War Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 5) by Aaron Ritchey (find a book to read TXT) 📗

guns hanging out the sides. I crouched down into the brush even before Pilate, who was getting slow in his old age.

Old Blackhawks, diesel-powered, buzzed over us. They had to install big old cranks onto them and a tension system of reinforced rubber to get the engine going and rotors spinning, but they worked. More U.S military. The ARK used zeppelins.

Pilate crawled through the brush and found me.

Nice thing about a city burning in front of you—the destruction cooks the air, and it wasn’t long before I was sweating in my coat.

Pilate reached out a hand, and I knocked it away, and fisted my other hand. I was already looking to punch through him, but instead, he shushed me.

“Easy, Genius. Easy now.” He spoke to me like he was soothing a pit bull. Good.

He continued but kept his hand to himself. “This is what is called a field promotion. I am promoting you from Genius to Cavatica. Your basic training is over. We’re partners now, comrades in arms.”

“I don’t feel ready,” I said.

“Sucks to be you then because here is your war, Cavatica. And though it’s been awful, God-jackering awful, I’ve trained you.” Pilate gritted his teeth and his next words came out as a growl. “And I will never do this again. Ever. You’re my last student, and if I’m given another, I’m going to eat a bullet instead. You understand?”

“I thought I was the suicidal one,” I muttered.

“Well, death is in Burlington, and he’s selling one-way tickets to the great beyond. To the great cosmic muffin. To the abyss. Or into the loving arms of Jesus.” Pilate’s eyes were again shiny. He sure was getting weepy in his old age.

Me? I was done crying forever. I clung to the negative integers inside me. Tears made you weak, and I had to be strong, stronger than ever before.

“So we need intel,” I said before he could.

“That we do,” Pilate agreed. “But first, I’m going to hug you, Cavatica. I’ve been hitting, kicking, and stomping you for days on end and every time I hit you, it hurt me far more. Can I hug you?”

I nodded gravely.

He enfolded me into his arms and held me to his chest. I felt his heart beat, smelled him, and it was home. Pilate was my father forever.

“Why did you take off your collar?” I asked, eyes closed.

“Because my greatest sin is training you. I’ll never recover. I’d be a hypocrite to put on a collar again.”

“I forgive you,” I said.

“What’s my penance?” he asked.

I pulled back and gestured to Burlington. “Go forth and sin some more.” It was what I’d said before when I’d heard his confession.

He laughed, but it was a sad sound. “Always the same with you. Like a broken record.”

“Don’t get the reference.”

Another melancholy chuckle. “And besides, the Pope has been sending me telepathic messages. The Holy Roman Catholic Church is not pleased with me, and I’ve been let go. Fired. Finished.”

“You’ll always be a priest,” I said. “You made the vow. You were changed, ontologically.”

He chucked wearily.

Gunfire echoed in the distance followed by heavy mortar fire. Then a bigger explosion that shook the ground around us. More smells of mass destruction, ashes, plastics burning.

“Welcome to your war,” Pilate said.

“Glad to be here,” I whispered. “Wish I knew who was fighting down there. Wish I knew who destroyed my hometown. I’d like to share a few bullets with them.”

“That’s so stupidly Wren,” Pilate muttered.

Where was Wren? What was Wren? What had happened to her and Sharlotte while I had my head firmly up my butt back in Hays? Couldn’t think about that.

“Only one way to find out who’s playing Armageddon in there,” Pilate said. “And that’s to go and look. Problem is, either side is bound to take shots at you, though you do look more Juniper than a Military Meg.”

I had to grin at that one. Military Meg had become the icon for any regular girl who fought in the Sino. Uncle Sam and Military Meg, in lockstep. Since America was already undergoing a shift toward the New Morality, Meg couldn’t look shaved—she had a cute bob haircut, cherry cheeks, and a grim determination in her very blue eyes. A lot of pundits pointed out it was damn racist to show your average American soldier as a blondie, but the image of Military Meg stuck.

A dozen popular musicians at the time, including Country Mac Sterling and LeAnna Wright, put out a bunch of songs concerning soldier girls. In those songs, Meg had dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. But the official army recruiting song featuring the blonde Meg hit the charts and stayed at number one. God bless America.

“Military Meg or not,” I said, “I’m still the one to go. A man walking around in town is going to draw attention, and it won’t take long for people to recognize you even without the collar. A spy then gets the word back to Hoyt that Pilate and a girl are wandering around in the Juniper. Then he might start looking at my eye scans a little too close. My war would be over.”

“We can’t have that, can we?” Pilate again lowered his head.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Worse comes to worst, I play the confused teenaged girl.” I unlatched my gun belt, slid it off, and gave it to Pilate. But I kept one of the .45s.

Pilate raised his eyes to me. “This is why you’ll do fine. You’ve become accustomed to violence. Normal people out in the World live their lives with a level one tolerance for violence. Your average citizen will live their entire lives without getting shot at or shooting anyone. But you, you were a soldier long before I gave you basic training. You’ve lived most of your life at a level nine.”

He paused. His voice grew rough. “And that was the lesson of the ax handle. I needed to bring you up to level ten.”

“Well, it worked.” I remembered the feeling of the