Posted by Extranjero on May 14, 2007 at 10:58:46:
STORM SISTERS (Part 3)
The courtyard was a patchwork of white snow and bloody slush. The garrison lay strewn across the square. The pock-marked house looked down at them with gaping, glassless windows. A wintry silence blanketed the base.
The rasp of a match seemed loud amid the devastated stillness. The small flame hissed and sputtered in the cold. Nikola inclined her head to light a fresh cheroot. A wry amusement glinted in her eyes.
Dead girls sprawled on every side, their hands still clasped to punctured breasts and bellies. She looked from face to upturned face – saw hurt dismay and wide-eyed disbelief. Breathing a stream of pungent smoke, she turned towards the palace. The breeze stirred tattered curtains, but the rooms beyond were lifeless empty shells.
A horse whickered behind her and she turned back to her troop. The Black Cossacks were lined up by the gate. Their hard young faces watched without expression. This kind of carnage wasn’t new to them.
Nikola retraced her steps, her bootheels crunching in the bloody snow. One of the mounts was riderless. She took it by the reins. A naked girl had been slung across the saddle. She dangled with her head down and her slender wrists bound tight behind her back.
Nikola grinned wryly, the cheroot between her teeth. She drew a skinning knife out of her coat. The captive girl was conscious – tense and quivering with cold. She whimpered as her head was levered up. Her breasts hung full and milky pale. The tips were bloodless buds. Nikola stroked them with the knife, then slid the blade along the rebel’s throat.
“Right, you little bitch,” she purred. “Perhaps you’d like to tell us where they’ve gone.”
* * *
Leilani had the dreadful sense of drowning in black mud. She felt a tide of it on top of her. Panicking, she clawed at it, but couldn’t get a purchase. Then the dark was bleached away, and she found herself curled up in clean white sheets.
She sat up with a gasp for breath. Her hair was lank and hanging in her eyes. She realised she was nude, and slick with greasy perspiration. A sallow, snowy daylight filled the room.
Someone in a plain black gown was sitting on the bed. Leilani blinked and saw that it was Lena. Her lover’s face was anxious, but she managed a wan smile. The sheet slid off Leilani’s breasts. Some instinct made her draw it up again.
“Battalion Leader. Welcome back,” a woman’s voice said dryly.
Leilani turned her head towards the speaker. She saw a sweet-faced blonde girl leaning over the high footboard of the bed. A fur-lined hood was pulled around her features like a halo, but the velvet cloak beneath it hung apart. The girl wore sheer black lingerie, despite the cold outside. She had a quite delightful pair of tits.
Leilani eyed the girl’s fair flesh. She swallowed, trying to lubricate her throat. Lena sat too stiffly, like a cat alert to danger. There were other people waiting in the room.
A stocky girl with short brown hair stood just behind the blonde. She was peering at Leilani with the squint of someone too vain to wear glasses. Her face was sullen, lips pursed tight. Leilani felt her hatred. She wore a French blue jacket and a matching calf-length skirt.
Leilani guessed she was an ex-Doll Soldier. The hapless girls were often made to re-enact the doomed Retreat from Moscow. The jacket was unbuttoned and its breasts were looped with braid. Beneath, the girl’s own breasts were pert, cocooned by a red bra.
In contrast to the period clothes, she wore a modern pistol on her hip. A Beretta 92, Leilani guessed. From the sour expression on her face, she looked like she could use it. Leilani’s bosom tensed beneath the sheet.
Another girl was standing by the window. She wore a khaki side-cap and a parka that engulfed her slender frame. Clearly she’d deserted from a different theatre. She held a drum-fed sub-machine gun pointed at the bed.
Leilani squirmed uncomfortably and looked back at the blonde. Amusement flickered in the girl’s green eyes. “I hope you had a pleasant sleep,” she murmured. “I guess you’re wondering why you’re still alive.”
“Maybe,” said Leilani guardedly. She glanced at Lena. Her lover stared back levelly without a hint of fear. Leilani smiled, and then her dark eyes narrowed at the blonde. “My girls aren’t, though. So who the hell are you?”
