Capital City
Lummatii
Lothian League
Marian Hegemony
The Periphery
3 February, 3150
A huge crowd had gathered at the steps of the capital building. Once word came that the pirates had been defeated, an almost parade like atmosphere had developed, with citizens flooding the streets. While the lives of everyday citizens perhaps hadn't hung in the balance no matter what the outcome of the fight had been, there was a general sense of elation at the fact that the specter of economic collapse brought on by the pirate's recent largesse had been lifted. And like any celebration, it had taken on a life of its own as the crowds had grown.
The pirates who had survived the fight had been taken from their cockpits and now were bound and on their knees at the top of the steps, facing the jeering crowd. Freyja walked beside Gunnar Logan, with a parka over her mechwarrior garb, towards where members of the planetary militia guarded the captive pirates.
"So what is all of this?" she asked him.
"The people are letting go of all of the tension that's been hanging over them since the shakeup in pirate leaders. They're relieved, they're celebrating," he paused "And a lot of them are looking to you."
She stopped and turned to him. "To me? All I did was stand up to that bastard."
He nodded. "Which is a hell of a lot more than most people have done before. Look, the government around here has been shaky for decades. Are we Marian subjects, are we Lothian Citizens, what does either of them mean? This planet is fractured and we've fallen back on what has always worked, a network of feudal holdings that all hang together out of necessity. But there wasn't anything uniting them. Nobody to bring them together to keep someone like Trogg from stepping up and shaking everyone down. Those of us with money appreciate you because you saved us from paying a lot out to those guys. The common people see someone coming up from nothing to achieve something great."
Freyja held up her hands. "I hardly came up from nothing. I grew up in a damned castle."
He shook his head. "Not to these people. You came from the bottom of the barrel from what they see, and you kicked the bad guy in the balls."
She played with the long braid of her hair nervously. "I don't want any of this. What the hell am I supposed to do?"
"For now, you don't have to do anything. Just let the people know that the pirates are going to face justice, that it will all be handled, and that they're safe. There's a lot going on here, I know. We will just play it slow. It will all work out fine. You just have to play the happy heroine for a few minutes."
She nodded. She walked the rest of the distance, past the kneeling pirates, until she reached Raiden Trogg. Even bound and with the guns of armed guards trained on him, his huge frame terrified her. She should have caved in his cockpit with the giant hatchet of her mech when she had the chance. Next to Trogg, she noticed the other woman from the night Trogg had visited the Bakkers. She thought she saw a trace of fear in the eyes of the red headed woman.
She faced the crowd. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say right now. We all stood up together, and we stopped these bastards from taking what wasn't theirs. We'll turn them over to the Marian authorities as soon as we can, at least those who haven't committed other crimes." She stopped and turned to face Raiden Trogg. "The criminals among them, we will have stand trial here in the capital."
She stared into Trogg's eyes. "They will face justice"
He smirked unrepentantly at her. "You think you can get rid of me that easy? You think you're on top of the world, don't you? You think you're hot shit, something special? Yeah, well remember, I've seen the real you. I've seen you all broken like a little whore, at my mercy, begging me to stop."
Her rage boiled. It was as if the entire world were collapsing down on her. She felt as though she could barely breathe, and yet he continued on. "I know how you whimper, how you cry, how you taste. How you're nothing but a child, powerless when you come across someone like me."
She looked over at the red haired woman who had helped her the night of her attack. The woman who could have done more, perhaps, but yet had somehow been broken by the villain that now mocked her. In that moment, something in her snapped.
Her eyes darted to the nearest guard, who held an assault rifle at the ready. He had a pistol strapped to his leg. Finally her eyes settled on the knife secured in an arm sheath. Before anyone could react, she yanked the knife free and spun, plunging the blade into the side of Raiden Trogg's huge neck. She let out an almost primal scream as she rammed the knife deeper, hot blood from the wound pouring over her hands as she collapsed on top of the gargantuan pirate leader.
She pressed down, holding the knife in as Trogg struggled at first, then less, before his movements stopped entirely. She felt Gunnar and one of the guards pulling her off of the lifeless body of the pirate, and she was struck by the fact that the crowd below them continued to roar. She struggled to break free until Gunnar grabbed her face in his hands and shouted at her.
The sound of her name being shouted at her snapped her partially out of her rage. She stared at her blood drenched hands as Gunnar quickly ushered her away from the crowd and inside the capital building itself. She fell to her knees and her guts wrenched, causing her to vomit.
She had no idea how much time had passed before she became aware of laying huddled in Gunnar Logan's arms. "Welcome back," he whispered.
"I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. I'm just sorry. He just....he was too fucking arrogant, he was....." Gunnar pressed his fingers to her lips to stop her.
"You don't have to apologize. I know what he did to you. Trust me when I say nobody blames you for what you did."
She nodded, then paused for a moment in thought. "How did you know? I never told you, I didn't want you to think...well...to think about it at all. I didn't wan't you to have to think of me like that."
He sighed gently. "The Bakkers told me, back when you were in the hospital. They thought I should know."
She shook her head. "Why would they think that? It wasn't their place to tell you about that."
He took a deep breath. "I didn't want to tell you like this."
She gave him a scared look. "What are you talking about?"
Gunnar closed his eyes to steel his resolve. "When you were in the hospital, the doctors.....they discovered that you were pregnant. Mrs. Bakker did the math, and given the timing......his attack on you made him a possible father, as well as me."
She pulled away from him and shook her head in disbelief. "And nobody told me? Nobody thought to tell me?!"
He looked away in pain. "We just thought it would be best--"
She cut him off. "You thought it would be best if what? If I didn't know? Well I didn't know. I don't know! I don't know if I just lost your child fighting a fucking battle! I don't know if I just slit the throat of the father of my child! I don't know if I've got the child of that fucking monster growing inside me right now or not. You didn't think I should fucking know?!"
She slapped him as hard as she could muster across his face, then collapsed sobbing into his arms.
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