just so’s I can get better look. And guess what, suh, I still can’t tell what’s goin’ on over dat way. Can’t we get ourselves a bit nearer?’ Well, that was a fair request, but I didn’t have to tell her it was all but impossible. This was as close as anyone could get and not be seen, unless you happened to be perhaps a mouse or better still, invisible. I didn’t have to tell her so, thankfully.
I set to examining the communications relay and the small garrison for a while; after some watching, and having Arabella ask me several times what I was seeing then describing events to her, I started to come to a conclusion about this place: it seemed to me that the garrison had been reduced here for some reason. I counted only about 20 or 30 Xarans there, as opposed to the 50 or more I saw last time I was thereabouts. What had happened? Perhaps they’d decided things were quiet here and withdrawn what they thought they could spare. Whatever the reason, I saw an opportunity.
Briskly I pushed my telescope together and stowed it in my bag, then I said to Arabella ‘I think this may be possible.’ ‘What?’ ‘It may be possible to destroy the communications relay. With just the two of us.’ I explained what I thought I’d seen, and also that we needed to do it quickly in case they decided to return to their former level of manpower. Arabella asked, after stowing her eyepiece, ‘so, suh, what do we’s doin’ first?’ ‘I need you to take me back to where your comrades were killed.’ She gaped, and then looked extremely doubtful. She sputtered out, ‘b… but dat may be dangerous. Dem Slimers, dey might be comin’ back, you know. Why’s you wantin’ to do dat, suh?’ ‘Because, Arabella, I might be able to salvage a suit for myself, or failing that, possibly some weaponry I can use.’ She nodded slowly, as if imperfectly agreeing to the plan. I started to wonder why she seemed less than enthusiastic about my plan, after all it went along with her stated desire to the job either herself or with my help.
- At the Bombsite
We were obliged to camp overnight on the way to the bomb site. Again Arabella proved pleasant and chatty, but this time I noticed a certain nervousness to her. I spent some time wondering what that was all about, but could think of no reason why. The answer became clearer to me during the next morning as we walked over yet another hill: I saw a body - no, an suit of powered armour not unlike Arabella’s. It was badly burned, scored by laser fire, as I’d expected: rather like the damage to Arabella’s own, but much more heavily. Of course, the male soldier inside was well and truly dead, and had been so for a few days.
There were four more of them. All wearing combat suits similar to Arabella’s, but carrying different weaponry, mostly close range lasers and a few grenade launchers. What struck me was the way they all bore the marks of combat, rather than simply being smashed and burned by a bomb dropped from some Xaran Aerofighter, and also that they were spread out much more than I’d expected, considering Arabella’s description of what had happened. I checked each one carefully, looking for a suit that might just serve me if I wanted to blast my way into the communications relay and smash it up, which I wanted to try. There was no one suit that would serve my purpose, but I cobbled two together, taking a laser from a third, and after some time I was wearing my very own suit of plastic-steel powered armour, fit to do some serious damage: except it was far from being in good repair, and would probably go wrong if I looked at it sideways.
There was nothing we could do for the bodies of the men who’d been killed, but we got them together and hid them in some trees, just for security’s sake. I promised Arabella I’d help sort them out and get them to her pickup point once we were done: she seemed a little uncertain about that. Then we hiked our way back to the relay station, planning our attack as we went. It wasn’t much of a plan: Arabella would blast away from the distance, I’d go in alone, she would shoot anyone that I couldn’t deal with. That’s if she could see them, I thought glumly. Having come this far, I didn’t feel like backing out.
- The Attack
The next day we arrived back near the place where we had spied from a couple of days previously. We spent a little time making sure things at the installation were as they appeared to be before, Arabella again pressing her glasses against her targeting scope as hard as she dared, in order to get a better image, I surmised. Slightly nervously I asked her ‘Arabella, don’t take this the wrong way, but you can see well enough to identify me over there?’ She stared at me for a long moment, then answered, ‘why, yes suh, er I’s meanin’ Puffin. Of course, suh.’ For some reason I wasn’t completely convinced, but I hoped she knew how best to use her weapons on her suit better than she could see.
