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At first glance, Cassandra appeared to be a mouse of a woman. Standing barely five feet tall with elfin sharp features and delicate bones, it was a wrong impression that she employed to her advantage. Currently it was proving effective on the Section Chief Commander who had overtaken and set up occupation on Earth. While he was human, those he worked for were not.
Since the occupation, Cass had risen in ranks among the resistance far enough that she now held the local cell by sheer force of will. She commanded with a ruthlessness that earned her much respect, but few friends. Tonight, she would execute her plan at the enemy's headquarters, her most daring mission to date. Standing in front of the mirror she exchanged her black tailored pantsuit for a flowing print dress, her heeled calf boots for soft leather ones with a sheath for a knife in it's lining, and unbound her hair from its severe ponytail to drape in heavy waves of bright copper to her waist. Slipping further into her alter ego, her whole demeanor shifted. The tightly strung muscles unwoundd; a rare vulnerability softened her features, and the "Cass of Brass" submerged into Cassandra, the scullery waif. A powerful disguise that gave her entry into the governor's mansion-turned enemy headquarters to gather intelligence. One last look in the mirror and she was off.
She had little trouble getting past the guards posted at the door into the opulent office. A laxative slipped into their thermoses, and counted heartbeats later, she tiptoed to the oaken filing cabinet and began flipping until she heard the heavy, measured steps coming down the hall that could only belong to the arrogant Commander Brennor. She cursed her luck at his timing, spun on her heel and grabbed a dust rag out of her apron. She wouldn't have to pretend at being startled, that being in the character that she was playing, but she had dearly hoped for more time to investigate the filing cabinet. The resistance needed to know where the next raid was going to be.
Cass closed the file cabinet door, took one-step to the left and picked up an exquisite vase as though she were dusting the mantle it had been sitting on. If she timed it just right, she could deflect from her reason for being in the room and maybe squeeze more information from her enemy. The plan that was forming in her head was risky, for it required the section commander to notice her, always a dangerous thing. Slipping further into character, she dropped the vase in time with his entry into the room.
CRASH!
"I am sorry! I will pay you for the vase. You startled me, and I... I am so sorry!" Cass pulled her hands up to her mouth in her alter ego's reaction to his towering rage.
"What are you doing in here? Why are the guards away from their post?" The section Commander covered the room in three powerful strides and struck Cass hard in a back handed blow that rocked her head into the mantle. Cass saw a blinding light, her ears rang and then she crumpled to the floor as the blackness swallowed her.
The room was warm. The smell of baking bread and the tang of spiced cider made her mouth water as she remembers another time and place.
Home.
Momma and Papa finish the last touches of the meal they are about to eat. It is her birthday, and she knows that a cake lays hiding in wait for dessert. She stands, perched on the arm of the couch by the fireplace, admiring the necklace that Papa gave her in the antique mirror above the mantle.
A vase looking somewhat familiar, but wrong, sits on the mantle too. Dragging her focus away from the disturbing vase, she looks again at her reflection and realizes that that it too is wrong. Her reflection is grown up, pinched and angry. Reading the lips of her reflection that now speaks to her; she mouths along and hears herself say "Wake up!" Before she can question the meaning, a hand, the strong and heavy hand of a man, claims her reflection's shoulder. The reflection says something else now... struggling to concentrate, she reads, "It's a lie, wake up! Don't forget who you are."
In terror, Cassandra pivots and calls to Papa. He is there now, his arms drapes across her shoulders telling her how proud he is of her. Cass points to the mirror as an explosion shatters the glass at the door and windows. Papa pushes Cass behind him, shielding her with his own body. Cass fights to see what's happening. The door slams open; a man with a rifle and body armor peppers the room with bullets. Cass hears her mother scream and her father grunt as he turns his back on the onslaught to whisper into Cass's ear.
"Play opossum my little Cassilla, like when you were little. Don't make a sound do you hear?" Papa grunts again and little bubbles of blood form at his mouth. They both slump as Cass tries desperately to hold him up, to hug her life into him and stop his from leaking onto her new necklace and birthday dress. Shock and fear combine numbing any sound she might make as they both reach the floor. Somewhere, as her mind was closes down she hears a voice say "Clear!" and the soldier begins looting the house.
The next morning, the weight of her fathers stiffening body and now cold congealing blood is a strong stench in her nose. Fighting a wave of panic and fear induced frenzy; Cass struggles to free herself from under her father's bulk.
