Authority Rejected

Part 3

The room was pitch black. This was because it was underground, and there were no windows. The dark, stagnant air was stirred into streams and currents by a strong reverberation which soon died away as all returned to stillness. Concussive sounds struck, and then a squeal as large metal door pins retracted, rubbing against steel. A grating noise ran along the reinforced walls as the massive door of the vault-like expanse was pulled open by well greased gears above and below the stubborn barrier. Intense sunlight spilled in, but even that was only enough to illuminate a meter into the room, exposing gray flooring with embossed crosses to provide traction.
Four men were silhouetted by the light, and distorted by the heat that rose from the desert behind them. The terrain in the area was all the same, and not even worth describing. Just dry cracked soil, and no shade, except for the long rock hill that concealed the vault.
"Nice place to hide this, Buller," Ben said, "I'd take a piss right now if I thought it would make something grow out here." The others ignored him and they all entered. They were glad to get out of the direct sunlight, but inside the air was stifling and moist. Pavel gulped as he breathed, as if he was drinking the air as well.
"Is it really necessary to put all this rock over the entrances? I mean we actually had to blast just to get to the door," Pavel complained. Pavel would have seen Buller's sullen stare of annoyance, but it was still too dark.
"Gaardnar, go out and blow those charges on the cargo exits, I'll find the controls, and get everything up and running," Buller ordered.
"Where did you learn to handle explosives, Ben?" Pavel asked.
"You pick up a few things in the Confederate army," Ben replied.
"You know I'm starting to get really tired of your whining, Wellington," Buller said, allowing his anger to show.
"I'm not whining," Pavel objected.
"Gaardnar, you put up with this?" Buller asked, but Ben had already left to detonate the explosives on the other side of the hill. Buller figured that Ben had already left and mentally shrugged to himself before he snapped his nine volt flashlight on. A railing appeared and the light seemed to intensify the surrounding darkness. The light was directed on Pavel's face blinding him before he turned his head away. "You need to learn to keep your trap shut," Buller said.
"Knock it off you two, and be useful. We've got work to do," Angus cut in with deep commanding tone, silencing the others.
Buller blinded Pavel again, "You just park it there while I'm gone," he said before walking along the railing and vanished within the blackness.
Pavel took a single step to spite Buller, then spoke to Mengsk while rubbing his overloaded eyes, "What's with him anyway?"
"He's had a bad experience," Angus explained, refering to the night at the courthouse nonspecifically since he knew Buller would prefer no one to know," but he's always been like that. We wouldn't have known about this place or been able to enter it without him." Angus stared out into the darkness a moment, thinking, before he continued, "What's your story anyway? Haven't had the chance to ask you."
"Oh, well I was just a regular guy, before the Confederates shot me up, and almost got me for questioning. Then I fell in with Ben. We realized that we all needed you," Pavel said, activating his own flashlight to scan the room, and finding nothing.
"He's a good man, as long as you help him out he'll stick with you. Remember that," Angus said.
"I will," promised Pavel.
"I don't know why you think I'm so great," Mengsk said and shook his head idly.
Pavel looked directly at Mengsk as he talked to him, "People trust you, your a real Korhalian Senator, not a Confederate appointee. They will follow your voice, if you raise it high enough."
"It just took me awhile before the truth, that they don't give a shit about us, hit me, now all of us and our families are in danger," admitted Angus.
"I wish I could see mine again, but I'm afraid it would put them in danger," said Pavel.
"You should," insisted Angus. "You need to be there for them, you need to take them with you, and protect them."

Buller had made his way down to a corner and turned right before continuing to where the wall jutted out and the catwalk swerved to the right before continuing. He stopped at the outcropping, and entered a keycode into a pad next to a heavy door in the wall. He was surprised by the shake that followed. 'Must be Gaardnar, at least someone around here is useful', he thought to himself. The door had already slid open, and he entered the moderately sized room, shining his flashlight around in an attempt to orient himself.
He stumbled past a few chairs on his way to the other end that he had passed over with his flashlight. To his left, in the unpierced artificial night, was a large long table with benches for use by workers, technicians, or guards for breaks. The far wall had an identical door, but just to the right of it lay a power box with a lever next to it. Buller seized it, and gave a good downward jerk. This caused the indicators in the panels to his right to light up. It was now apparent that the wall above and in front of the control panels was actually a window to the void still outside the control room.
He deactivated the flashlight, placed it on the floor against the wall and felt his way to a simple plastic chair. There was now illumination in the room, but the only light was that emanating from the panels, and it made Buller feel like he was alone in the universe. It was enough for him to make out the controls, however, and he flicked a series of switches.

