A Really Bad Week

[governorkang]

There was something different about the tavern. Typically, the mood in it was cheerful, almost homey; for the past few days, however, it had been... solemn.

It could have been blamed on a number of things. Because of the recent strike against GLaDOS, people were remembering those that had been repodded, and Hisk, the previous helper, was among that group. Kawalsky, Cassie, and two of the people in the pods had been killed. And lastly, though it was public knowledge by that point that Hiccup and Rose had been hurt, it wasn't yet known exactly what had happened or how bad it was.

Kang knew, though.

All of that combined equaled a somewhat mopey draconian behind the bar.

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[governorkang]

"She was old enough to know the risks of what she was doing. And from what I hear, she was the best suited for that particular job. There comes a point where you have to accept that a child isn't a child anymore," Kang said quietly. "You can't protect them forever. I know this from experience."

[fieldpromoted]

Trudy didn't have an answer to that, really. "At least her parents aren't awake," she said. "I'd hate to be the Captain and have to tell someone like you that he sent their little girl to get killed." She took another drink of the ale, finishing it off and sliding it across the bar in a wordless request for another. "Worst damn part of being in command is doing notifications. Was always glad I was either overseas or off-planet, never had to do it in person."

[governorkang]

Kang took her tankard and his own, refilling them both, "Comes with the job, unfortunately. Not just children either, but friends or mates. One of the girls, her mate was killed by a group of humans a year ago. A misunderstanding of some sort. I had to tell her about Harvah'k; it was one of the hardest things I'd ever done in my life." It was made harder by the fact that she was pretty much his sister-in-law, by human terms.

"Someone has to do it, though. At least in Cassie's case she died trying to help the rest of us out. I would hope that her parents would understand that."

[fieldpromoted]

"Hell of a misunderstanding," Trudy said, accepting the tankard and taking another drink. She was putting them away at a pretty steady pace, and it didn't seem to the helping the set of her mouth and the slump of her shoulders.

"Then again, I get that. Plenty of Na'vi killed over a misunderstanding. Plenty of us too." Then she cursed softly. "Damn, I haven't talked about Pandora since..." She scowled and took another drink.

[governorkang]

"The humans had reason to dislike us," Kang sighed. "Doesn't excuse what happened, but I can see why it did in the first place."

He tilted his head to one side slightly, "Pandora? You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

[fieldpromoted]

"Always makes it harder when the enemy has a legitimate reason to hate your guts," Trudy said. "That's kind of why I don't like talking about Pandora-" she paused. "Okay, it's the main reason why I fucking hate talking about Pandora. I was stationed there for the two years before I realized my commander was a useless waste of carbon."

She made a face into her beer. "He seemed like your typical jarhead Marine at first, so much muscle he'd worked away his brain cells, you know?"

[governorkang]

Kang nodded, "They had a damn good reason to, unfortunately. And, I know the type. Always hated working with them."

[fieldpromoted]

"Yeah, well I'd dealt with it too. You been in the military for long enough, you're gonna run into one." She shrugged. She was going now, and nothing could really stop her. Trudy hadn't talked about Pandora on the ship - she'd mentioned it offhand once or twice, in a kind of philosophical way, but she'd never talked about this part of it.

"Pandora had some stuff this company wanted - space rocks or something, to make fuel out of. I wasn't really a scientist, I didn't follow. Unfortunately the Na'vi didn't like it very much when we started flyin' in and out of their forests and diggin' up stuff, you know?"

[yubyubcommander.livejournal.com]

Wedge entered the tavern quietly. He figured if anyone was here drinking, they probably didn't want to be disturbed--he wouldn't either, after what had happened. He cocked his head to one side slightly as he heard a rather familiar voice--Trudy Chacon. He smiled and slid himself into a seat at an empty table off to one side, listening for now. He didn't need to involve himself at the moment.

[governorkang]

"I don't really blame them. Were they humans, or another race altogether?" Kang asked.

[fieldpromoted]

"No, not human," Trudy said. "Around ten feet tall, blue, looked kinda catlike. Glowed in the dark a bit, but then the whole damn jungle glowed in the dark. Didn't have much in the way of technology, nothin' really to trade with us. If the rocks hadn't been there, we prob'ly would have left the planet alone, since the air's toxic and you gotta wear a respirator."

