On The Desert Road

The crawler kept up a good pace. Clegg expertly drove it over the terrain, avoiding rocks, dips, and bumps. Jennifer sat beside him, holding a gun, watching for anything that looked like a biodread if they were still in the area. After everything that had happened, she wasn't talking very much to anyone. Then again, perhaps Clegg didn't know what to say to make small talk. Jon sat in the back of the crawler, stretching his leg out as Randall kept watch out of the back of the crawler. Clegg could only take them to the base of the rise where the sky bike had crashed, then he needed to pick up the bodies of Jack and Martin and get the crawler back to the Oasis refugees to help transport the wounded on to Penham.

Randall sat opposite him, watching the ground go by as the crawler lumbered along. He was very quiet, still in mourning the loss of his uncle. Jon had already given Randall his condolences. He knew what it was like to lose not just a close family member, but the last one he had. Like Jon, Randall had close friends who would look out for him and help him, so he wasn't alone.

They sat quietly for a time, but Jon's curiosity was getting the best of him. "Randall, can I ask you a question?"

Randall nodded. "Sure."

"How did you remember Jennifer after all these years?" he asked in a low voice. He didn't want for Jennifer to hear – he didn't want to upset her.

Randall pulled a picture out of his pocket and unfolded it. There was a remarkable likeness of Jennifer drawn on it, only it was Youth Leader Chase, not Jennifer depicted on the page. Jon took the paper and looked at it carefully. "This is very good. The way you drew her eyes – they look just like her."

"Really?" Randall asked as he looked at the picture again. "I always thought I never could get the eyes right. I could only make them look…"

Jon finished his explanation. "Like they're human and not the empty, emotionless eyes of a Dread Youth. I know - I've seen too many eyes like that myself."

"That was the problem," Randall confessed. "I never could draw them the way I knew they had to be."

"But you did draw them the way they are," Jon countered quickly. "Actually, when I first met her, it was her eyes that showed me that she wasn't like the others. You could see right into her soul, and I could see she was hurting."

Randall grew quiet again. Finally, he had to ask, "Was growing up in the Dread Youth really as bad as she said?"

Jon shook his head. "No, it's far worse than what she told you. She gave you a few facts, but the details of how Dread Youth are raised are hard for any of us to comprehend. She's told us some of it, but not all. Dread takes their humanity, their sense of self, everything that makes them individuals."

Randall frowned. "Is it really all lies? That's what she said."

Jon nodded. "Dread lies. He uses rhetoric to hide the truth, and litanies to train his troops. When she went to Sand Town, she really didn't know what would happen. And when she got there, there was nothing she could do to stop what happened to the town. If she did anything other than what was procedure, that overunit probably was under standing orders to deal with any soldier who disobeyed, and they don't think twice about shooting someone down. It's hard to explain how saving you and your uncle that night put her in more danger than you can imagine, but she'd do it again in a heartbeat."

Randall was quiet for a while, then he said in a low voice, "She didn't know my father was hiding under the house."

"No," Jon explained. "I know her. She'd have tried to save him if she'd known, just like she saved you and your uncle. Even if it cost her her life." He handed the drawing back to Randall.

"No, you keep it," Randall said. "I don't think I'll need to draw her anymore."

Jon smiled, folded up the paper and put it in his pocket.

The crawler jerked to a halt. "Okay, folks, here's where you get off," Clegg called out.

Jon scooted to the back of the crawler, Randall and Clegg helped haul him out. "Thanks for bringing us this far," he said. "We appreciate it."

Clegg waved a dismissing hand. "After everything that happened, we still owe you." He handed Jennifer a large leather bag. "You said your radio was damaged when you crashed. Here are some repair parts we had laying around. Some of them may help. There are some items in there that may help you shore up your landing gear, at least enough to let you fly out of the area."

Jennifer took the pouch with a grin and hoisted it over her shoulder. "Thank you," she told him as she handed him back his gun.