Several sets of canned lights directly above and off in the distance became visible to Pavel and Angus, but they were just warming up, and only the lights themselves were visible, hanging in space. The rest was still darkness.
"What do you mean when you say that you sounded like your son?" Pavel asked, continuing their conversation.
Standing next to the rail, Angus began to explain as a box of light appeared far off in the dark, "My son Arcturus is a Confederate prospector, he left Korhal a long time ago. Needless to say he is much more supportive of the Confederacy than I. The way I was acting, trying to protect the Confederacy from us almost, well, I felt like it was something Arcturus might try to do." Pavel just nodded as Ben rejoined them.
Ben asked the others, "Hey, has Buller got everything taken care of here? We're ready to move, outside." They noticed a change in the air, there was a fragile breeze now. The lights were also gaining strength. They could make out a lower level that dropped from their height just after the safety rail. There seemed to be rows of something that gleamed at them like incredibly large brutish metal men. The box of bright light was from an enclosed room about half a mile away along the left wall of the vault.
"This place is bigger than I thought!" Pavel exclaimed with his eyes wide in wonder.
"That must be where Buller is. Let's take a look," Angus said.

In the vault's control center Buller was still looking at digital read-outs and pressing buttons as the others joined him. "About time you got here," he said, "got ventilation and AC on. So what do ya think of the stockpile?"
"What?" Pavel asked, puzzled by the question.
"Look out there you idiot," Buller said, pointing out of the window. The vault was now fully lit, and was a mile long, and about an eighth as wide. However, on each side of the expanse were countless rows of CMC- 300/400 Powered Combat Suits and racks of 8mm C-14 "Impaler" Gauss Rifles.
"And there's three more floors of this stuff below," Buller said. There was indeed a cargo elevator just under the entrance to the vault.
"This is good," said Pavel in understatment with a bemused expression on his face.
"Its not right, the Magistrate should be here with us now," Buller, said, mouning for the man.
"I know," Mengsk said, "but you can't think about that now."
"You need to open the cargo doors," Ben reminded Buller.
"Oh, yeah, sorry," Buller said, and he entered a few key commands, and eight large doors on the end opposite of the cargo elevator began to rise. Immediately, trucks backed into the openings and men poured out. "That's it, everything is running now," Buller told them.
Ben exited to the catwalk in front of the control room and addressed his commrades, who were waiting for orders, "All right guys, start loading it up, the sooner we move it, the sooner we can use it." The crews started to work murmuring about the new toys they were getting.
"Why did the Magistrate go to all this trouble," asked Mengsk.
"The possibility that the Confederacy could turn on us was considered, but the real reason is that we wanted Korhal to be able to defend itself if the Confederacy abandoned us to a stronger foe," answered Buller. "How many of these things are you gonna use?"
"A lot," Ben said quickly.
"About four or five hundred," said Pavel.
Angus then spoke up, "We're taking them all."
"What!?" Was all Buller could say as he stared at Mengsk.
"If we are successful here in Augustgrad, then other groups around Korhal will join us, it will be the beginning of the end," said Mengsk, calmly staring at the men as they worked. "They'll need this equipment too. If we're going to fight the Confederacy then we have to go all the way, we have to free all of Korhal."
Buller thought a moment, and then said, "There's electrical lifters that can move a few suits at a time, it should help speed things up, but still...,"
"Its going to take a while to move all of this stuff," added Pavel.

General Edmund Duke had relocated to the Freidricksburg after the complete destruction of his flagship, the Norad. The cruiser's communications center was being equipped to become the new TacCom for Alpha Squadron. A corner of the complex had been hastily walled off with excess sheet metal, and a simple stainless steel desk and chair was provided. Duke had to go out to TacCom to use any computers.
He had heard that one of the lifeboats had managed to leave the Norad before the colossal blast. After its recovery, however, the sight inside after decontamination was not pleasant. It had looked like a bunch of sleeping zombies, but they weren't going to be reanimated anytime soon. The radiation had killed them all, and their last hours of suffering must have been excruciating. It had also caused their bodies to decay at an accelerated rate. The stink had been truly amazing in its power. Duke knew casualties were a fact of military life, but he still felt badly. They were still his boys, and he didn't like it when good soldiers were wasted in such pointless ways. Add the fact that the attack had targeted him, and it was no surprise that Edmund felt personally insulted.
Only Duke and some of the higher ups had any clue that the nuclear detonation was an accident merely set off by the attack. So all the news stations were screaming about how the rebels have nuclear weapons now. The many militant groups that had cropped up were becoming bolder after the news, even after the small outpost that had been lost was retaken. Command was pissed at him, he had failed at preventing this situation. They had said that his performance was unsatisfactory, and nothing else. That was bad, and it was making Duke very nervous. Sometimes, when he thought about the situation, he'd find his index finger tapping his piece of shit desk before stopping it. Duke didn't know what they were going to do, but it would be something, and he probably wouldn't like it.

