---

Index:

1. Chipper
   

Chipper.

I guess you could say that I was. Might I add that it’s a quite Leeds thing to say, in my opinion? Not that I was able to speak the language to the degree I do today, but still, it does remind me. Speaking of chipper: Funny how it started, really. You know how food, especially sweets, are really rare on a planet that has just been sieged and conquered by the Royal Navy, right? Understandable, really. Who’d need troops that devolve into lardarses over the consumption of too many cherry tarts? Still, they were still imported, because sweets tended to up morale a lot, and, even though you’d never hear a soldier tell about it: Sweets were sort of a currency between us.

I remember how the keys were making excessive noise as I tried jamming each one into the same hole in the hopes that it’d actually yield the result I wanted. I had way calmer hands back then, though if you’re about to steal food from the Royal Navy, you would know that there was something to be excited about.

“Gen, Try this one,” I could hear Gwendoline’s voice as she peeked to see whether I was making progress. See, I was trying to open a food ration container of the Royal Navy with a pair of stolen keys, and the fact that it was effectively in the open air made it a bit tricky without being seen. No, I was not some kind of bum back then. I was actually a soldier of the Royal Navy and stationed on Leeds. Airstrip 4, New Wakefield, if that tells you anything. It wasn’t like there was anything distinguishing it from the other Gallic bases, or ‘enclaves’, as they were sometimes called in a more derogatory way, though I would say that it was significantly hotter. Not because the sun could be seen or anything — such a thing was hardly possible on Leeds. It was because of the very close proximity to the nearby supply port, which was responsible of supplying the troops and Gallic personnel within New Wakefield. They usually came in sealed containers that could be conveniently shipped by hauling vessels to designated drop-off points, where they would then be brought wherever they were needed. The upside of them was that they could simply be stacked and therefore saved a lot of space. The downside was that they were, well, archaic material, let’s just say.

“You know, this’d be easier if I could actually see what I was doing,” I gave back to her, squinting and trying to get a glimpse of the console. The roof of the building had been retracted a while ago, and the sparse light pouring in helped somewhat, but it was still hard. The keys belonged simply to the warehouse. Nothing quite screamed trouble like spying a key on an office table and thinking: oh boy, I bet I can get some pop-tarts. “Why aren’t you doing this, even? It was your bloody idea.” If there was an adjective I’d use to describe Gwen, it’d be ‘spontaneous’. Either that, or crazy, depending on my mood. I’d still pinch her cheek, though.

She made a step towards me, her steps resounding louder than I would have liked through the warehouse, but just when she was about to look at the console, I managed to make one key fit, and the console came to light in green. Huh, it didn’t even ask for a password or anything. Did I say those containers were big enough so you could go inside them and stand upright? A panel to the left of the console hissed and slipped aside, admitting entrance.

“You know, it’s always refreshing to see you acting incompetent just to then solve whatever you said you can’t solve,” Gwen mentioned dryly while peeking around the corner briefly to make sure there wasn’t anyone coming. She was fiddling around with her rifle, which she probably shouldn’t be wearing because, if we got caught, this thing weighed some ten pounds and would slow her down. Then again, if we got caught, we’d be scrubbing the latrines for a year. I sort of doubted that there would be any more severe consequences, given that someone who’d literally drawn a dick on the front of an officer’s cap only got decked across the face and made to serve in the kitchens. Then again, the food there was sort of pre-packaged garble, so it was probably not as pleasant as I imagined.

“It’s like in school when you get an assignment and you be like ‘man, I can’t manage that in a week!’, and you manage in three days, and everyone’s impressed,” I replied, and I guessed that at this point, I was only speaking so I had my mouth open. I myself had opted out of my gear, since our shift had ended. It was still very visible that I was with the Navy, looking at the colours. Grey, white, and blue. I had always thought that the Sirians, primitive as they were, had more flair when it came to clothing. The soldiers sometimes joked that their simple minds needed this to attract partners, like a peacock with its shiny, colourful tail.