Anyway, the plan of attack was simple: just for me to go in and shoot up the defenders, and Arabella to keep them off guard and certainly off my back. I broke cover and ran toward the fence as fast as I could. While they were wondering who I was, Arabella came out too, but instead of running, started blasting away with her laser at anything that seemed like it could be smashed up. By the time I was near the wire she’d ripped a hole in the wire, but my barely-functioning suit had taken a few laser hits - thankfully from beams not as powerful as hers. And then I was in among them - the Slimers, that is. I didn’t see any of their gooey faces, but I’d seen enough of them before: they always looked as if someone had daubed jelly on their faces. Not their fault, I suppose, but it was their fault they were on my planet uninvited, so naturally I was more than interested in seeing them go in one way or another. I had to kill 3 or 4 - I can’t quite remember, before planting some explosives around the communications dish and making a run for it.
And as I ran, I noticed that Arabella was still there in the distance, pouring it on, now landing autocannon shells on them. “Yeah, I know, we’re at war, but… never mind,” I thought, “she’s probably just keeping them busy”. A few seconds later the whole camp blew, and I felt the pressure on my back, despite the suit. The thing was getting hard to run in: I’d sustained some damage in the fight, and added to that taken previously, it was enough to do some quite serious damage to the motor functions. To a considerable extent, I was having to move it rather than it move me. I limped over to Arabella, who was unaccountably still shooting her laser at the few remaining Slimers.
I called out, as she fried another one, ‘hey, Arabella, we can stop now…. we’ve done it.’ She ignored me, and only when I’d limped over to her I got an answer to my cries, ‘but, suh, Dey’s de enemy!’ She blasted at another one. I did my best to limp over to her, and grab her by her metal shoulders, and try to shake her into sense. ‘Arabella! It’s done! Leave them!’ Finally she ceased fire, then did whatever needed to be done to stow her targeting scope.
We got ourselves away from the scene of the attack as soon as we could, which wasn’t easy with my suit so damaged. But there was another problem, one in my mind: something that I had long suspected I now became absolutely certain about. As soon as we dared stop, I took off the damaged suit so I could move faster, then confronted Arabella as she sat on a tree she’d pushed over for a seat. She said to me, with a note of triumph in her voice, ‘suh, we’s did it!’ I said nothing, and then after a pause said ‘Arabella, I think I know what really happened to the rest of your combat team.’ She met my gaze with her shrunken gaze, and for a moment her eyes vanished as her lenses flashed sunlight at me.
She looked for a moment as if she would play the innocent, so I went on, ’there was no Xaran Aerofighter, was there? After a rather bemused pause, she shook her head. Patiently I said, ‘you did it, didn’t you? You killed them, Arabella… I’m not completely sure why, but I have a good idea.’ She looked at me with some ferocity, and I thought for a moment I was due for the same treatment. Instead, she said bitterly, ‘suh, dey made so much fun of me, made so many cruel jokes. About my glasses. Dey deserved it, every one of dem. Dey’s were likes your resistance buddies, callin’ me half-blind and stuff, thinkin’ I’s no good to dem. Better off at de back, or at home. But, I’s here. And dey’s sooo cruel to me. I’m sorry, suh, but I’s done killed ’em.’
- What I’d Do For a GWG
After a long, awkward pause she said to me, ‘well, suh, I mean Puffin, suh, what you’s gonna to do about me? You’s gonna turn me in?’ I made her wait a little for my answer while it formed in my head, then I told her, ’no, no. I don’t think so.' She gawped at me as if I’d lost my mind. Actually I probably had, but then I found Arabella interesting and didn’t really want to discover that some military court had sent her to be executed. I then said to her, speaking slowly, because I’d only just had the idea ‘Arabella, perhaps we can… cover it up. We can make it look like your combat team were ambushed or something. If anyone asks, they’ll come to me first and I’ll tell them the same. No-one need know the truth.’ She continued to look at me, now with a mixture of surprise and anticipation in her face, ‘you’d do dat for me, suh?’ ‘Yes, I would.’
There was another awkward silence, and then I asked, ‘well, what do we do to get you off this planet? Where’s your pickup point?’ She told me. It wasn’t that far away: I suppose they’d anticipated a quick getaway. We had to get ourselves there on foot: it took about an hour or so, then set up her mobile transmitter and sent a signal to the mothership in orbit. About another hour later a shuttle came down to pick us up: thankfully it was entirely computer controlled, so we didn’t have any awkward explaining to do as we took it over to the site of the “ambush” and picked up the remains of her combat team, then stored them in hermetically sealed boxes ready for the journey home.
