Purpose

Maria

As her would-be rescuers departed, she followed, her Predator easily keeping pace with the twin Talons. Gliding over the scorched rock, cloaking device on, she followed less than thirty meters behind, listened to their communications. They were quiet, speaking little, their voices hushed.

"She is nuts," Sandal Three says.

Sandal One sighs. "Wouldn't you be? Seven months alone, fighting those you killed your family? Having nothing left in your life to look forward to?"

Sandal Three does not reply.

-----

The woman in the Predator looks down at the console, her eyes filled with tears. The sensor display lights up.

The Talons with their light sensors do not see the danger.

The Predator slips between the Talons, shoots past them on overdrive. Sandal Three looks to the side. What was that he saw moving out of the corner of his eye? He shakes his head. He is on edge.

Five hundred meters ahead a rounded silver vehicle with stubby legs looms over the edge of a crater. Sandal One snaps a word to his wingmate, charges his ELFs. Sandal Three acknowledges, activates his own weapons. The two vehicles separate and arc off to flank the Executioner.

The silver vehicle rocks as if from a heavy impact, and a series of small explosions light up its underbelly. The golden-brown Predator is visible now, pulling back, then driving forward for another strike of hull on hull and missile on shield. Before the Executioner has a chance to react, its leg snaps, and it topples to one side to lay in a crumpled wreck.

The Talons arrive as the Predator's cockpit opens, and the black-suited pilot jumps out, carrying a laser cutter. Sandal One seals his suit helmet, cracks the cockpit, crouches his vehicle.

-----

The woman deals the massive wreckage a furious kick, striking a small sensor mount and ripping it clean off. She kicks the sensor, sending it sliding a hundred meters over the baked rock, attacks the hull with the cutter. Quickly, efficiently, she cuts her way through the sparkling metal into the cockpit. Sandal One watches as she freezes, drops the laser cutter, crawls inside. When she comes out she is carrying a crumpled figure in a light grey suit, a human.

"Who is that?" Sandal One says over the suit communicator. The woman does not reply, only lays the grey-suited figure down on the shadowed side of her Predator, retrieves the laser cutter, and replaces it on her belt.

"A survivor," she whispers a moment later. "Someone like me."

The Talon pilots return to their vehicles to get their med kits, but the Predator pilot waves them away. "She is fine," she says softly.

"How do you know that?"

"I am a doctor," she says, the annoyance in her voice the first emotion besides sorrow the Talon pilots have yet heard from her.

The woman in the grey suit moans, covers her eyes from the Mercurian glare. "What- where-"

"Your Executioner was destroyed."

"Who are you?" she groans, sits up against the Predator's cockpit.

"I am like you," the Predator pilot says softly. "A ghost..."

The younger woman merely nods, looks over at the destroyed vehicle. "There is a rose," she whispers in a broken voice. "In the vehicle, in a vacuum pod..."

The Predator pilot nods, returns to the Executioner, crawls inside, returns with a small, transparent container. Inside on a thin green stem is a single, beautiful red rose.

The Talon pilots stare at it for a moment, then turn back toward their vehicles. They do not understand.

"It's the only thing to survive the destruction of my colony," the young woman says, reaching out, taking the rose, holding it to her chest as if it were the most precious thing in the universe, which indeed it was.

"Will you go with them or stay here?" the Predator pilot asks softly.

The young woman looks at the Talons, at the wrecked Executioner. "Why would I leave? This is where I belong."

The Predator pilot nods. "If you are still alive, there must be others."

"We must find them!" she cries. "Don't let those monsters destroy anything else!"

"We will find them," the Predator pilot says, quietly, firmly.

"I need something to drive," the younger woman says, glancing at the Executioner.

"I have vehicles. Weapons too, taken from the vehicles I have destroyed."

The young woman looks at the rose. Tears fill her eyes. "This isn't what I really want," she whispers.

The Predator pilot looks southward, toward where her house once stood, toward where now only rubble stands. Her voice is filled with the tears that for once do not sparkle in her eyes. "I know..."

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