I watched Gwen casually stroll past the neon-red caption across the entrance reading: Aucune entrée non autorisée. Well, technically, we were authorized, alright. At least the machine thought we were. Looking behind me once more, for a brief moment I thought I had seen something between other containers in the warehouse, but squinting, it was only a broom. Oh well. “Ey, wait for me,” I called out after Gwen and stepped in behind her, pulling off the key from the console so the door would close behind us on its own. And no, I wasn’t trapping us inside.

Entering the small storage unit, I looked at something that looked like an orderly store arrangement back home. There were small passageways that formed a cross-section in the middle, while goods were stacked around, easy to browse. There was a slight breeze coming from a miniscule ventilation system. The container knew when someone was in there needing fresh air, at least. Stepping further in, I tried to spy the prey. “It’s probably really easy for the guys in logistics to find what they want,” I mused while looking around.

The light was bright neon, making it easy to see. Coffee machines, all sorts of mechanical doohickeys and lots of bread. Taking one of the packages in hand, I turned it and saw that it was from Lyon. Of course it was, agricultural world and all. Gen missed living there. “Ey,” I could hear Gwen’s voice from further inside. “Check this out.” Turning my head, I put the bread back where I had picked it up from. It wasn’t what we wanted after all. We’d probably be eating this for dinner in the next few days.

Closing the distance between Gwen, and me I looked over her shoulder, as she was kneeling on the ground, fishing with her hands in one of the boxes stacked on the wall. “Hmm?” I intoned questioningly. I probably should’ve seen coming what happened next, but I was blue-eyed, and I’m not talking about my actual eye-colour. Withdrawing her hand, Gwen blew a bit of, what I presumed to be, rye flour into my face. I gave a sound that was a weird mixture of a grunt and a squeal, and while I was lucky enough to close my eyes fast enough so I wouldn’t get flour into them, I still breathed in a good chunk of it and started coughing, all the while I could hear Gwen laughing merrily at my misery.

“Oh, Gen, you’re so easy at times,” I could hear her say between my coughs, before she rose to her feet and proceeded to pat my back to help me free my pipes.
“I swear one day,” I forced out between gasps of air, though then starting to laugh myself. Gwen had this habit of laughing like a hag, with a little sound that seemed like a hick at the end of each breath — it was infectious. “Dick.” She elbowed my side briefly with a mischievous glance and I knew this was revenge for hiding her toothbrush once. “Was there actually something you wanted to show me, or…?”

“Well, yes,” she gave back, rising to her feet and motioning to another small stack of boxes. “I’m pretty sure there’s our price, but look what else they got here.” Turning around, she started withdrawing the covering of another box to reveal… clothes.

“That’s unspectacular,” I commented, looking at the contents. “What’s so special about that?” They reminded me of the normal uniforms we wore, except for… “Hey! They’ve changed the collars!” I exclaimed, opening the box further to look in. “***** finally! There are buttons, look!” In hindsight, I was way more excited about the possibility of not choking on my collar all the time than I was about the sweets.

“I knew you’d enjoy that,” I could hear Gwen chuckle behind me. Turning around, I could hear her open another crate. “Come, help me sack this.” Closing the box with the clothes as best as possible, I returned to her, and we spent the next few minutes stacking pop tarts into a bag that Gwen had brought. Judging by the looks, it was one of those things we used for laundry. Good thing the tarts were sealed.

“Did you hear that?” I asked after a while, stopping with my hands in the bag, motioning for Gwen to hold up for a moment.
She gave me a questioning glance, leaning against the wall lightly. “Hear what?” I raised my finger and sure enough, there were voices on the outside. From what I could get inside that storage unit, they were shouting, and still pretty far away, at least outside of the storage facility we were in. “Well,” Gwen started, though she never was able to finish her thought before the loud sound of a siren drowned out the voices from outside. “Damn.”