And then came a difficult thing: she was about to leave me behind, and looked quite despondent being as I wasn’t coming any further. But I surprised her: I asked ‘Arabella, is there room for a passenger?’ She smiled, and said, ‘yes, suh… Puffin. Come aboard, you’s welcome. Very welcome.’
We were soon aboard the mothership, and after stowing the boxes containing the bodies away, Arabella said she was going to take her armour off. I went off to the cabin she’d allocated for me. Again, there was no other human crew aboard the ship, only a computer ready to take us home. After what seemed like a very long time, but in fact was only just over an hour, I heard a knock at the door, and I spoke, ‘open.’ The voice-activated door swept open, to reveal a black woman, just over average height for a woman, slim and fit as if she’d spent forever in the gym, but with a set of curves that opened my eyes, and black hair groomed down over head, short but not unfeminine. She was dressed in a pair of loose brown combat trousers and a green sleeveless top that left little of what lay beneath to the imagination. She was pretty, and attractive… who was it? Well, of course, the thick glasses, glinting in the light of my cabin, gave it away. She asked, ‘well, Puffin, can I’s come in…. or do I’s have to stand here all de way home?’
I beckoned her in, and without further ado she plonked herself on the bed beside me. I noticed that around her head there was a dark band of some elastic material, a headband attached to each of the earpieces of her spectacularly thick glasses and looping around the back of her head. It wasn’t quite the same colour as her hair, but not far off, but more than that, it held down her hair and prevented it becoming a proper hairstyle. I supposed that wasn’t a problem for her, being a soldier, and also that it was necessary to keep them on her face rather than falling off her decidedly average sized nose and ears.
She reached her hand behind her head, and said ‘Puffin… dis is kinda a thanks for what you’s doin’ for me.’ I watched her starting to unbuckle the strap around the back of her head, and asked, ‘what are you doing?’ ‘Well, suh, I’s need my glasses to find you’s, for sure. But for this, dey’s help me, but I can feel you’s lips instead. I’s sure you don’t want me lookin’ at you’s wit’ dem on me.’ I touched her arm, and said, ’leave them.' She glared at me intently for a second, her apparently tiny eyes growing large and staring, then when she realised I was serious, she shrugged and said, ‘well, if I’s can wear dem for combat, I can wear dem’s for dis too.’
Her hands dropped, then reached out to hold my head, and pulled it forward to her, and she kissed me full on the lips, her eyes shutting tight as she did so. And I reached out for her, with one hand feeling the soft fullness of her breast in my palm, and the other reaching out for her head… her glasses. I really felt that if I couldn’t know what it was like to see the world through her thick, slablike lenses, I must at least feel them with my fingers. They felt like the smooth, solid things they appeared to be: as I gently ran my fingers along her earpiece and around the rolled edge of her lens, and then further forward, the smooth, flat expanse of the front face her right lens. Her eyes opened, and she pulled away from me slightly, looking bemused. She asked, ‘Well, Puffin, you’s meanin’ dat you’s likin’ me in dese things?’ Her eyes rolled heavenward for a moment. She continued, ‘why’s couldn’t I’s found you’s before? Never mind… Dis is good… you’s feel away just where you’s wantin’. And so I did, feeling both the softness of her body and the smooth hardness of her lenses, both front and back, and it was one hell of a time. And it wasn’t the last time we did it on the trip home, no we did it time and time again. But eventually we arrived, and the two of us had to explain the bodies we were carrying with us. Yeah, OK, there was a bit of a problem, to say the least, but I think because I was there saying things that fitted the story, Arabella got away with it without anyone getting close to the truth: that she’d killed her comrades because they’d mocked her once too often. More probably it was because we were in the middle of an interstellar war, so the deaths of five marines, while serious, was hardly unexpected on an occupied planet. But I’d helped her get away with it because I found her attractive and interesting, perhaps a poor excuse but never mind, I didn’t care. They didn’t know her the way I knew her: they never made love to her in her thick glasses, I doubt that would have occurred to them or anyone else, including me until I’d tried it.