Clegg patted Randall on the shoulder and crawled back into the driver's seat. Randall turned to Jennifer, looking more apologetic. "I sorry I tried to hit you with the ax."

Jennifer placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry I had to deck you."

"I missed a lot, didn't I?" Jon asked jokingly.

"Randall," Clegg called. "We need to get Jack and Martin, take them back to the ruins. They're on the other side of this rise."

Randall climbed into the passenger's seat. With a goodbye wave, they were gone. For the first time since early the previous morning, Jon felt relieved. He'd never been around a group of 'nice' people he wanted to be as far away from as he did the Oasis refugees. Yes, it was because of what they put Jennifer through, but he couldn't say they weren't hospitable after the fact, but he wanted a lot of distance between them. He knew he'd feel better and sleep easier.

"What do you think? Having to go around the base and then up an incline… two mile walk?" he asked.

"About that," she said as they started off in the direction of the path that would lead them to the sky bike. Jennifer walked slow enough to accommodate Jon's limping on his makeshift crutches. "This is the gentler slope or so Clegg said. We should be able to climb it to the top pretty easily. The first thing we need to do is get the radio repaired. Hawk is going to be worried about us. I just hope we can cut through the interference of that storm. It'll be here in a few hours."

The storm. Jon glanced up at the advancing clouds. That storm was going to be… what had Hawk called them? A gully washer?

"Then I'll remove the starboard landing arm. It'll make the bike easier to fly if I can get it going again. At least I'll be able to balance it. We may have to fly slow and low to the ground, maybe make hops but it should get us back home."

She was becoming all business. Jon knew when she behaved like that, there was more to the story. "Jennifer?"

She turned toward him, not slowing her pace.

"If you want to talk, I'll listen."

Jennifer stopped. She glanced around, then she looked at the snow-capped mountain that had been her guide through the desert. "I know you heard the testimony I gave at the tribunal, and you've never asked about anything else that happened around the time I escaped."

"I thought that when you wanted us to know the rest of it, you'd tell us," he explained. "I know a lot of it's been hard to talk about."

Jennifer nodded, her eyes very much on the mountain. "There's something I want to show you on that mountain. It's a safe place. We can wait out the storm there."

Power Base: Three Hours Later

The three men sat stunned around the main control console. They'd just heard news that could have been far worse.

"Are we hearing right? They put her on trial for Sand Town?" Tank asked Hawk, completely disbelieving the report.

"I think so," Hawk confirmed quickly. "It was hard to hear through the static. If Mentor's cleaned up version of Jon's transmission is right, the people at Oasis only agreed to go after him if Jennifer went with the townsfolk quietly and abided by their decision at a tribunal for her actions at Sand Town." Hawk spoke into the communicator. "We'll come get you."

"You'd never make it in time. The storm's practically on top of us. Jennifer knows a place for us to wait out the storm. It shouldn't last too long and we'll head out as soon as it's passed."

"What about Soaron and Blastarr? Are they still in the area?"

"There's no way to know. Blastarr took some pretty bad hits in Oasis. Once he's regenerated, they may head back to Volcania. We should be okay for now. We'll check in as soon as we can."

"Should be okay?" Hawk asked. He didn't like the way Jon said that phrase.

"More happened at Sand Town than we knew, and Jennifer found out a few things herself. Something else has hit her pretty hard, I think. I don't know what it is yet."

Hawk knew Jon was the only one who could find out if Jennifer was ready to talk. "Okay. Contact us again as soon as you can. Mentor says the storm is showing signs of weakening, so it should be enough for you to get through to us."

"Roger that. Power out."

"Major Masterson?" Mentor looked down at Hawk from his perch on top of the console. "Neither Captain Power nor Corporal Chase were dressed for the winter conditions in the mountainous region of the area they're in. Temperatures have already dropped drastically and the storm will reduce them further."

"They'll be okay, Mentor." They'd have to be.