“What do we do?” I asked Gwen, feeling adrenaline rush through me. This had never happened before; usually, Airfield 4 was quiet. The sirens could only mean…

“We stay here,” came the reply, and I gawked at Gwen.

“Are you serious? You hear that out there? You know what happened the last time that siren went on.” Was Gwen seriously proposing that we hole up in here like rats in a hole to avoid getting our hands dirty? “A dozen people killed, Gwen!”

“So? Want to join them out there?” she asked nonchalantly, sitting down on the ground, away from the wares into a corner, opening the bad and withdrawing a tart. The rifle lay on her lap as she opened the wrapping. “Really, Gen, we’re doing an awful job out here. What do you get for fighting for Charles? You’re married, for God’s sake! You should take better care of yourself so you can come back to Maurice when you’re done here.” She took a bite of the confectionary. I gaped. What was this seditious nonsense?

“We’re not cowards,” I retorted briskly. God, the righteous anger I had felt in that moment. My face flushed as I looked at my best friend. Then I blinked. She held the keys in her hands — the ones that I had used to open the storage unit. “How did you-“

“When I patted your back,” she explained matter-of-factly. I didn’t know she was that dextrous with her hands. No wonder she always won in poker. I wouldn’t even notice if she cheated. “Please, Gen, the others can take care of whatever is going on outside. I only want the best for you.” I ground my teeth at that statement, though I couldn’t do anything, but huff indignantly. Gwen wouldn’t hurt me, I know, but she would thrash me if she thought it served a purpose. She was stronger than me, but I was smarter, mostly. One might think that this wasn’t really a recipe for a friendship, but the military made even the unlikeliest of characters work together and bond. Honeur et patrie, valeur et discipline.

I sat down by her side and leaned by head against the wall, my heart beating like wild. I tried listening to what was going on outside but it was impossible over the siren. Looking at my watch, an old tattered thing that I only recently had adjusted to the local time on needs, I saw that we had hardly been in here for ten minutes.

10:42

Sighing, I turned to the side. “Gimme,” I said eloquently and reached out for one of the tarts in her bag. Gwen didn’t protest and let it happen. At least she didn’t smack her lips while eating. This really made my piss boil like nothing else. Unwrapping her small bakery good that wasn’t actually baked per hand, I took a bite. The sweet bite of flavour enhancers filled my mouth, though I couldn’t care less. It wasn’t like I was fat. The Navy regulated the diet of each soldier well enough so it would take a lot of effort to gain excessive weight rather than lose it. I looked at my watch.

10:45

“It’s still going,” I stated, now needing to speak at a normal conversation volume to not be drowned out by the siren.
Gwen didn’t react at first. “Yes,” she replied, apparently unsure what even to say. “Just stay here.” For a moment, Gwen’s Bretonian ancestry came through as she spoke the last phrase. Her French was flawless and way better than mine, yet it had never irked me that a foreigner was a better speaker than me as a native. Gwen was born on Leeds, and after the planet had fallen to the Royal Navy and the Armed Forces resistance planetside had been broken, the Navy had accepted locals who wanted to join the Royal Navy. I knew that Gwen had done this willingly, and I’d also never seen a sign that she wasn’t earnest in her desire to serve the crown. That was all I needed. I wasn’t some sort of inquisitor that rummaged around in the heads of people. If Gwen was not putting me in danger, I was glad that she joined. I had to admit that most of my Gallic colleagues were horribly boring.

“I hadn’t planned on going,” I replied, looking at the ring finger on my right hand. Gwen was right, of course. I shouldn’t be running into potential danger when I had husband and child waiting at home. Opening the clasp that kept my watch on my arm, I opened the back where the batteries are and looked at a small picture of Maurice, my husband, which I had put there. We weren’t allowed to carry purses or anything while we were on duty, so this was really the only way I could keep a small momento with me at all times. Our son had been born two months before I was drafted. We still hadn’t rightly settled for a name, since Maurice and I were were pugnacious when it came to such things, so we had put that off until I came back. This wouldn’t be possible, usually, but Lyon’s laws weren’t as strict when it came to population cataloguing. Rural areas, as I said. I put the watch back on.