Bucking and wild with fear, Cass wrestles with her hysteria. Fight! Live!
The light hurt her eyes as she lashed against the bonds that held her. The memory still clung to her. Dream-fogged and still in the grips of terror, she heard herself scream and sob, noises that she had never heard herself make and didn't recognize at first as being her own.
Disorientation and a stabbing pain that threatened to make her throw up lanced across her vision.
"Easy now, you took quite a fall." There were two of Brennor, and neither of them would focus. Both of them wore curious looks on their faces.
"What happened?" Memory flooded back with a new wave of sickness, and it registered that she sit, bound in the wing chair near the Fireplace. "Am I your prisoner? I swear I will repay the vase with my service, willingly. I am a nothing, please don't imprison me." The last she said with only a partially manufactured sob. It took a great deal of concentration to not throw up on the man and give him more reason to be angry with her.
"No. I admit that I was furious when I saw you in here, and I struck you harder than was necessary. You hit your head on the mantle on the way down. You've been unconscious for a long time."
Only now did Cass feel the swelling of her lip and jaw, as it had blended with the host of other sensations. Experimentally Cass darted her tongue to assess the damage, and came back with a taste of blood and no feeling where the knot had formed. She dropped her head to hide her face behind a curtain of hair while she tried to puzzle together how to execute the plan she had been forming before she passed out. Had the situation gone too far for her to redeem? The echo from the pain induced dream came back to her 'Don't forget who you are'. She decided in between waves of pain to ask a few questions and see how close to him she could get. There was a plan for the next raid, and she needed the details that she hadn't been able to get in the filing cabinet to find. Quickly she calculated the risk and assessed her own resources before raising her head to ask:
"Then, you are not going to punish me for the vase?"
"Let's just say, I never liked that vase. Besides, I have had time to consider and my curiosity is stronger than my anger. Why are you in my office when you know it is off limits, even to clean, unless the guards are present?"
"I... Wanted to get my evening chores done early, in order to leave the city and visit my parent's grave. I buried them 10 years ago today. I know I wasn't supposed to be in here unsupervised, but it's a long walk and I took advantage of the guard leaving his post to get in here early." A laxative added to the guard's dinner helped that along of course. It was true that she wished she could have gone to her parent's grave. Cass concealed what he might have discerned as a partial lie behind yet another wave of nausea.
Commander Kyle Brennor was a shrewd and hard man, one to be respected and of whom to be wary. His sudden softness toward her was a thing she was unprepared for and a thing she did not trust. She watched him like the prey she was while he circled behind her to untie the thin blanket that he'd used to secure her to the chair. His blond hair fell over his brow as he worked the knot. "Ahh, the first Strike was 10 years ago. I was there. Though only a foot soldier then. You were a child at the time?" The knot released and he folded the blanket with precision while he listened to her reply.
"Yes, it was my tenth birthday. Soldiers killed my family and robbed me of everything I might have had to remember them by." Except this, she thought, as she fingered the necklace that still lay secure around her neck. "I spent the next two days burying their remains - and surviving off the birthday cake my mother had hidden for me. They took everything else."
"You were calling out for your father while you were unconscious, begging him not to leave you."
Blood drained from her face as she realized how fortunate she was that she had opted to tell him partial truths. She had no idea how long she had been unconscious or what she had said in her delirium. A new tremor of fear edged through her body, one that sent her pulse and the throbbing in her head to new heights. Calm, she had to stay calm or she would indeed throw up on him.
"Tell me, after the raid, what happened to you? While you were dreaming and crying, I was moved to cradle you as a child. Then something... changed, and you threw your head back and seized."
"And that is why I was tied to the chair?"
"Yes, you shook so badly I didn't want you to hurt yourself further before I could question you." He spoke the words with a gruffness that his body language betrayed by the relaxed set of his shoulder and jaw. He wasn't as angry as he was pretending to be. She could use that if she could just find a way to get control of the situation.
"Then I am not under arrest?"
"No."
"But I am not free to leave either?"
"No."
"Then why are you keeping me here at all? I am nothing to you M'Lord, and caught disobeying a command at that. Why not kill me outright? I don't understand." Again, Cass dropped her head to unscramble her thoughts and chase the pain of her concussion to the far corners of her head... She desperately needed some water and time to think.
