From Last Time:
Enza watched as Lok Sim closed his eyes and pulled her little niece into his arms. Thia wrapped her arms around his neck as he cradled the back of her head with one hand and gently kissed the crown of her hair. "Be good," he whispered.
Enza could see the hesitance in his expression as he let Thia go and rose to his feet. "I should go," he said quietly.
"May fortune be with you, Sergeant," Enza said.
"Thank you, ma'am," he replied.
Impulsively, instinctively, Enza stepped toward him, wrapping her arms around him. For a long moment, he remained still. Embarrassment and mortification rose up inside her until his arms came around her, engulfing her in his embrace. "Be careful," she whispered.
"I will," he replied. He held her just a fraction longer than necessary before withdrawing reluctantly. "Goodbye ma'am, goodbye, Thia," he said as he opened the door and lifted his pack. He stepped out, closing the door behind him with a soft click.
********
New Stuff:
"Hey little guy!" Jimmy exclaimed as they approached the farmhouse. Martha stood on the porch, holding Jon in her arms. Jimmy ran ahead of Lois, bounding toward the house with his typical, youthful enthusiasm.
"Thank you for having me over, Mrs. Kent," he said.
"Call me Martha, Jimmy," she replied, smiling. "And we're always happy to have you."
Lois walked up the path to the house and up the porch steps. "How was Metropolis?" her mother-in-law asked.
Lois smiled somewhat wearily. "You know what it's like this time of year," she replied.
"I thought the crazy shopping didn't start until tomorrow," Martha said.
"It doesn't, but it does seem like half the world is in town for the parade." Jon stretched toward his mother and she took him in her arms. She kissed his cheek. "Did he behave himself?"
"Perfect angel, as always," Martha replied.
"Well, he gets that from his daddy, doesn't he?" Her eyes met Martha's and she could see in them the sadness she felt.
"He does," Martha agreed softly.
"How's my little boy doing?" Lois asked as she looked at her son. She adjusted the cap on his head, pulling it back down over his ears. "Excited to see your Uncle Jimmy? Yes, this is Uncle Jimmy, do you remember him?"
"Hey, little J," Jimmy said cheerfully.
Jon smiled shyly before burying his head against his mother's neck. "Would you like to hold him?" Lois asked.
"Sure," Jimmy replied, smiling. He took Jon from Lois.
"Why don't we get inside," Martha said. "The turkey's resting and Jonathan's setting the table."
"Resting?" Jimmy asked as he stepped into the house.
"Yeah, apparently turkeys need to rest after you roast them," Lois replied as she pulled the screen door closed behind them. "Don't ask me; this is why I don't cook."
********
Lois found Jimmy on the porch, a cup of steaming apple cider clasped tightly in his hands. He leaned over the railing, staring out into the darkened night. He looked up at the sound of the door closing behind her. "Hey," he said. "Happy Thanksgiving."
"Happy Thanksgiving, Jimmy," she replied. She stood beside him and neither said anything for a long moment.
"Are holidays tougher?" he asked.
"Yeah," she replied. "Especially the ones when you're supposed to be thinking about how thankful you are. I mean I am…I have a beautiful son, and wonderful friends, and a family that couldn't be more loving and supportive. But he's not here to share any of it with me."
"He'll be back as soon as he can," Jimmy said.
"I know," she replied. "I know he will."
"And he's going to be so amazed at everything you've accomplished," Jimmy said.
Lois smiled sadly. A lot had happened to her in the last few years. She'd been swept up in so much, but she wasn't quite sure if her efforts had been good enough. It always felt like there was more she could do. "Hey, what about you? You got your first Kerth this year."
He looked down at the mug in his hands. "It felt so weird, getting an award for taking that picture. I didn't do anything; I just stood there and watched my friend go through something so horrible."
"You did a lot more than that," she said. "Jimmy, everything on the ground changed because of that photo. It's like I was yelling in the rain at no one at all for a year. Then you took that picture and suddenly everyone started to pay attention."
"How is everything over there?" he asked.
"We're making progress, I guess," she replied. "Sealing borders, disarming the rebels, you know."
"Yeah," he said.
"Thank you, for doing this with me," she said.
"Lois, this was all you, I just helped a little bit," he demurred.