11:03

I closed my eyes and tried to forget the sound of the sirens outside. Easier said than done. A grating sound from outside jerked me up. “Wha-“ I intoned, scrabbling to get back to my feet.

“It’s the roof,” Gwen told me, patting the ground again. “They’re closing the roof, nothing more.” For a moment, I felt like a child that was being reprimanded by her, though I took a deep breath and made a move to sit down again.

The entire storage unit jerked as the sound of an explosion and falling debris shook the hall, the clanking on the roof of the unit clearly marking that something was falling down on it. The sudden jerk upset my balance and I fell, almost hitting my head. Sitting up, I saw Gwen holding onto the wall as best as she could. She looked at me, with wide, surprised eyes, and I scrambled to find somewhere to hold onto, fearing the unit would lurch again as it had before.

As the ringing in my ears subsided, I could hear the roar of machines outside, or rather from above. Metal grated on metal before there was a ‘clank’ and the entire unit lurched again, this time upwards. “They’re carrying us!” I exclaimed needlessly, not totally freaking out. We shouldn’t have gone in here. This was a terrible idea! We didn’t seem to ascend too much, judging by the way gravity was tugging at us. Nobody had really considered that these things could house humans in space, I thought, and so I dearly hoped they’d not enter space now because I didn’t fancy zero gravity.

Gwen meanwhile was simply holding onto a metal bar on the wall that was designed to fasten cargo on and had her eyes closed, the white on her knuckles clearly visible. I was about to say something else but a terrible hissing noise that seemed to be closing in made my ears perk up. It was the last thing I heard before everything went black.

---

I was sitting on the roof of a nearby office building as they brought them outside. Six men, all clad in that horrible gown they gave to prisoners. At least their heads weren’t covered. It was something I admired about the way people met their end at the point of a Gallic Rifle. Four soldiers followed, each equipped with a rapid firing weapon, and an officer in the front. I pulled up my legs and looked around the courtyard. Onlookers had formed something akin to a semicircle. Nobody wanted to stand behind the people who were now put up in a line in front of a wall. They wouldn’t be able to see if they stood behind.

I heard a rustling by my side as Gwen sat down nest to me, resting her back against a chimney so her side would be facing the site. We didn’t say anything as the officer in the front started reading aloud a long list of transgressions. I had to admit that I didn’t understand half of what he was saying. Not because of the distance between us the High-French he spoke, but because I was, well, not that well-read and the longer words and convoluted sentences made my head spin. It didn’t matter anyways. This was simply for the onlookers, not the ones who stood with their hands bound behind their backs, encircled in a mob of bodies that trapped them. None of them was showing any sign of regret though, or at least it seemed to be this way from the distance. I wondered what they thought the officer was saying. These Bretonians didn’t speak our language after all.

---

The sound of a body hitting the floor jerked me awake again, though I wish it hadn’t. My head felt any sort of gigantic animal had performed passionate coitus to it for an extended period for at least one hour. Groaning, I tried prying open my eyes and immediately regretted it, as even the dim light of a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling was too much for me to handle. Turning to the side, I emptied the contents of my stomach, the wretched smell of half-digested cherry tart burning in my nostrils only amplifying my desire to retch.

“Easy,” I could hear a familiar voice from the side and I felt a pair of arms grab me beneath my armpits to prop up my upper body enough so I wouldn’t accidentally choke on my own vomit. We would remain like this for a while, during which I blindly retched a few times dryly, nothing else being there in my stomach that could be ejected. My head felt like it was wrapped in a thick coating of Styrofoam, trapping the heat and making every movement feel sluggish, and uncontrolled. “Better?” I nodded, feeling like opening my mouth would be a bad idea. I was slowly put down again until my head rested on something that was softer than the ground at least. “You should sleep. I’ll see that I get this cleaned up.”