Though it would likely take days to move all of the equipment in the vault, the first truck full was all that was necessary to begin Mengsk's first mission. This mission was to capture the largest broadcast center in Augustgrad. The media building was in a sparsely populated commercial sector of the city. The building itself was at least twenty stories high with tinted windows surrounded by granite. On top was a series of satellite dishes, which would be able to send signals to a majority of Korhal's communication satellites.
Pavel and Angus knew that it would be protected by Confederate troops, but they had come prepared. There was nobody outside of the building, so it was easy to pull their semi up to the front of it. While Angus and Mengsk dropped out of the cab, Ben exited the back with twenty five of his men all clad in powered armor with a red color scheme. Buller was back at the vault directing the equipment transport.
Ben activated the suit's external speaker, "Sure feels strange to be in one of these again. All right, the plan is to go in the front, and take out any resistance. Then we get you up to make your little speech, and then we're gone. We'll make sure its clear before you enter."
Ben ordered his squad into position. The scene of heavily armored men standing in front of the aesthetic wood and glass doors with the station's logo in them was almost comical as they slid open, but right now the fighters had other things on their minds. They scanned the lobby. At the opposite end was a large booth where the station receptionist sat. Her mouth hung open in amazement and fear. Elevators were on either side of the booth, and each had a security officer in front of it. Ben leveled his weapon and fired at one, someone else took the other. Both unarmored men dropped almost instantly. A man next to Ben brought up his gleaming gun to take care of the receptionist, but Ben pushed it away, raising his voice over the suit com, "No, she's not a threat."
However, Ben was wrong. The receptionist's mouth snapped shut, and before fleeing to the stairwell, she pressed the silent alarm. About ten seconds later, the Confederate marines entered from side doors.
"Heads up!" Ben shouted.
The lobby had precious little cover, only a few couches, and those wouldn't stop rounds from an "Impaler". The men were forced to stand their ground against the twenty or so Marines that had formed a line against them. The space exploded with the echoes of gunfire. The Gauss rifles could fire short bursts, but because of the capacitor employed by the rail guns to minimize energy consumption, they had to be allowed to recharge for a couple of seconds before the next burst.
Ben felt a couple of rounds graze the side of his suit, causing very little damage. He saw the offending marine, and took him down with a few well placed bursts. "I guess the reflexes don't forget," said Ben to himself in the bubble helmet.
Shots traveled around the room punching through the drywall, and sending white dust all over. Some even shattered the doors causing Angus and Pavel to run behind the walls outside for cover. The dust filled the room with blinding white, and the sounds of gunfire died away. The dust began to settle showing only the fallen marines on the other side of the room, the rest had dissapeared. Ben used his suit com to call in Mengsk and Pavel, who were now wearing headsets with microphones to stay in contact. The suit coms had a limited range, however.
Angus was the first to speak while staring down at the seven losses they took, and the ten of the enemy, "So it begins," he proclaimed in a gruff voice.
"Is this everything they had?" Pavel asked.
"No, twice that," Ben said.
"Why did they retreat so fast?" Pavel asked, unsure of the enemy's reasons.
"Ben, you need to take your team, and go to the roof. If they can't stop us, then they might try to destroy the dishes there. Don't let that happen," ordered Angus.
"What about you?" Expressed Ben in concern.
"We'll be fine, they wouldn't have anyone in the studios. We don't have time to make a complete sweep anyway. Just make sure you protect the equipment," reiterated Mengsk.
"On it, Chief," Ben acknowledged.
Ben informed his squad that they we're taking the stairs to the roof. When someone asked him about using the elevator he pointed out that their suits were far too heavy for the elevators to handle them. "Don't worry guys, we got them on the run," Ben reassured some of the men who were looking at the seven casualties.
One of them replied, "But they got Gary, and Tom, and Eric, and..."
"You knew it was going to be like this, it doesn't mean we can stop," said Ben. The fighters had to duck down and turn sideways to get into stairwell, but soon Pavel and Angus were alone in the room. Pavel hustled behind the booth and began looking though files on the computers there. Angus stood on the other side rhythmically knocking his fist on the desktop. They both knew that there was not much time. Soon the fist of the Confederacy and of Alpha Squadron would fall upon them, and then little hope would remain.
"Main studio is on the fifteenth floor," confirmed Pavel.
Mengsk had already called the elevator, and the ride up was luckily uneventful. Up on the fifteenth floor the news broadcast was on air. Pavel and Angus made their way past the cameras and wires to the monitoring room.
The producer noticed them first, "Who the....Senator Mengsk?!"
"I need to broadcast, now," ordered Mengsk.
"Sure, we can do that, sir," He was perfectly willing to air an exclusive speech from the Senator.
"We need to be on every station possible," added Pavel quickly.
"We can't do that," He insisted.
Angus produced a pistol and held it at his side, "We need to be on every station possible."
"We may be able to do that," relented the producer.