"It meant everything to me," she replied. She pulled her young friend into a hug, feeling tears prick her eyes. She let go and stepped back.
"We'd better get back inside," she said after a long moment, trying to smile. "If we're gone too long, they're going to assume we forfeited our pie."
*********
Lok Sim closed his eyes as he listened to the low hum of the transport. All around him, soldiers – real, battle-hardened soldiers – sat in silence, and he wondered once again what in the world he was doing there. The sound of footsteps caused him to look up. Commander Talan walked by him and suddenly stopped, sitting down in the empty seat next to his.
"How are you, Sergeant?" she asked.
"Fi…fine, ma'am," he stammered slightly, wondering why she would have noticed him. Up close, the commander seemed to have an aura about her. Her power to intimidate wasn't just a result of her unusual height; Lok Sim figured he had several inches and about fifty pounds on her, but her presence still commanded his attention.
"Nervous?" she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," he replied, trying not to shrink under the gaze of her hard, gray eyes.
She nodded thoughtfully. "It's all right," she said.
"I just…I've never been in combat, before," he admitted.
"If I do my job properly, I'll keep your record unblemished," she replied.
"Ma'am, can I ask you a question?" he ventured hesitantly.
"Certainly, Sergeant."
"How do you know? Before you're ever in that sort of combat situation, how do you know how you'll react? I'm not a coward, I mean, I don't think I'm one, but how can I be sure I won't freeze up out there?"
"You can't," she replied simply. "No one knows how they'll react until they're there."
"Were you afraid, the first time you went into combat?" he asked.
"I was," she said without hesitating. "Every soldier in this transport was."
"Oh," he said, not sure how to reply.
"Remember your training," she counseled. "Keep your eyes open, do your job, and trust your fellow soldiers."
"Aye, ma'am, thank you," he said with an anxious nod. The commander stood up and walked toward the back of the transport. Lok Sim closed his eyes again. He took deep breaths, trying to stave off the impending sense of nausea. His skin was cold and clammy, his throat as dry as sand, and he felt like he couldn't sit still another moment longer. He wanted to be anywhere else but on that transport.
********
Talan gripped tightly to the overhead handle as the lumbering transport touched down. The doors opened and the soldiers lined up to rush off the ship and into the night. They ran past her in a tight group. She grabbed onto the arm of her grizzled sergeant, Faral, as he approached the doors and pulled him aside. "I need you to keep that new communications engineer alive and safe," she instructed. "He's the best we have and there isn't a single one of us who can do his job, understood?"
"Of course, ma'am," Faral replied.
"Good, go," she said tersely.
********
"Lois, I'm not going to run this," Perry said emphatically.
"Yes you are, chief," she insisted gently.
"Dammit!" Perry yelled as he threw the mockup across his office. Lois watched silently as at hit the wall behind his couch. "I will not have you excoriated on my editorial page."
"They're not criticizing me, they're criticizing Ultrawoman and the UN, and it's not your editorial page, it's the editorial board's editorial page," Lois replied wearily. "If they want to criticize Ultrawoman, that's their right."
"But they're wrong."
"What about freedom of the press?"
"It's still my press," Perry said stubbornly.
"You know, I'm not seeing a lot of benevolence in the benevolent dictator bit tonight," she said, distancing herself as best she could. The editorial was hurtful and it stung and contrary to what Perry said, it wasn't wrong. When pressed, she'd refused to comment on the terms of the agreement, but she'd stated that she was relieved that the fighting was going to end. In that sense, she had tacitly endorsed a terribly flawed peace agreement - one that granted amnesty to the worst of the worst. But what choice had she had? If she hadn't agreed to assist the UN in upholding the pact, there was no way the government of Togoro would have agreed to it and no way it would have allowed in the international force. The rebels would still be moving freely across the borders and she'd have absolutely no help disarming them. She'd have no authority to arrest the other war criminals and bring them to justice. There would have been no way she could have provided the security guarantees necessary to get the humanitarian organizations back in the region to perform their life saving work. She'd been forced to choose between war and an imperfect peace. It was her ideals or other people's lives. She'd made the only choice she could.
"But this is you, Lois. I cannot let the board use my paper to hurt you," he replied, the sadness clear in his voice.