Everything was spinning again, the bit of movement having taken all I had out of me. What followed would be frantic periods of half-sleep, half fever dream that weren’t restful, but at least distracted enough so I wouldn’t puke again — not that I would be able to remember that afterwards, though. At some point, though, I awoke and felt lucid enough to open my eyes a little to peek. I was lying on the ground, a Gallic jacket had been haphazardly used to cushion my head a little. Judging by the smell, it was not mine. This seemed to be some sort of living room, with the exception of- Woooah, yeah, not normal. Living rooms, usually had four walls, and this one was lacking half of one. Adjusting my head a little, I could just peer onto the street outside. Given that it was dark already and that there were no street lights, apparently, I couldn’t rightly see much beyond the wall, but the street itself seemed to have seen better days.

Someone really needs to tend to this place. I coughed when I turned my head too much, as the ground was powdered with at least half a centimetre of dust. “Hello?” I croaked, my throat being dry from, well, my stomach acid and nothing to drink.

I really didn’t want to sit up.

Sighing inwardly, I slowly raised my upper body, careful to not be too quick and make myself sick again. Alright, this worked out better than I had thought. Apparently, there was a bandage around my head as well. With my hand, I felt along the linen cloth, and noticed a spot that was damp. Withdrawing my hand, though, it was dry. At least it didn’t bleed through, if it was bleeding. Now freer to move, I took in the rest of the room. Nothing remarkable, really. A table whose leg was broken, tilting the entire thing, a closet, a small commode that I could’ve bet had housed a TV at some point, and a door into another room. Well, if it was a bathroom, then I could really do with some water.

Walking was a wobbly affair, but one that I just so managed. Arriving at the door, I pushed it open. Not a bathroom, but some sort of foyer. Made sense, considering this was probably a house. A really dirty one. I spied tiles in a room down the small foyer, so I hobbled there, and voila, a bathroom. With a sink! My hopes were dashed however when the only thing coming out of the tab when I opened it was a gurgle and a whole lot of nothing. “Oh for *****’s sake,” I cursed, in a tone that was almost loud enough for the average conversation. Did I mention already that my throat hurt?

Looking up into the mirror, I had to admit that I looked terrible. Leaning on the sink with both hands, I could see that my eyes were bloodshot. Boy, I really needed bra for those rings under my eyes. Better not to think about this right now. Instead, I started rummaging around the bathroom. Maybe I would find something of value here, since people sometimes had jewelry in their bathrooms, right? Sadly, I came up short, though. So additional pop tarts for me. That is when I noticed something else, though. Where was Gwendoline?

Leaving the bathroom, I turned towards a small set of stairs that would lead up and down. Figuring it didn't matter, I went up, finding myself in a small corridor that led to three rooms. It looked more habitable here, at least. Less dust, and the wallapapers weren't as yellowed.

Left seemed to be a washing room of sorts. Diverse articles of clothing were strewn all across the room, as if someone had haphazardly looked through them without being able to decide what they wanted to wear. Judging by the dust, not recently, though. The next room was another bathroom, this time with an actual shower tub and not just a cell. Fancy family must’ve lived here. There was mould growing on the ceiling that looked like it could be crawling with all sorts of abominations, so I quickly left that room again and closed the door behind me. I really didn’t need that in my life right now.

