Asylonia

7. The Temüjin

VII.

Silence. A callous chill filled Noah's veins. Cut off from the rest of his men, he could only pray that they were smart enough not to follow him, that they had been able to get themselves to safety and avoid meeting with the same fate as the Lieutenant.

Noah pulled his suit from shoulder to waist. His ripped muscles glistened in the darkness. Sweat leaked from his pores, trickling over an eagle tattoo with just two names inscribed beneath its mighty wings. He hooked his arms beneath those of Lieutenant Maponos, and carted him into the pilot seat. Finding a packet of cigarettes hiding in the Lieutenant's pocket, he brought one it slowly to his lips and lit it, inhaling deeply, and exhaling with a satisfied sigh as the fire filled his lungs. His eyes followed the flow of smoke, wafting and weaving around the corpse. Black chasms ripped through the skull in the place where eyes once sat. Shredded nerve-endings peered out over the brim of the sockets like visceral eyelashes. Blood oozed from the mangled remains of Maponos' stomach. Noah had never known the Lieutenant all that well - this had only been their first mission together - but he knew him to be a young man. From the vigour of his once unspoiled, now forever charred, skin, and the smooth sheer of his fresh, blonde hair, now disintegrated to a black and red scalp, he guessed Maponos to be no older than twenty-five. Still, the fact that he had barely known his Lieutenant was not as important to Noah as the sombre fact that he never would. He had lost an ally. Earth had lost a defender. Somewhere, a family had lost a son, a brother, a husband, a father.

Wiping a tear with one hand and drawing deeply on his cigarette with the other, Noah surveyed his damaged ship.

His eyes fixed on a fire blanket. He tore it from its packaging and draped it gently Maponos' lap. Another tear-stained his cheek. This time he let it lie there, leaning forward to press a delicate kiss against the scarred forehead of his fallen ally.

'Don't worry, buddy,' he whispered. 'We'll get you home safe. Give you the best damn send off The Motherland ever saw.'

His left arm throbbed with a heavy ache and he pressed at it with his right hand. From the memory of his UEF medical training, Noah knew it to be broken in at least two places. Tucking the shattered limb against his side, he struck up a second cigarette with his free hand and held it between his lips, taking short puffs from it as he slithered almost silently across the yard on his belly. A wall of damaged spacecrafts confronted him, cutting off his path. There was no climbing over it, not with one arm, and no going around it. Instead, Noah reached for his trench knife. He carved a hole in the side panel of a ship sat atop two others, took a few steps back, and charged forward. Wedging himself through the narrow gap, Noah worked his way through the ship, taking care to protect his broken arm, and rolled out the other side like a scuba diver taking off the edge of his boat, only instead of cool, calm water, he landed on cruel, stone-covered ground that drilled pain into his coccyx.

From out of the silence, Noah felt something cold and intense seize the back of his neck. Bitter experience told him he was being choked well before his bulging eyes could fully register the image of a Temüjin whip, squeezing at the throbbing muscles of his throat. Sat with his back against the outer wall of the scrapyard, the flesh of his pulsing face and limbs boiling with seething shades of scarlet, Noah's eyes closed and his teeth ground together. His muscles cramped, and his arms shot upwards above his trembling head. The Temüjin whip seared the rough skin of his palms as he grasped at it. Summoning every ounce of the strength, adrenaline, and desire to live which roared within him, he tugged vigorously on the whip.

The Temüjin guard at the other end of it staggered, yet did not fall. Noah pulled harder still. This time, the guard was divorced from his post and fell forward, the sick smack of his spine against the ground pierced Noah's ears. The General leapt to his feet, freed himself from the noose, and stole the whip from the guard's hand. Sliding his thumb against its switch, the thong of the whip made a whispering shhhhhapp sound as it retracted back into its handle.