Every Shut Eye Ain't Sleep

Leah didn’t think she could be more tired than she was at that moment. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong. All she had left were clothes soaked in dust and blood, and a failed mission that had cost countless lives in the process. Everything she had done was for freedom from the X and their tyrannical rule, but that freedom was fading away with each new dawn.

Our cause is only as strong as our weakest soldier. Her mother’s favorite phrase for every setback or victory. She has whispered those words as blood poured from her mouth, her elder sister’s blade in her chest. As Leah let her head rest on the steering wheel of the truck she’d illegally taken, she could hear those words echoing through her skull, but not in her mother’s voice but her sister’s, a smug expression in her eyes as she watched Leah fumble about from her impenetrable tower on high, leading the enemy that was hunting her former family down.

Three days and two ambushes later, she was the only one left of her crew with a ton of contraband that she could not moved, and she needed to move it. The cause she had spent her entire life fighting depended on the credits she get for the sale of that contraband. It was her mission. It was a chain around her neck that she could feel being pulled tighter and tighter. It was her doom.

There were only two moves left to play. She chose the one of least resistance.

The illegal call went out on the planet’s nexus to a hidden starbase on the other side of the planet’s smallest moon. Her comm had barely survived the last firefight, but it would do for what she needed.

“Report.”

“Everything is belly up.” Her voice shook. She stopped, took a deep breath, and pulled in the anger. “The mission went foul, but the goods are in hand.”

“Count?”

“Me.” Just me.

“Leah, you alright?”

She skipped over the operator’s concern. She couldn’t think on that right now. “Zeph, I need a crew to help me move the goods. Two would be adequate. Four would be best. Whoever you can get on short notice.”

“Kiddo, there’s no one left. The crew I sent you with were the last of the willing.”

No. There had to be someone. “Zoe?”

“Leagues away on Nebula 16.”

“The Crockers?”

“Off planet, working the outer ring.”

“The Sanchez brothers?”

“Dead.”

Leah closed her eyes. “How?”

“Job gone wrong. They might have gotten out had the X not been right on their tails.”

Leah cursed under her breath. These last couple of years had been lean. Most of the smugglers still breathing had jumped planet to save themselves or had died in the process. It wasn’t always about the contraband when it started, but after so many battles, so much bloodshed, the goods had been the only thing left of the cause for freedom.

“You sound exhausted, kiddo.”

“Two trucks full of goods and no way to move it. Yay, I’m a little tired.”

“Come in, Leah.” Zeph’s voice was a barely more than a whisper. “ You can rest up and have a meal not fished out of the dumpster. I’ll even get you some work. It’s over.” There was a long pause. “Your mother wouldn’t want you out in the cold like this.”

Leah laughed, the sound bitter to her ears. “If I still have a pulse, damn straight she’d expect me out in the cold. Someone has got to finish this, Zeph. And it looks like the only one left is me.”

“I won’t bury you, kiddo. I’m tired of funerals.”

“Yay, I know.” There was only one more thing she could do. The last move. “I know what I gotta do.”

“Leah-”

“Zeph, you remember that spot you used to take us as rugrats? The one with all the slides and ramps and swings?”

“Yay, kiddo, I remember.” His voice was laced with humor. “Damn near killed your sister spinning her around too fast on the tire swing.”

There was a beat of silence. “Simpler times.”

“They were. Better, too.” It was easier back then to pretend they were normal people when she was child and not soaked in death.

The tell-tale click of someone tracing the call came over the phone line. Instinct told Leah to cut the call. Her hand only held the comm tighter. This was the last call she would ever be able to make; she wanted to remember every detail before she disconnected, even the static.

“Don’t wait up, okay?” In her mind’s eye she saw his face full of the deep lines and scars of a man twice his age. He had been her friendly giant who would toss her in the air just hear her giggle. Now he was just another phantom voice to hold in her memory. “I’ll be seeing you, Dad.”

There was a catch of breath on the other end of the line. Tears and goodbyes that could not be spoken aloud. “I’ll be seeing you, kiddo.”

It didn’t take much to set the truck on fire. If the call didn’t trace back to her, then the explosion that ensued would do the trick. Leah looked up at the night sky as grief swelled in her chest, the stretch of stars and space all the larger for it. Suddenly, there was a soft blur in the distance that grew bigger with each heartbeat. A slight tremble ran through the ground beneath her feet. Air cruisers. The X were coming.

Leah let years of exhaustion carry her to her knees, arms braced behind her head. She couldn’t see them, but she knew they had already touched ground. A dozen or so red blaster pointers were aimed at her chest a moment later.

The outfit had fought for freedom once, but freedom had a price. It was time for Leah to cash in.



Word Count: 997
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Continuation in "Every Shut Eye Ain't Sleep" .