The Reign is Over – Part 12
I am writing this post ahead of schedule.
Allow me to repeat myself: I am currently writing this blog post, and it is absolutely nowhere near my self-imposed (and oft-missed) deadline of Midnight the day of.
I am, by all accounts, working ahead of schedule.
Do not be alarmed. You are still in the world of the living. I have not been replaced by a doppelganger, nor have I become a pod person.
Last night was a pretty solid wake-up call. While the new job at the new store is not bad in any particular way, the fact of the matter is that I’ve become old. It’s not a function of years, but more a function of mileage. While I’ve made great strides with both my health and my physical exercise routine, I’m still a far cry from healthy. I also have problems that time has made worse, not better.
So when I am presented with something that causes me to wax philosophical (see: complain a lot to the wife), I have to do some soul searching. Is this the life I want for myself? To be given painful scraps, and force myself to find contentment in it? To waste away the years I have left on things that barely even allow me to tread water? So much of my internal dialog has been that I’m better than this. That I’m smarter, more hard working, more valuable than the pitiful excuses for jobs that have been my only companion since I left state employment nearly six years ago.
It takes two to tango however, and after all the explanations and excuses, the only constant is me. Occam’s Razor isn’t accurate all the time, but if every job has become an issue, the issue isn’t the jobs anymore. The issue is me.
Eating humble pie is the absolute worst, but good medicine often has the harshest taste.
I hope I can remember this moment a week from now, or two weeks from now, or two months from now. Motivation and a desire to change is all well and good, but it needs to translate to long term gains or it is just so much pointless moralizing.
I’ve done enough hand-wringing. Time to roll up my sleeves and get to work.
The Reign is Over – Part 12
The lurid green of plasma fire slammed into walls and flesh as the firefight dragged on. Lieutenant Armsworth had managed to find a good position at the doors edge to allow Brutus to wind up once more, and within moments of joining the fray, the deadly weapon had swept through five of the attackers.
Lieutenant McNamara’s job had become very simple. But like most simple things, getting the job done would prove far harder in practice. Her sole responsibility now would be pinning down the attackers so that they could not make a clean break for the doorway leading to the rest of the storage facilities. She had to force them to stay and fight it out. It was risky, requiring her to man her post along the bottom edge of the sliced-out section of the door. The door-frame could absorb enough punishment to offer effective cover, but that left her head and face exposed as she pumped out shot after shot.
She took a hit to the helmet, the force of the blast ramming the helmet into her forehead. The edge of the helmet bit flesh, and a small trickle of blood marred her face as she frantically undid buckles and straps to remove the now red-hot headgear. She threw it backwards with a grunt of frustration and took her place once more at the doorway. Helmet or not, she couldn’t afford for her attackers to fall back and regroup. Her team was taking a pounding, but it would be far worse if these goons had another chance to take them by surprise.
Officer Griggs and Officer Horatio were both down. Griggs had taken a shot directly to the face, and Horatio had taken three hits in quick succession to the chest. The armor held, but it had heated so quickly from the absorbed energy that he had started cooking in it. Those unable to join the firefight hauled him back and did their best to remove the armor as quickly as they could, but the smell of charred flesh and the horrid black and red burns that coated his chest would haunt her nightmares anyway.
Nightmares would require her to survive however, so she gritted her teeth and kept harrying the alcoves which still housed armed thugs. She caught one goon who had been trying to make a break for the door, clipping him in the leg. He yowled at the thigh shot, but his holler of pain and rage was soon cut off as another blast caught him mid-chest and finished the work McNamara had started.
She kept at the grim business, and before another minute had elapsed two-thirds of the hired muscle had been brought low. Brutus was whirring down, the heat of the barrel and the tiny fusion engine too high from over-use. Armsworth was breathing like a bellows, face and chest coated in sweat from the heat of the weapon and the effort of maintaining accurate fire from cover with a meter long death-stick.
The goons began to realize that Laszlo had cut and run the instant return fire started to appear, and that they and the rest of their fellows had been left to die. Laszlo knew McNamara would have no choice but to work as she had, absorbing the losses to take out the ambush party in a clean fight rather than risk greater harm from any of them in future. It had weakened her while costing him relatively little, and if he had been willing to waste nineteen perfectly good military-grade assault rifles on disposable shock-troops, then this mission would cost even more lives before the last shot was fired.
The incoming plasma bolts abated, and abruptly they ceased entirely. The remaining seven attackers began throwing out their rifles at irregular intervals. The weapons skated across the floor towards the position of the assault team, and on their heels came their owners. Their hands were up above their heads as each knelt down and moved upraised hands down to the back of their heads. Each motion was done with exaggerated care, all of them demonstrating familiarity with police procedure.
McNamara and her team had won this round, but the price-tag was the death of four good souls and a newly-crippled Corporal. The price was not worth the payout.
Lieutenant McNamara let out a sigh and set her rifle on the ground, head bowed to rest her forehead on the cool marble. She knew that tears would not be denied forever, that new names would be added to the lists she had carved into her soul. Her dreams would find new ways to torment her. Yet this was a price she had promised herself she would pay. The little girl standing beside her parents empty boxes at their funeral had always known this was the price she would have to pay.
It was up to her to make sure she, and she alone, bore as much of that price as she could. She owed it to every one of the names written on the walls of her mind.
To be continued…
Somberfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