"You intrigue me." He stood as though he were uncomfortable with the question and paced in front of her for a few steps before regaining control of his emotions. "You are more than you appear. I have very little at this post to interest me, and at the moment, you have all of my attention." He paused to let that sink in as he leaned against the mantle and repeated his question. "Now, tell me what happened to you after the raid. I want to know what would make such a quiet thing fight so hard."
"May I have a drink of water? I will tell you." She bought some time to think through the pain in her head and fight her rising stomach. She needed to rework her hastily thrown together plan. Telling him the truth would cost her nothing and maybe bring her into his graces. She needed his sympathy and this uncharacteristic tenderness had her puzzled. She swallowed painfully from the cup he offered around her now swollen mouth and deliberately allowed herself to shake from reaction. "Cass the Brass" would have squelched the trembling in favor of taking control of the situation, but here she needed to think like herself, but respond like the timid maid she pretended to be (or might have become if the resistance had not rescued her from that awful day).
"Speak!" he commanded. "How did you end up in my office, breaking my china?"
So she told him. However, she watched very carefully the emotions and contrasting hardness and softness that played across his brow as she told him of her birthday party and cake she knew her mother hid until the proper moment. The transformation that the Commander underwent before her eyes fascinated her. She saw him wince when the door kicked open, brows widen and his jaw go slack as she told him of her fathers last words. Then understanding light his face, the puzzle solved, when she explained how she woke the next morning covered with his blood and unable to shift his stiff body from her own.
She was careful to imbue her story with as much real emotion as she could. It was difficult to connect her emotions at first, as she had not allowed herself to enter those memories in many years. However, by the end she was sobbing fresh tears that splashed into the cup she held. Wiping her face with the back of her sleeve, she apologized for her breakdown, and began hiccupping.
Lord Brennor was up and pacing again, his hands behind his back while he clenched and unclenched his jaw trying to control his own reactions.
A stab of fear went through her as he paused at the door to shut it, and then viscously twisted the lock.
Slowly he pivoted back to her, as he seemed to wrestle with something internally. Clearly, he was deciding how to best pursue a course of action that he found unpleasant and Cass was glad her hands were untied as she edged them near her boot to where her knife lay concealed. If he attacked her, she wouldn't go down easy.
Capturing her eyes and holding her gaze with his own, he crossed the floor to stand a few feet in front of her. Calm! She counted her heartbeats and measured her breathing... waiting for his move.
"I was that soldier." He paused to let what he said sink in. "I was 16 at the time and it was my first raid." When she held her reaction, he seemed disposed to confess something more. This was falling into her plan to gather more information so she pointedly ignored the rising emotion his revelation brought and forced herself to relax and listen to what he was saying.
"On that day, ten years ago, the aliens initiated their plan for harvesting our planet. Routine scout ships reported that our solar system had a wealthy planet of ores, water, fertile land... and slaves. They abducted my whole family and systematically killed my father and two elder brothers in front us, leaving me as the final hostage to gain my mothers cooperation."
"What did they want her to do?" Her mouth had gone dry again and she sipped from the glass without taking her eyes from him while he paced the room.
"You see, the aliens communicate with one another telepathically, and we just don't have the right equipment to hear them." He tapped his head. "In order to bridge the gap, they prepare a human female by undergoing a year long change of diet and infection with a virus that suppresses their immunity while a toxin creates a delicate chemical balance. It's always a woman that they do this to, but I am not sure why - I don't have all the answers yet."
"Once they had my mother prepped they then forced injections and surgeries on her body to implant a tumor-sized organ in her brain that sent nerve endings down into her spinal column. That new organ became the connector between human understanding and their own. They could read her knowledge of humanity while they controlled her. It also allowed them to speak to us through it."
"Insanity and cell degradation set in while her immune system recovered from the toxin and she battled for control while her body went into rejection. Her time with me was limited but she had a strong will to live. She was a fighter who endured that torture in order to teach me how to battle them... until one day I no longer recognized the person that looked out at me from her eyes.
She served the Elders - what the aliens call themselves - against her will. She did this because they held me prisoner. It was because of me!" Brennors eyes narrowed in rage. "That was 12 years ago. She lived for two years in that condition. Until she was to broken to be useful..." He let the last part hang in the air while he drew his breath, returned to the present, and focused on Cass who held his gaze to feed on his every word. "After that I was forced into their militia."