Going up stairs in powered armor could be tricky. Not all of the suit's foot could fit on the step, and it required some balance. Ben's squad could hear the Confederates above them, it was clear that they were heading to the roof. The day was hot on the roof and the twenty floor climb had caused their body temperatures to heat up the insides of their suits before the internal cooling system kicked in. After the tedious ascent, with a couple men nearly falling down, they came to the roof where the marines were wiring up the satelight dishes with explosives. Ben's squad opened fire, and dropped three of the Confederates before they took cover and returned fire.
"Get down, we almost got 'em," Ben shouted his encouragement over the racket.
Five of the squad fell before the rest dodged behind metal boxes holding utility systems for the building. Ben leaned out fired of a burst at the enemy, and pulled back as the crossfire ate deep into his cover and chewed up the aluminum. 'Damn' thought Ben. He had just lost five guys in a few seconds. He now understood that their earlier luck had been from them having the advantage of surprise, but his men needed to be trained or retrained. They could not possibly match up to Confederate marines in their current state. Another of his men fell with his chest armor a mess of jagged plating and blood. Ben smacked the armor of the two men closest to him, "You two, we're going to flank the Confederates. Everybody else, lay down some suppressing fire."
There was a crescendo as ten of the squad fired a series of bursts in tandem forcing the seven remaining marines to take cover. The three ran to cover between and to the side of the Confederate's position. They continued moving up amid sporadic bursts of fire concussing through the air. Ben gave the signal, and they emerged. The enemy realized they had been flanked too late. Ben had clear shots of all seven Alpha Squadron marines. Two fell immediately. At that moment several dishes began to rotate to random angles. Ben's comrade on his right fell, and Ben grunted as the hypersonic spikes impacted the upper left of his chest armor leaving deep rends, and taking his breath away. Of the five remaining marines four tried to take cover from Ben, but were shot to ribbons by the fighters they had been hiding from. The last tried to run to new cover, but was stopped by fire from behind as he ran.
"Clear!" Yelled Ben to the team, still on his knees from the hit he took. They stepped out, and took a while to rest. The others helped Ben up after a few minutes. There were now eleven men left. Ben could see a ship in the distance. It had an oval cross-section, and was elongated, like a flattened straw, but with curved ends. It was a Confederate gunship. As the name suggested, the ship was outfitted with several laser cannons. "Mengsk, come in," requested Ben.
"Pavel here."
"Where's Mengsk?"
"He's about to broadcast, you alright? You sound hurt," Pavel asked.
"I'm fine, but you'd better be fast, we've got a gunship incoming. Give me your location, and we'll find you."
"You gotta be kidding me!" Exclaimed Pavel. "We're on the fifteenth floor."
Pavel was in the monitoring booth where the crew had maxed out the signal strength, and pointed the dishes to transmit to as many satelights has possible. Pavel gave Angus the OK sign through the windows, and the camera men gave him the count to air time.
Around the planet, television signals were interrupted, and replaced with the image of Angus. He sat straight, with a sober and direct look on his face. Then he made his address to all of Korhal, "Citizens of Korhal, this is Senator Angus Mengsk. The Confederacy may have told you that I am dead, but I assure you that I am alive. I come before you to speak the truth, that the Confederacy will not cease its efforts to subdue our people until they rule over every facet of our society. It is the Confederacy who draft our children into their military against our will, who everyday kill innocent Korhalians in our streets, who take from our fields and factories the food and products we pour our labor into. This will not stop, there is no hope of the Confederacy returning what it has taken from us, soon those few freedoms we still have will be lost to us. The peace and order that they say they will bring is a lie. We will suffer as second class citizens under a fascist government! Already we are under the control of General Edmund Duke in a state of martial law. I offer an alternative to this spineless, wretched state of existence. I offer you, my brethren, the power to say "no"! I have listened to your voices, and I know that you are ready to stop living under oppression as the Confederacy's dogs. I have the weapons and equipment to make the Confederates go. Today I ask for men with the strength of mind and courage of heart to use them! Very soon we shall make our presence known, and at that time I ask that you join us. We have a duty to ourselves and our loved ones to work, to fight, to create a world and a life where our generations can be free, and live unmolested from ignorant opportunists who would use them as kindling to keep the fires of their voracious and destructive society burning. It is not a question of if we will win the fight, but a question of when. This I promise to you, as a man, and as a son of Korhal."