The last room seemed, curiously enough, to be one belonging to a child. Not a small one, but a teen, maybe. I couldn’t rightly tell with gender, since nothing was really telling of that here. A closet, a bed with unicoloured white (now grey) sheets, all tousled around and I was pretty sure the yellow spot in the middle of the mattress wasn’t from water. There was a small mirror above a commode that had nothing but a set of picture frames on them, so out of curiosity, I picked one up and looked at it. It was a picture of a dog. It was sort of hard to see through the dust. Wiping it away didn’t make it better, so I placed it down again and took another picture. Dog. More dog pictures. “Oh boy,” I muttered, having counted a total of six pictures, all of the same dog. “Isn’t this where normal people have pictures of their family or something? Also: Gwen!” I called out, this time actually manage to be loud enough so the entire house should hear the call. There was a window next to the closet, so I approached and grabbed the handle. It took a considerable amount of force to crank the handle and open the window, probably due to rust, and so it came like it had to as I heard a cracking noise and the window almost fell onto my feet if I hadn’t jumped back a little, making my head spin again.

“Great,” I groused to myself, poking out my head and looking outside through the night. It hadn’t been that dark as I had originally thought it to be. It was simply that, well, from the ground level, it wasn’t that well visible. Debris littered the streets below and a few flickering lights overhead did give some light, illuminating…

I blinked.

There was something not right with that sight. This was Leeds. A planet almost completely covered with city and industry. Everything around here should be bustling with life. The space above them should be filled with metal constructs of the cities that had started to expand towards the skies in search for more space. But here, there was nothing.

I looked up.

I wasn’t in a house. I was in a twenty stories or so apartment complex. This was a residential area. So why was everything so run down and empty? Across the street, I could see the husks of other tall buildings, some of them half razed to the ground and burnt out, and in one of them…

My heart skipped a beat when I saw the remains of a Clydesdale in one of those ruins. Below it, I could see the familiar blue paintjob of the metal container that she and Gwen had sneaked into earlier. Pulling my head back in, I left this room, down the stairs and out of the ruined wall where I had woken up, picking up the jacket I had slept on in the process. It was trickier than I thought to get there to the other side, given the debris that littered the street. If I had paid more attention, I would’ve noticed that the charred stone was akin to that of the apartment husk that I was heading towards, indicating that the Clydesdale had knocked them here.
I couldn’t go in the front door, so I simply climbed through a window whose glass had broken when the ship had crash landed. Now standing in front of it, the entire arrangement looked like it could come tumbling down at any time and crush the container below. “Gwen,” I called out again, figuring that Gwen would have probably come here, maybe? Had we crashed? I couldn’t rightly recall. Why was there a Bretonian ship who’d carried us?

It appeared as though the container itself was largely still intact, though. Giving the Clydesdale above one last, stern look to tell it that it shouldn’t fall on my head, I went to peek inside the container after taking a deep breath of air that smelled like burning. The light had gone off, so it was a bit dark, but still visible. “Gwen?” I repeated, taking a step in, and another. I almost slipped on something soft on the ground.

Clothes? Kneeling down, I picked up a pair of pants. Gallic colours. There were shoes right next to it, simply flung there haphazardly as if the person had been in a hurry. Feeling something hard in the pocket of the pants, I reached in and withdrew a small metal object. Holding it into the light, I could see that it was Gwen’s watch. Why’d she leave her clothes here? Standing up, my eyes fell on something on a toppled over shelf that made me blink. A Gallic rifle. Her rifle.

Reaching out for it, I checked the energy cell. Completely full. With my hand, I opened the small monitor that was affixed to the left hand side of the rifle, wanting to see if it still worked. It came to life as it was intended to, and after a small booting sequence, I could see what looked like a small radar. Gallic rifles were usually equipped with a sensor that worked similar to lifeform detectors on space ships. A small heads up display. This was the reason why, when it came to fighting in close quarters, the Royal Navy had always had an advantage because this tech was not employed like this from any other faction. Just one example of Gallic superiority.

Beep. Beep.

My hands started shaking as I listened to the device. There were two dots right behind me. Two and four metres. I tried listening but there was nothing.

I spun around, my back colliding with the shelf loudly. A shout in a language I didn’t understand and a figure burst out from behind another toppled shelf where it had crouched to avoid being seen. In the dim light, I could see the gleaming of something that I assumed was a weapon as the figure rushed towards me. My eyes widened in surprise as I pulled the trigger.