“My name’s Danielle,” the blonde girl said, still smiling; leaning forward. Her splendid cleavage deepened to a gulf. Leilani glimpsed the dark disks of her nipples through the bra. She felt a quiver of instinctive lust.
“Hi, Danielle,” she sneered before the feeling could take hold. “We’ll cut your foxy tail off in the end.”
The surly girl’s eyes glittered, but Danielle seemed unperturbed. “Perhaps you will,” she said. “But in the meantime, I want you.”
Leilani’s eyes were drawn back to her cleavage. Then, still covering her breasts, she reached for Lena’s hand. “Sorry,” she said flatly. “I’m already spoken for.” Her girlfriend’s fingers tightened round her own.
Danielle smiled engagingly. “I didn’t mean it quite like that,” she said. “I brought you here because of what you are.”
“And what’s that, then? An officer? The Field Brigades don’t brake for hostages.”
“A killer of Commanders,” said Danielle.
Leilani blinked, and felt her stomach shrinking. The blonde girl’s smile was colder now. It glinted with a calculating edge.
“We rebels have our spies,” she went on softly. “I know some things about your history. Like how you led a Doll Soldier rebellion, and buried three Commanders under their own citadel.”
Leilani’s skin felt clammy now. “That was another life,” she muttered hoarsely.
“Sure it was,” Danielle agreed. “They thought that they could use you. And then one of their own went rogue, and you defeated it.”
Lena gripped Leilani’s hand. The girl in the blue uniform looked restive. But over by the window, the young guard was listening with wide-eyed awe.
“I had no choice,” Leilani said. “And I’ve no choice but to serve them. You know that they’re not human, and they rule the bloody world.”
“I know they’re from another age. Another world, maybe. Those ancient myths of fallen angels might have come from them. But what if there were other angels? Bright ones to their dark? What if they had been imprisoned? What if somebody could set them free?”
“Jesus, girl,” Leilani breathed. “Are you insane or what?”
“Take me to bed, then ask me that,” Danielle said teasingly. A blush coloured Leilani’s silky skin. The blonde girl’s smile faded to a glittering green stare. “I want you to take out their Winter Warlord.”
Leilani turned her face away. “Just go to hell,” she said.
“I’ll leave you to consider it,” said Danielle evenly. “Don’t try to get away, or you’ll be killed. This place is an old convent, so perhaps you’d like to pray. We need all the guardian angels we can get.”
She turned to her lieutenant with a swish of her long cloak. “Karen, get some food sent up.” She sauntered from the room. The brown-haired girl glanced grimly at the prisoners. “If it had been up to me …” she said, and patted the Beretta on her hip.
“Good job it wasn’t then,” said Lena. “By the way, I like my coffee black.”
Karen curled her lip at her, then turned to the young rebel by the window. “If they make a move, you kill them both.” The tall girl nodded earnestly; she looked about nineteen. Fair hair and a girlish face. She tucked the gun-butt closer to her ribs.
Leilani settled back against the pillows and let her gaze go roving round the room. It was a Spartan, whitewashed cell, with little in it but the wooden bed. A painted ikon hung above the headboard. She looked at Lena’s long black gown, and guessed it had been borrowed from a nun.
“I didn’t know these places still existed,” Lena said. Leilani shrugged and rubbed her naked arms. Before she had been snatched, she’d led a hedonistic life. Religion, like nationality, had largely been subsumed by global rule.
“People rebel in different ways,” the sentry said behind them. “Some retreat to refuges like this one. And some of us get hold of guns, and fight!”
Leilani stared at her but didn’t answer. Behind her, through the window, she saw steep-pitched roofs and gilded onion domes. Her eyes flicked to the gun. It was a Russian PPSh with a wooden stock and slotted barrel sleeve. In spite of her assertiveness, the girl was clearly nervous. A twitchy trigger-finger for a gun that fired nine hundred shots a minute.
Leilani looked away, and gave her lover a thin smile. “Perhaps it’s time we saw the light,” she said.
* * *
Seen from the cover of the trees, the convent lay in splendid isolation. It might have been a fortress, with its solid lines and whitewashed outer walls. The low sun glinted on its domes and tinged the bone-white buildings. The fields of snow around it looked pristine.
