I came upon this mostly unfinished short going through my old hard drive and figured the three of you that still browse here might enjoy it.
Went through and edited it slightly but it's still in the same erratic, achronological format I wrote it in.
I think it was intended to be backstory for my character when I wrote it a few years back
(also in edgier and slightly more cringey times, but hey - internet anonymity)
Here goes
...
There were no documents: the sea-chests filled with the lifestuffs of the refugee fleet: provisions, trinkets, and hiding among them a girl, young- not more than seven or eight. She was brown-skinned, Nalmese like the rest of the refugees, curled charcoal hair tangled and matted with grease and blood,bruised knees clutched in her childish hands as she lay curled up in the oaken chest, still with fear. She must've ran from the sounds of battle: hiding herself among the supplies amidst the chaos around her. As she stared, the girl raised her head slowly, tentatively bringing her eyes against the dark glasses above her. They were blue eyes she remembered, eyes like her own. Blue like the sky of an aviator's dream, eyes filled with fear and horror and yet staring upwards with such longing hope, eyes which she came to realize were her own eyes, staring back from her past. Endless pools of blue through which she once again saw that hazy afternoon in Nam-shen, the Arashi raiders sweeping into the quiet farming village like a swarm of locusts, devouring all they saw and destroying what they couldn't, running her mother through with a rusty blade, and relishing in it, laughing at it. In those eyes she saw again the mercantile guild couple, rich, young, who found a scarred, bewildered girl amid the embers of her slaughtered village and took her in, and the hope in those eyes was her hope, and the despair in them was her despair as the couple discarded the girl like a passing fancy, a stray kitten that had turned into a lanky, spitting she-cat, dumping her with the shine drinking "uncle" in the outskirts of Anvala, the one that beat her and made her work as a whore; and once again, the hate she found was her hate as she killed the man and found refuge in the cannon and sword of the Anvalan Air fleet. Her life story, played out in its entirety in the endless pools of blue before her. And yet without a thought she de-holstered her .357 Bengston revolver, aimed down the barrel, and blew open the girl's head, gore splattering over the stained oak.
Orders were, after all, orders.
When no documents were found admiral Sparer ordered the ships burned, the sailors whooping and cheering as the flaming hulks drifted down into the sands below. All the sailors that is, but one. A week later she was shot down over Gabriel's Pass, the entire squadron obliterated in a blitz attack by nomad raiders. Her galleon sinking towards the sand below in flames, she managed to unspool a sky-anchor and survived. Barely. But in the long trek back to civilization, and for many years wandering the burren as a mercenary afterwards, she could never shake the image of those two wells of blue staring backwards into her soul.
...
The orders came to the 7th division, 12th heavy support squadron of the Anvalan air fleet, borne upon the wings of a desert falcon. Its rust-red plumage a splash of color against the burren below as it glided, riding the rising spirals of heat with its broad, outstretched wings, and bore to a landing upon the beefy gloved arm of Admiral Julius Sparer. Nobody knew how the birds accomplished such a feat, flying hundreds of miles to a constantly shifting location with such uncanny accuracy; perhaps, they speculated,
Perched upon the rigging of the ship above, the girl with no name watched with a scowl on her face, brushed aside her sun baked hair, and returned to polishing her gun.
And something Else:
The desert is a tactician’s dream and a quartermaster’s nightmare.
The 47th luftebattalion was engaged to the fullest sense of the term. The attack had come roaring through the thunder of an abating sandstorm, the opening barrage of rocket fire catching the weary vanguard relishing in the first fresh air for days. Chain of command had immediately been shattered, the chaos compounded by the loss of communication lines across the ridge; and the Commodore of artillery galleon squadron Niju-ichi was pleasantly surprised at the sporadic and uncoordinated ground fire directed back at his ships.
...
Flares signalled desperately for close support but their junkers, outnumbered and hastily mustered, were fighting a valiant if ultimately hopeless engagement against charging formations of Yeshan fighters.