"I appreciate it, Perry, I really do. But I've already given up so much of what I believe in here, I'm not going to undermine something I've fought my entire career for. Let the board run the editorial," she said as she stood up.
********
Clark paced the floor of the High Council's chambers – New Krypton's chapel of democracy. Every day, the councilors packed into this assembly hall and debated the issues – earth shattering and mundane – that faced the people. Now, in the middle of the night, the chambers were totally silent and still. He glanced over his shoulder at the pair of immense chairs from which he and Zara presided over the Council meetings.
He closed his eyes wearily, trying not to think of the nightmares that had woken him. He'd thought about contacting Talan, but she was still deployed in some deep, dark, barely explored region of the world. Over the last few weeks, he'd tried contacting her several times, whenever the burden seemed too much to bear, but she was never there. She was out hunting Nor constantly, and in those few moments when she wasn't, didn't she deserve a little quiet? Was it fair to burden her with his problems when she faced death on a daily basis?
He wondered, not for the first time, what possessed him to come here, what made him think he could lead a planet at war? Staring up at the hundred seats in the assembly, he wondered about the councilors who sat there every day, judging him and the decisions he made, scrutinizing his every move, wondering if he was capable of this burden.
In truth, he wanted to be good enough, strong enough, to lead these people. To bring peace to their world. He wanted to overcome the weakness in himself, the fear and the loathing.
But he wasn't good enough, was he?
He thought about all the people who'd died at Silban, and Breksin, and Terian, and a dozen other settlements across the planet. He thought about the medic, Rayid, who'd treated his wounds the very first time he'd been injured. The medic who'd been dead more than a year now. He thought about the little boy at Silban – the one he'd pulled from the rubble. Clark had told him that everything was going to be all right, even though he'd known damn well that it wasn't. He thought about the guards who'd been killed the day he'd been captured. They'd died protecting him.
He hadn't been good enough or strong enough to help these people. They'd needed him, and he hadn't been able to protect them. He sat in the First Minister's chair, like a court jester usurping a king's throne. He didn't belong there. He didn't belong anywhere anymore. Even if he went back to Earth that very moment, he still wouldn't be home. He wouldn't be whole.
********
"How is he?" Ching inquired softly.
"Clark?" she asked.
"You're thinking about him, aren't you?"
"I worry about him," she replied. Zara turned onto her side to look at her lover. "He's in so much pain and he won't talk to me."
Ching took her hand, knotting his fingers through hers. "Is he speaking to anyone?"
"I think he talks to Talan," she said.
"I hope he does," Ching replied. "I hope she can help him make sense of what he's been through."
Zara bit her lip, deep in thought. "He doesn't sleep," she said. "At night, I can hear him in the outer room. And sometimes, he seems to just disappear in the middle of the night. He comes back in the morning and says nothing. I never ask him where he goes, and I don't think he'd tell me."
"He tends to disappear a bit in the day, too. He managed to get rid of his guard detail for hours one morning a few weeks ago. He was fine. It turns out he and Talan had gone for a run." She said nothing in response and Ching arched a brow at her. "You think he's having an affair with her?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so; he loves Lois too much. But I'm not sure." The uncertainty was suddenly hanging there between them, heavy in the air. She was probably wrong to wonder, she told herself.
"And if he was?" Ching asked gently.
"Please do not ask me to judge him," she said. "He has been through so much that we cannot begin to understand. And he is so alone." She knew how much Lois meant to him; Clark loved Lois as completely as she loved Ching. She wanted to believe that despite the years of separation, with no end in sight, he'd kept that love at the center of his thoughts. But if he couldn't, if the loneliness was too much to bear, she couldn't bring herself to hold it against him.
********
Lois swept into the rebel camp, hidden deep in the forest of the Lake Regina Valley. But all the camouflage in the world wouldn't have protected the rebels from her. In the darkness, she was able to tie up each of the camp's guards before they could sound the alarm. She found the target of her search and radioed the commander of the British SAS unit. The commandos swarmed the compound, taking it without firing a shot. Satisfied that the situation was under control she turned back to the reason she was here; she had an arrest warrant to carry out.