Up on the roof, while Angus was making his address, Ben had ordered his team to the fifteenth floor to meet with Mengsk. Ben was the last to leave, and looking back saw the gun ship hovering over the building. One of the turrets aimed at the dishes on the other side of the building, and lit up. The thick beam lanced across the dishes cutting them into pieces, the explosives were also hit, causing a chain reaction as half the roof disappeared in a cloud of blinding concrete dust. Ben moved down the stairs as a cloud of dust enveloped him. After rubbing some of the dust that layered his suit off of his bubble helmet, Ben caught up with the others, in the main studio.
"What happened up there? We lost the feed," asked Pavel.
"The gunship," Ben explained as a deep rumbling reverberated about them.
"Oh. Its all right we got the message out," assured Pavel.
"What's that sound?" Angus asked.
"That sound means that we need to get the hell out of here," Ben said.
A wide, intense laser beam, originally intended for space vessels, shot through the studio killing three more of the men as well as numerous station employees. Those still alive panicked, and ran in various directions amid screams and profanities. The room was incredibly hot, and cinders floated all about. The new smoking hole in the wall displayed the bulk of the gunship. Ben pushed Angus and Pavel into the stairwell, and they continued down as another blast vaporized a swath of the studio.
Pavel exited the building ran all out for the semi they had arrived in. The gunship hovering above fired down upon the truck. It erupted in a light green vespine fireball, leaving a white hot crater. The wave of heat and then force made Pavel stagger, and fly back.
"Looks like we're next," said Angus, letting his distress only show a little.
"I got an idea," Ben said.
Going to a manhole cover, Ben used the motor assisted force of the suit's arm to jam his finger through the hole, sending a squealing into the air, and lifted it up before scraping it onto the ground with a ringing thud. He motioned the others into the hole. Pavel and Angus did so without a word. "We'll meet up later," Ben imparted, "All right everyone, scatter, and run like hell." The remaining fighters moved in opposite directions, but another five were turned to glowing cinders before the rest escaped. The gunship fired one last beam at the manhole, punching through the ground, and melting the surroundings. After a few minutes the vehicle of destruction ascended into the heavens, and out of sight.

When Arcturus Mengsk returned to his room for the evening, he kept the lights down low. Most of the day had been spent speaking with various buyers of his minerals and Vespene gases. The Confederacy always paid him handsomely for his materials, but ever they tried to argue down the prices. The command center he operated from was now anchored on a mining site so small that the planetoid they were on had no atmosphere. The view from his room was of eternal night. He had heard of the broadcast that his father had made earlier. The foolishness of the action amazed Arcturus. He knew that his father was not fond of the Confederacy, but he was not a rash man either. He feared for the safety of his father. Korhal had a chance to find a place in the Confederacy, but now they may not allow Korhal to have any place.
Arcturus could feel something stir within him. There was anger, much anger, but this was something deeper, below the anger. It was something inseparable from himself. Arcturus did not know how to describe it, but it was something he had never before felt. He looked at the Comsat that was five paces away from where he sat in his plush, burgundy chair. He felt the need to go over to it, and send a message to his father, but for some reason he didn't, and he hated himself for it.

