| From: | Paul J. Adam Shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk |
|---|---|
| Subject: | The Edge of Destruction |
| Date: | Tue, 4 May 1999 22:52:47 +0100 |
>>>>>[+++++begin diary
I don't know where the time's gone. I blinked, and a couple of months
were gone.
There is just so _much_ to do. I've got an army of four thousand men,
and nearly fifteen hundred hybrids, and nearly five thousand _invae_ on
ice. We're playing pirate all over the region, hitting passenger ferries
and fishing boats to harvest warm bodies for the Queen, and in between
times my army is learning how to be soldiers.
They don't like it, of course. Snake Woman might have been a good spook,
but militarily he was clueless. No wonder Rusanov smashed the Doctor's
horde in Yemen, if he was running them. They got comfortable and happy
as a gunned-up rabble, and then I landed and started changing things.
I still don't dare turn my back on them. But they're becoming soldiers,
not a mob. It just takes so much _time_.
Nar'moh'ach is distracted. Strange rituals in his inner sanctum, rarely
emerging, he simply tells me to spend whatever I need to spend and do
whatever I need to do to make our army happen. I've bought uniforms for
our motley horde, replaced heavily-armed but hopelessly unreliable BMP-
4s with Mowag Shark APCs, standardised the force's rag-tag weaponry,
millions of nuyen spent, and I'm accountable to nobody for it. I wonder
where Snake Woman put the money? Not into his duties, it seems...
Kathleen is a great help to me, though not in the way Nar'moh'ach might
have expected. We were almost frantic lovers for a few days, before I
_looked_ at her, saw the fear hiding behind the mask of pretended
desire, realised she was terrified I'd start blasting her with the pain
buzzer. Or, worse, that if she didn't please me I'd turn her over to the
guards to be their sex toy: it turns out that Nar'moh'ach let her watch
them amuse themselves with the prettier prisoners before they're
cocooned for the Queen, to show her what would befall her if she didn't
please me.
But I don't want a terrified partner: rather none at all. We talked, we
realised... that the only thing our marriage really had, was mutual lust
and that was pretty much burned out even when we split. Now? Now, we're
really two strangers living in a gilded cage. I've got an army to train:
she's got damn-all to do except to help me. So I made her my admin
officer, and now she's got something for her mind to work on. Good
thing, too, else she'd be sharpening her claws on me... and I know what
a bitch Kathleen can be when it suits her.
Now, we live together, sleep together, we even make that last figurative
as well as literal - but just occasionally, when the mood feels right.
Mostly, we've managed something we never did before: we've become
friends.
I'd hardly have believed it if someone told me it would happen. The only
thing less likely would be Lilith Running Wolf Lynch turning up and
demanding that _she_ should be my sex slave... unfortunately, that ideal
has yet to material. If she ever shows, she'll be here to kill me and
wipe the rig off the face of the Earth.
Better make sure we're ready. Because I have a grim conviction that it
won't be 'if', but 'when'.
+++++end diary]<<<<<
-- C F Mitchell <22:52:56/05-04-60>