She burst into the concrete and cinderblock building to find her suspect – a rebel general suspected of carrying out numerous attacks on refugee camps – in bed. He scrambled to sit upright as she strode into the room. She could see his jaundiced eyes go wide with terror as she stood, grim faced over him. As she reached under her cape, he jumped backward, cowering. Lois held up the folded piece of paper she'd tucked under her cape.
"Leo Kumassi, by the power of the Security Council of the United Nations, I hereby present this warrant for your arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity," she announced, her voice harsh and stern, as she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out of the building.
A pair of SAS men jogged over toward her and took the prisoner into custody, restraining his hands behind his back with handcuffs. They frog marched him off to a waiting vehicle as she lifted off the ground and turned back toward home.
********
Clark shrank back against the wall at the sound of footsteps. He shivered, freezing in the damp basement. He knew that he couldn't disappear. Even in the darkness, thin and wasted though he was, there was nowhere he could hide. Nor would find him.
A door at the top of the steps opened and light flooded into the underground room. He shielded his eyes with one manacled hand.
"Kal El." Nor announced his name boastfully, as though his triumph over his enemy had already been completed. And hadn't it been? "Let's see, where should we pick up today?" his tormentor mused aloud. Nor's boots thudded as he slowly descended the steps.
He walked leisurely toward Clark. Clark pressed his back against the cold wall of his prison. Chained down, he couldn't stand up, and he certainly couldn't fight or flee. "Oh yes, you were about to tell me what that word means. Low-iss," Nor hissed as he stopped right in front of his prisoner. "Perhaps you're wondering why I care. What in the world I could possibly stand to gain from whatever it is you mutter in that mongrel tongue of yours. It's simply this, Kal El," Nor said as he leaned over Clark. "There is nothing you have, nothing dear to you, which I cannot take. Nothing of yours that I will not make mine. So let's save the both of us some trouble. Tell me what it means."
Clark looked up at his captor in defiant silence.
Nor grinned evilly at him. "Have it your way." With both hands, he raised a metal baton high over his head and prepared to swing.
Clark shuddered so hard he woke himself, his heart still thundering. In the darkness, he couldn't be certain that he wasn't in Nor's dungeon. He looked around frantically, realizing he was in his bed, in his small room, safely tucked within the First Ministers' residence.
On legs that still trembled, he stood up and walked out of his room. He just needed to do something, to think about something, nothing, anything other than what he'd just relived. He needed to get his mind off it. But he couldn't contact her. Her unit was probably on maneuvers. Besides, at some point, didn't he need to learn to stand on his own again? He couldn't keep running to others when his troubles seemed overwhelming. Clark sat at his desk and buried his head in his hands. Morning was still hours away. He wanted to scream out in frustration, but refrained. Zara was asleep in the next room and there was no need to wake her.
He looked down at the chain resting against his bare chest and picked up Lois's ring. Holding it tightly in his hand, he closed his eyes, concentrating on the feeling of the metal band being pressed against his palm.
********
"Very nicely done, Ultrawoman," Dalton said as he stood up from his wingback chair. The Canadian ambassador's secretary closed the door behind Lois as she stepped into Dalton's office.
"I'm really not in the mood, Dalton," she replied sourly.
"You just arrested another war criminal, in a war that you forced the world to stop. Isn't this cause for celebration, or at least a moment of proud reflection?"
"Yes, the man I arrested was a terrible human being, and capturing him gave me all sorts of warm and fuzzy feelings, but the architects of this genocide are still free and they're going to stay free."
"We do what we can," Dalton said simply.
"What about doing what needs to be done?" she challenged.
"You know it's not that simple. This was the best result we could hope for."
"I sold out my own credibility for this? I hedged and I lied about governments no society should have to put up with. I police a cease fire that protects a war criminal. I've given up everything I believe in…"
"That's a load of crap," Dalton shot back, startling her out of her indignant tirade. "You traded some of your values for ones you think are more important. You prioritized. Your untarnished, squeaky-clean credibility, or hundreds of thousands of innocent people's lives? You made a choice; are you going to tell me now it was the wrong one?"
This was one of the handful of times Lois could recall being rendered speechless. Dalton took his seat again and picked up his glass of rye. He swirled the amber liquid in its glass before continuing more calmly. "You made a deal with the devil, we all do. I make a dozen of them every day before noon. The difference is, you didn't get ripped off. You played their game and you beat them at it. I'm not expecting you to be happy about what you had to give up to win, but don't lose sight of the fact that you did win. People are alive today who wouldn't be if you hadn't done what you did. Now have a drink with me. If not to celebrate, then to drown our sorrows."
