Lena buried her head in her arms on her desk, beginning to cry uncontrollably.
Why? Why were so many of her squad dead?
Of course, she knew the answer. But she couldn't do anything. She'd made a promise to herself that she'd reach the final destination and catch up to Shin and the others, and she couldn't do that if she did something stupid and selfish that would dishonor their deaths.
But, they weren't the only ones who had died. And while they wouldn't want her to do something like this, and had told her as much, Lena doubted Shiden would have the same reservations. Maybe this was cheating, there was certainly no way anyone in Spearhead would approve of it. But they weren't here anymore. And Lena didn't think the she was half as strong as they were.
She flicked the Para-RAID back on, and connected with Shiden.
"Cyclops. You there?"
"The fuck do you want right now?" was the curt reply. Shiden sounded pissed, but also curious; normally Lena wouldn't resonate without a reason on a day right after there had been losses.
Lena had asked this question before, not to Shiden, but to a different 86. Someone who's name she hadn't even known. But this time, she was hoping for a different response. 'Cyclops, do you hate us? Not me in particular, but us white pigs as a whole. If I told you that another one of the handlers had been killed, would you be happy?'
"Where the hell are you going with this? I'm certainly not going to feel bad for them dying, but I can hardly be happy over a faceless asshole getting killed if I never even got to see him. And don't go off'ing yourself, your majesty."
"Don't worry, I'm not going to be the one dying, not as long as I do this right."
Lena looked around for a weapon. As an officer she did have access to firearms, but they were regulated so that would leave a paper trail pointing back to her. Plus, they were loud. And while she did have a few knives at her house, she hadn't planned on needing one when she'd left this morning. She hunted around for a bit before ducking into a maintenance closet and grabbing a screwdriver. Not the most effective weapon, but it would have to do.
"You said you wouldn't be happy if it was just a faceless asshole dying, right? Can you close your eyes for a minute, then? I wouldn't want to get distracted right now."
Shiden reacted with disbelief. 'You're not seriously…', trailing off as Lena tuned the Para-RAID to link vision. She did close her eyes, however.
Lena walked down the hallway, brushing past another operator who was just leaving. With just a screwdriver, she probably would have to be careful who she picked. She stopped in front of one command room, towards the back end of the hall. Unlikely that anyone could hear a scream from down here, and it was occupied by Leon, who definitely deserved the moniker of 'white pig'. In addition to having no regard for his squadron, he was also a drunk and probably hadn't exercised a day in his life. Lena stepped into the room, finding him slumped over his console, surrounded by empty cans.
'Now or never, Lena', she thought to herself. Grabbing the screwdriver tightly, she swung it hard into Leon's back, and it penetrated through his flesh. As she pulled it out, a suddenly awakened Leon screamed in pain and lashed out blindly, almost catching her off guard. She managed to evade his blind grasp and plunged the bloody screwdriver into him again, knocking him to the ground in the process. She stepped over him and brought the weapon down again and again, hardly seeing anything beyond the tears welling up in here yes.
"Just die, you bastard. How many people have you gotten killed, and then laughed about it? Why are you alive, while there's people that are ten times the man you are dead out on the battlefield? Why?!"
After what felt like an eternity, she looked up, and noticed that Leon wasn't moving anymore, and probably hadn't been for some time, judging by the amount of blood that was pooling up around them.
"Fuck, that was too fast." Lena muttered. What was it Raiden (no, Werwolf, she didn't have the right to use his name) had said that day? "Its not revenge until the other side regrets all the shit they've done with every fiber of their being, till they drop to their knees and beg you for forgiveness. That's when you kill 'em."
'Well, your majesty, you certainly know how to put on a show. But how do you plan to get out of this mess?'
Lena remembered Shiden was still connected, and turned the Para-RAID back down to the minimum setting. Better safe than sorry as far as that went.
"I can take care of myself. Security here is shameful, and if they tighten it after this it won't help, I'll be more careful next time."
Lena knew the security cameras in this section of the building weren't working properly, and with the general attitude in the military it wouldn't have been impossible for a civilian to just walk into the building if they looked confident enough. They had no reason to suspect her. And if she was wrong, and she did get caught? Well, so be it, she deserved whatever the Republic would do to her anyway.