The row of horses waited in the treeline. Nostrils flared impatiently, and clouds of breath expanded in the cold. The riders added to the mist as their excitement mounted. A waft of pungent smoke streamed into it.
Nikola glanced down the line, a smouldering cheroot in her right hand. The girls sat easy in their saddles, checking guns with brisk efficiency. Karina hooked one shapely leg around her saddle-horn, not bothered by the cold on her bare skin. A pouting blonde with sleepy eyes, she made the routine check-up look like foreplay. The weapon was an MP40, black and streamlined in her half-gloved hands.
She was the only girl who didn’t favour a fur hat, preferring a black forage cap instead. It bore a silver skull like all the rest. Beside her sat Natasha, with her copper-coloured hair and button eyes. The bearskin coat she wore concealed the fullness of her figure. Her haughty poise belied her small stature.
Sophie had crimped blonde hair and a permanent half-smile. She was slotting a curved clip into the gaunt receiver of her PPS. Unlike the other girls she wore an autumn-pattern smock, a legacy of earlier campaigns. Sweet-faced Sara looked as prim as ever, with a smart black jacket underneath her coat. A silver rune was stitched onto its left hand collar-patch, the sigil of some long-forgotten army.
Nikola looked round at Gail. They shared a private smile. On winter nights they kept each other warm. Gail had tumbling chestnut hair and puppyish brown eyes. She wore a plundered fox-fur coat that hinted at the shapeliness beneath.
The other girls were ready: there were twenty in the troop. Nikola slid her cheroot between her teeth. She unbuttoned her coat to clear the pistols on each hip. A matched pair of Beretta Cheetahs, nickel-plated, with plain wooden grips.
“Come on, girls,” she drawled, and picked her reins up. “Let’s put the fear of God into the place.”
The Cossacks walked their horses forward, into the white field. They started to advance on the old convent. There was no sound but the scuff of snow, the creak of saddle leather. Then a bell began to toll, but it was just a heedless call to prayer.
Nikola relaxed into her horse’s rolling gait, and felt its undulations through her arse. The ash of her cheroot glowed fitfully. No-one seemed to be on watch – or else the rebels hoped to bluff it out. Then, as they approached the wall, a wooden door burst open. A pair of giggling girls in G-strings scurried out to tumble in the snow.
They’d just been sweating in the convent’s bath house, and now they revelled in the icy plunge. Two shapely novice nuns, perhaps – but Nikola suspected they were rebels. One girl was a blue-eyed scamp with a mop of bleached blonde hair and bulbous tits. The other was petite and pert, with mischievous sloe eyes and auburn hair.
They rolled together in the snow, oblivious to the riders coming up. The redhead scooped a handful and offloaded it over her squealing friend. Nikola caught Sara’s eye and nodded at the pair. The smart girl drew her sabre with a rasp.
The rebels looked round in surprise, still kneeling in the snow. Their sniggery expressions fell apart. As they began to scramble up, Sara kicked her horse towards them. The girls lunged back towards the door but were overtaken in the space of moments.
The heavy-breasted blonde looked up and wailed in dismay. Her cry was cut short by the slicing blade. The sabre slashed her throat and split her vertebrae like plastic. The gawping blonde head tumbled to the snow.
The body slumped onto its knees. Its breasts bounced with the jolt. For a moment it stayed upright, like a dummy in a shop window display. Then blood spouted from the neck, and pee blotched the white G-string. The torso toppled sideways and was still.
The other girl had thrown herself out of the horse’s path. She crouched and whimpered in the trampled snow. Then she saw the wide eyes in her girlfriend’s severed head, and screamed hysterically behind her hands.
Nikola pulled out one of her pistols and shot the redhead through her plump right breast. The dense flesh barely slowed the searing bullet. It chewed on through the rebel’s heart, and splintered out past her left shoulder-blade. The girl’s scream choked into a grunt. She pulled a tearful face. Then flopped into the bloodstained snow as limply as her friend.
The gunshot cracked across the field, rebounding off the walls. A flight of ravens took off from the bell tower. Nikola hauled her horse around and gestured to the doorway. “Ten of you, through there,” she snapped. “The rest with me, before they close the gates!”