Scout paced around the control room, slamming his fist in his hand. "They didn't have any right to do that. Sand Town wasn't her fault. She didn't know that everything Dread told them was a bunch a lies until then. How could they put her on trial for that?"

Hawk looked up at Mentor who was patiently listening to the conversation. "She's the one who gave the order to have the town cleansed. I think Jon said a boy named Randall and his uncle remembered her."

"She just repeated a litany," Tank argued. "They were conditioned to do that from childhood."

Hawk was so angry with the townsfolk, he couldn't think clearly. Instead, he changed the subject. "The bike's damaged, so they've got to do some repair work before they can fly a long distance. They should be able to make some short hops. I don't like it. Blastarr and Soaron may still in that area."

"Should we go get them?" Tank asked.

Hawk shook his head. "Jon said not to. Anyway, we can't. We just got an emergency request from the Passages. We've got to get there. Mentor, keep this frequency open at all times. Jon may try to get through again. Until they get to a fully functioning radio, they're out there without us and I don't like it."

"Of course, Major," Mentor agreed.

Above The Desert

That storm was almost on top of them. Jon could feel it was going to be more than just a typical storm. It was going to be ripping, thunderous and violent. He could feel it in the air and see it as the dark clouds lit up with lightning.

Jon saw the dark thunderclouds just ahead of them, curving around the mountains. He felt the high winds rocking the bike. The weather front was massive and stretched across the horizon. It was still moving slowly towards them. No wonder Jennifer wanted to wait it out someplace safe. There would be no way for the crippled sky bike to fly around it, over it or through it – not if they wanted to reach the base in one piece. They were limping home slowly as it was, both literally and figuratively. Jon's leg would need real medical care, not just a quick patch job and the sky bike would have to undergo a complete overhaul and rebuild. It was taking every bit of skill Jennifer had to keep the sky bike balanced without any landing arms.

There was a far worse storm brewing in the woman sitting before him as well. He could sense Jennifer's turmoil as she focused her attention on piloting the sky bike. She was still being extraordinarily quiet, and it wasn't just because of sheer concentration. It was because of what happened in Oasis. Something else, maybe another memory, was ripping away at her.

To tell the truth, he wasn't feeling very talkative either. Jon didn't know what to say. Too much had happened on the mission, and the thoughts were still running through his head. Small talk on the walk back to the sky bike hadn't gone over very well either. Of all the people who could call Jennifer 'friend,' Jon was the one person who should have been able to talk to her no matter the circumstances. He was still in the dark to the whatever-it-was connected with Sand Town that was bothering Jennifer.

Sand Town. Once again, it had come back to haunt them, but this time, it wasn't merely the name of a place or the place of a horrible memory. Real people who had survived and escaped stood face to face with someone who had no idea what would happen. As much as she had told the team, as much as she had confessed, there were small details that Jon had never known about. Then again, Jennifer hadn't known about them either. The details came from witnesses who survived Sand Town. Their stories came from entirely different perspectives.

Jennifer flew toward the mountain. Again, Jon thought that there was something familiar about the place, something he couldn't quite remember.

He leaned over so she could hear him. "Will the bike stay in the air long enough for us to get there?"

"Not at this altitude with all this wind," she said. "I'm taking her lower to the ground." Fighting the flailing sky bike, she flew low over the mountainous region. She slowed the bike down and carefully maneuvered it until they'd reached the far side of the mountain. Beyond that was another mountain and another after that. She found the site she was looking for, slowed the bike down and landed it as carefully as she could beside a wall of rock. After powering it down, she said, "Wait here. Let me make sure everything's okay before we move the bike in closer."

"In closer where?" Jon asked.

Jennifer pointed to a particular section of rock nearby. There was a dark area. Jon thought it was shadows. "It's a cave entrance," she told him.

Jon realized that this was going to be one of those times when Jennifer wasn't going to do a lot of talking all at once until she was ready. She had a story to tell, and the cave was part of it.