"This transformation is an abomination!" This he said with such vehemence that he actually vibrated. Cass watched Brennor saw his jaw back and forth, as he fought to control himself.
"She looked a little like you even. The same heart shape face, but her eyes were blue and her hair was streaked silver and blond. You look both harder and softer than she did." He shook off the effect she was having on him and followed it up with saying, "I watch everything. And you... are more than you say you are.
Cass, breathless with his admission was still trying to process this new information. Blinking back tears she didn't know she had been shedding, she cleared her throat to ask, "Why are you telling me this? How can you let me live, knowing it?"
"I want the aliens dead." He paused choosing his next words carefully. "And unless I miss my guess all together, so do you."
"What are you talking about?"
"You are no mere scullery maid. I know that you lead the resistance."
Cass jolted with fear and reached for the blade she had hidden.
"Oh, don't bother going for the knife in your boot, I have that tucked away somewhere else. I know a great deal about you Cassandra. As I told you, you reminded me of my mother. You caught my attention all those years ago on your birthday. Though I must say, I didn't know that you and the famed 'Cass the Brass', leader of the resistance, were one and the same until I found you thrashing around on my floor. That will teach me for relying on reports rather than my own eyes."
"How did you know I would be here?"
"You are not the only one to use subterfuge. I let the information of our next raid, leak to your spies, and then, waited for you to arrive. Which you did, thank you very much. How else were we to have this meeting?" Brennors eyes were actually twinkling, goading her!
"What do you want from me?" Her anger chased the fear away.
"I have a plan for how to poison the Elders home world."
"What does it have to do with me?"
"They are in need of another woman to create a new liaison." The water would have spilled from her lap had Brennor not caught it from her nerveless fingers and set it up on the mantle.
"The catch is that it cannot be just any woman. Most don't survive the change, and once they know what is happening to them, the poor wretches find ways to end their life."
"They are an old race, their civilization is decaying and they no longer build for themselves. Instead, they rape whole worlds and use them up. No one has ever challenged them on their own turf, but I plan to take this war right to them!
For ten years, I have clawed my way through the people around me to get to this position. I have the plan and the chemical weapon; however, I have to have a reason for them to take me to their home world in order to use it! And you are the first woman I have seen with enough hate and iron to possibly make this work."
There he paused and allowed the words to sit between them like a chessboard. The final moves were in play.
"How do you know I hate them and not you?" Her tone took on an edge and her head tilted in question.
"Call it a hunch. I trust my instincts."
"How do I know what you say is true?"
He paused for a moment and withdrew something from his pocket. It was two pictures stacked and folded together, well worn and soft from years of handling. He gently passed them to Cass who took them with trembling fingers.
One was her school picture taken from her home 10 years ago. It was the one hanging from the small frame in their home that day. The other, was a picture of a woman who did indeed look like Cass and her then teenage son, Kyle Brennor.
"You took my picture from the wall?"
Brennor nodded wordlessly.
Cass traced the faded outline of her face and recalled the message in the dream, not to forget who she was.
Time seemed to stretch.
"I need you. There is no way to get to their home world, but by invitation. The plague is not fatal, but it will render them sterile once the contagion infects the population.
"I will do it only on two conditions."
"Name them and I will tell you if I agree."
"One," she ticked it off on her right hand, "no more raids in this sector, my people are not to be touched!"
"That one is easy. If you agree, I call for a ship to transport us tomorrow and burn the files in this office tonight."
"Two, you must kill me before they touch me. I will not allow myself to become what you called an abomination!"
"You have my life on that" His eyes burned her with their intensity. She marveled at the revelations of the evening. Her world turned over ...and poured out.
"This won't kill them outright will it?"
"No, not in our lifetime, but they will never breed again."
Cass stood up and let her gaze wander the room. Her gaze met her reflection in the mirror and she paused there searching for the answer that would be right for herself, the band of people who depended on her and the family she buried ten years ago. She wondered if she would ever recognize herself in the mirror after today.
"Then I am in. Call your ships."
Deanna Rittinger lives in Michigan, where she and her husband raise five children. When not doing laundry, you can find her at the keyboard, working on another story or posting at her writers workshop forum http://rittinger.admiralxp.com. You can E-mail her at: DeaRitt13@yahoo.com for more information.
© Deanna Rittinger
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