"Anyway, I flew a surface transport with SecOps- that's the security company I was with there, after I got out of the Marines back on Earth. Mercenaries, you'd call us. Always did think there were a lot of guns goin' into the jungle if we were just there to get rocks, first year. Second year things started gettin' really tense - more raids from the locals, closer to the base."

[governorkang]

"What happened after that?"

Wedge's attention on the conversation didn't escape Kang, but he didn't say or do anything to point him out to Trudy.

[fieldpromoted]

"Avatar program really took off - bunch of our scientists had figured out a way to make a Na'vi body, some kinda neural uplink put a human's consciousness into it, like walkin' around in a big clonesuit. Quaritch was tryin' to get 'em to convince the natives to move off the site of their clan center, 'cause that's where the richest deposit was or some shit." Trudy shrugged her shoulder. It was obvious that she was dismissing some of the complexities because she wanted to distance herself from what had happened - she understood more about the situation than she said.

"Quaritch had enough at that point an' he decided that if the blue monkeys weren't gonna move, well, he'd just go blow 'em up and make 'em. So he did. Pulled every pilot from the base and flew to Hometree and blew it up. I was there-"

She had been there. She'd seen the smoke rising from the great tree into the sky, seen Na'vi running in all directions - kids, women, whatever. She took a long sip of her beer. "Didn't fire, for what it's worth. Sat there for a minute deciding, had my finger on the button, in the end I turned the chopper around." Her face got blank, and hard at the same time. "Wasn't gonna give up my honor as a Marine for that pig-headed bigoted shit."

[governorkang]

Kang was extremely glad he'd been reading up on technology. If he hadn't, he would have been clueless about what Trudy was talking about.

"He would have fit right in, in the Dragonarmies," he frowned.

[fieldpromoted]

Trudy just grunted. It seemed like now that she'd gotten the story out, she didn't want to say much else. "You'd be welcome to him. Bastard demoted me over it. Said I disobeyed orders and went AWOL. Damn sure hope Jake blew him up."

She shook her head. "Just... makes me wish I knew he was a bastard two years ago, so I wouldn't've signed up. Or a year ago, so I coulda stopped flyin' for him then."

[governorkang]

"He would've been killed off quick by some other power-hungry bastard. And remember, you can't change the past. You just learn from it," Kang pointed out.

[fieldpromoted]

"Yeah, yeah," Trudy said, swirling the ale from her second drink down in the bottom of her glass. "Doesn't mean I'm any less responsible for shit that happened while I was busy lookin' the other way, though. I knew what was goin' on, I just cared more about the paycheck."

[governorkang]

Kang shrugged. "At least now you know better. That's the important thing."

[fieldpromoted]

She drained the last of her tankard and slid it back over the bar in silence.

"You sound like you know a lot about this kinda bullshit," she said. Her words were starting to run together a little.

[governorkang]

"Fought in a war a long time ago," Kang snorted. "It's a long story."

[fieldpromoted]

"So was that one," she said. If he still put her off, she'd let it go, but... hell, she'd spilled her guts, it was his turn.

[governorkang]

Kang shook his head, "Point. Refill before I begin?"

[fieldpromoted]

"Jesus Christ yes," she said, shoving her tankard over to his side of the bar. She felt like she needed to get plastered into next week after sharing that little story.

[governorkang]

"We were created for this war, from dragon eggs. From the moment we hatched, they made us fight and kill each other for food, and taught us to hate elves and Solamnics," Kang said, after getting Trudy a refill and settling himself on the bar. Might as well give her all the details. "The humans treated us like shit. We were just dumb lizardmen, only good for digging latrines and serving as infantry."

He snorted. "I'm not all that upset we lost. The officers and highlords lied, cheated and backstabbed each other to gain more power, and made mistake after mistake. We managed to capture the general in charge of the entire opposing army, and instead of killing her, they paraded her around like a damn trophy. It wasn't exactly a surprise when she got rescued, and when Neraka fell, the officers told all of us to cover their asses while they ran away, safe."

[fieldpromoted]

Trudy nodded like Kang had nodded during her story, even though - like him - some of the specifics evaded her. "Rat bastards," she said, although it wasn't clear exactly which one of the many who had wronged Kang's people she was referring to.