********
"Good morning, Ching," Clark said as he adjusted the cuffs on his wrists.
"Good morning, sir," Ching replied from the doorway to the First Ministers' chambers.
"What do you have to report?"
"Good news from Commander Talan," Ching said. "Her forces retook the southern pass last night. That will open up a better supply corridor to the settlements on the other side."
"Excellent," Clark replied.
"Those farming settlements are vital to the colony, but close to hostile territory. The governors of the settlements are hoping for a high level meeting to discuss the protection of the region and maintenance of the supply corridor."
"Then we should go there," Clark said.
"We could always bring the governors here," Ching replied.
"And suggest that I won't go out there even though they spend every day of their lives in those settlements, because my safety is more important than theirs?" Clark challenged.
"You are a very high profile target, sir," Ching responded.
"I'm tired of hiding," Clark replied flatly. "Contact Talan. If she thinks her forces can provide security for a meeting, we'll arrange it."
"Very good, sir," Ching said in that tone that let Clark know that he still disagreed.
********
"General Commander Flad sends his congratulations, ma'am," her new communications engineer informed her.
"Thank you, Sergeant," she replied.
"And the schedule for the First Ministers' arrival has been finalized."
Talan nodded, tight lipped. Since she'd last seen Kal El, she'd had weeks to try to make some sense of her startling emotional awakening. The distance had done her good, she realized. Odd as it may have seemed, by concentrating on her work, she'd at least come to understand the rage that had been building up inside her. Her forces had continued to beat back Nor's and inch by inch, they were reclaiming their world.
But though she'd stared down armies, she wasn't certain she was ready to see Kal El again.
This, this was certainly cowardice. She hoped desperately that while she'd been away, he'd been all right. It wasn't the case that she'd gone out of her way to ignore him – maintaining regular communication was simply impossible while she was deployed – but the effect was the same. They hadn't spoken in weeks and she had no idea what he was experiencing.
The time and the space, though, gave her a certain freedom to think about what she'd realized. Loving him didn't change anything, not really, anyway. She was still his friend and what he wanted more than anything in the world was to return home to the wife and family who loved him dearly. It was perhaps odd that she didn't dwell on what things would have been like if fortune had led them down different paths. Because it wasn't simply an issue of luck or timing that prevented her from thinking about what her feelings for him meant. He belonged with his wife. His complete and utter devotion to her was one of the things Talan admired most about him. It was a fundamental part of who he was – part of what made him so thoroughly decent.
So it only made sense that the best thing she could do was focus completely on the task at hand and hasten the end of this war. And if being apart from him made it easier to give herself perspective on what she knew was the right and proper thing to do, it was merely a fortunate by product. It was better for everyone this way.
********
Alon rushed down the corridor toward his office. He'd been out of contact with Rae Et for weeks. There was no particular reason he had to be overcautious, but with the First Ministers' decision to appoint Ching as the new head of intelligence, an unknown factor had entered the equation. Ching was far too shrewd not to find any traces of Alon's involvement in various questionable enterprises, given enough time. As far as Alon could tell, he was still safe. Nonetheless, he conducted his affairs face to face as often as he could, avoiding the use of the communications systems whenever possible. And he used far more intermediaries than he would have preferred, but he could not risk exposing important contacts throughout the colony.
It was most likely paranoia he knew, but treason wasn't exactly an activity for the reckless. If he intended to survive this political mess, he needed to be cautious. Now, however, he possessed information that would be of extreme interest to Rae Et. In fact, he knew she would never let him survive if he withheld what he knew. Unfortunately for Alon, his only means of contacting her were through the communications system. He could encrypt his signal, but if his communications were being monitored, that would buy him about a day, perhaps a little more.
So he held onto the information for as long as he dared. Now, a day before their scheduled departure, he had the First Ministers' closely guarded itinerary—straight from a trusted source. He couldn't delay any longer. He would keep the transmission as brief as possible, cloak it in static and have it encrypted, but there was still a risk.
Of course, given what Rae Et was capable of doing to him, it was a risk he would have to take.