"Next time? What, you planning to single-handedly bring down the Republic?" Shiden asked in a joking tone.
"I don't have any plans. I just can't stand watching these fuckers go on living while you guys keep dying. And I can try, I have tried, I've tried everything to keep you alive and I get blocked at every turn, and your squadron still loses its members. Not to mention all the other Eighty-Six out there. So, I'm not going to let these bastards live. I know its weak and cowardly, and its not what they would have wanted, but I can't do anything else!"
"Well, I don't know who this 'they' is, but if you want to put on a few more shows like this, then I'm not going to complain." With that, Shiden disconnected, and Lena found herself alone, and thought back to her first Spearhead Squadron. They wouldn't have wanted this. Even Laughing Fox, who had berated her, or Gunslinger, who had more than enough reason to hate the Alba, wouldn't have asked her to do something like this. And if she truly wanted to reach their final destination, then she should be focused on fighting until the end like they had.
But Lena knew she wasn't strong enough for that. She was as pathetic as she'd been that day she'd watched Kirschblüte die, and anything else she told herself was a lie. She was a bloodstained queen, covered in the guilt from all the Eighty-Six she'd gotten killed. If that was fixed, then the only thing she could do was to make sure some of that blood came from someone that deserved it. She took another look at herself, in a blood soaked uniform and in front of a fresh corpse. Even if security was lax, she couldn't walk home like this. But there was one person she could probably trust. She called Annette.
"Annette, this is Lena. Can you come up to the command rooms for the processors, and bring an extra uniform with you. Come to room 47, Leon's, its towards the end of the hall on the second floor. Quickly."
"What? Why?"
"You'll see when you get here. Just do it quietly, and try not to be followed." Lena hung up. She took another look at the body in front of her. The blood was one thing, but if she could get it out of here, and clean up, maybe she could prevent any sort of alarm from being raised at all. If he just went missing, people would assume he'd quit and run off somewhere. But that could wait until after Annette arrived.
A knock on the door snapped Lena out of her thoughts. She grabbed the screwdriver instinctively, ready to jump whoever it was, until she realized it was Annette. Annette gave off a short shriek, clearly more shocked than Lena was, finding herself a blood drenched Lena standing over what had been Leon until a few minutes ago.
"You did this? Did he try to attack you? But then why the secrecy, just report it…"
"No. I attacked him. I've watched, no listened to, since I don't even have the ability to watch, far too many of the Eighty-Six die. And then people like him just sit there and laugh as they get even more killed without a reason." Looking up at Annette's horrified expression, Lena challenged her. "What, are you going to tell me that he didn't deserve this? We all deserve it."
She finished using the clean parts of her old uniform to clean the blood off of herself, grabbed the fresh one from Annette, and began to put it on. Annette took one more look at Leon, before turning and bolting out of the room.
Using the old uniform to prevent the blood from flowing out past the door, where it would be noticed, Lena quietly left the room and headed for the maintenance closet. After waiting for the hall to be silent, she ducked in, loaded a cart with several trash bags and cleaning solutions, and wheeled it into the command room. Stripping out of the uniform to keep it clean, she managed to stuff the body into the trash bags, which were nested to make tearing unlikely. Then she mopped up the blood, and spilled one of the half empty bottles across the ground to prevent any part of it from seeming too clean. It probably wouldn't hold up against a competent investigation, but hardly anything the military did these days was competent. For the body itself, she waited until night when the building was silent, then carried it outside, hailed a cab, and loaded it into the back without letting the driver get a good look at it. She ended up dumping it deep in a park.
It would probably be found eventually, but the whole Republic was going to die in a few years anyway, so what did the distant future matter? She wasn't going to see it anyway, so all she could do was make sure that these bastards died before then. It wasn't like the Eighty-Six said, the other Alba weren't just pigs. If they had been, maybe she could have brushed them off the same way Werwolf had. But she knew very well just how human they were. Which meant they would have to pay for what they had done.
And none of the others would get off as easily Leon had, she thought to herself.