Pavel and Benjamin pulled up to Pavel's house in a hovercar. The car was the one that had broken down on Pavel the day he had been shot. After doing some repairs and replacing the plates with older ones, they had transportation. The problem wasn't as bad as Pavel had thought. A blockage in the air intake had caused an overheat, and the engine automatically shut down.
The drive over had served to illustrate the magnitude of the effects of Angus' call to arms. All the four million or so people of Korhal, who had once given in to the Confederacy's relentless hounding, had undergone a metamorphosis. As Pavel had told Angus, the people believed in him. For so long they had no idea of the true intent of the Confederacy, nor did they have any sight of the common bonds of subversive oppression that were upon all Korhalians. Mengsk had offered them a trusted leader to stand with, and new ideas, such the belief that Korhalians were their own people, and that they were good people, possessing self worth, autonomous from a sprawling intergalactic ruling body. Their own home was all that they cared about, they had no desire to fight in foreign wars for other people. For the first time Korhalians were understanding that those who surrounded them were not just other people, but their brothers and sisters who shared the same collective fate as they did. The anger that issued forth from these people was magnificent in a way. It was as if they were ready to claim their revenge after finally coming to know that they have been, to some degree, slaves, all their lives.
However, right now, Pavel was more concerned about his family. He had listened when Angus spoke to him about his commitment to his family, and something had clicked. He was surprised how much he missed them. Pavel exited the passenger side of his hovercar while it continuously made its gentle yet intense blowing noise.
There in front of him was the house he remembered. It was white, and two stories. A small satellite dish sat atop the right side of the roof. The door with its golden elliptical handle. The sprinklers that always showered him with a light, sunlit mist on his way to work. The small door now covered with cobwebs, that had allowed their now dead pet entry through the fence, and into the yard. There were so many memories, so many experiences that had been taken for granted, and that had gained a new respect in his mind.
Then Pavel's attention returned to the present. The front door had opened, and on the step stood his wife, Kelly, holding the baby that they had not even named yet. Kelly just stood there in shock, slack jawed. She must have thought that she would never see Pavel again. The lines on her face seemed to soften, and silent tears begun to trace their paths down her soft, flushed cheeks.
Pavel's five year old daughter, Melanie came out, and at the sight of her father, came tottering over toward him. Pavel hadn't remembered just how beautiful his wife was. She seemed a radiant vision in his eyes. Pavel called for them to join him where he was, next to the hovercar. He saw the face, and eyes of his daughter, the joy appeared to run out of them like inexhaustible rivers, turbulent, yet caressing, as they were given to him freely, and without inhibition, as a child knowing no need to hold back in a world giving her only love would. This was the last moment in all of Pavel's life that he ever thought he could be happy again.
It was impossible to know why it happened then. Perhaps it was that they knew that Pavel wasn't coming any closer to the house. After that last moment everything changed. Every window in the house shattered, and the pieces flew out. Fire ripped through the entirety of the building. Where Pavel's wife and infant child had been standing, there was now only flames. His daughter was sent into the air by the blast, and collided with him, square in the chest. Pavel's rear was sent through the window of the hovercar, and landed so that the remaining shards of the window tore into him just below the fleshy part of his backside. The glass did not sever any major veins or arteries, but the pain was sharp. It was only a dim sensation to Pavel as he slid off, and on to his feet, tightly holding his daughter to his chest. Cracking sounds evidenced that the shards had broken, and remained in his body. Every pore was sweating from the heat and flame that was continuing to consume his home, his life.
"Holy shit!" Benjamin exclaimed, witnessing the event from the driver's seat. Some small bits of glass were in his face, and there were minor cuts. He scootched over, brushing glass off of the seat, and swung open the passenger door. Pavel was pulled in as the door was again closed, and Ben became quiet as he focused on driving away from the scene as quickly as possible.
Pavel stared into space, as the hovercar jostled from quick turns, and sudden stops, clutching at his daughter, the last person in the world that would ever care about him. Ben didn't say anything, and didn't know if Pavel knew, but it was obvious that she had died instantly. Pavel gave short infrequent sobs as tears irrigated his face, and the still warm head of his young daughter. Very suddenly the sobbing and tears stopped.
There had always been a softness in Pavel's eyes, but now that softness was fading, never to return. His eyes hardened. It was a hardness that was permanent just the way the softness had been. From then on, whether he laughed, smiled, cried, hated, glared, stared, ate, drank, spoke, slept, lived or died, the hardness was always there, looking back from within his soul.