Chapter 4 - What about the Children?
As soon as she saw the panel door close behind them, Aysha Napolipolita-Daitokuji looked at the Amazon guard holding onto her upper arm, noting that she was still distracted by the young women's conversation. She jerked her arm out of her grasp and made a dash for the great bronze doors that led to the outside and to her missing children.
As she and the guard struggled (the guard having grabbed her long green hair on the fly), Hippolyta stepped forward.
"Ambassador! Didn't I tell you that I was responsible for your safety, and for the safety of your children as well?" Now seizing a labrys - the sacred double-edged battle ax - from the wall of the Great Hall, the Amazon queen lay her hand on the guard's shoulder, ordering her to release the Ambassador's long ponytail. She then told the worried mother, "I swear by Athena that I will not return until your young ones are once again safe and sound in your arms."
A flash of mutual understanding passed between the two warrior women - one of an ancient Terran race and the other of the alien culture that had originally spawned it. Hippolyta then straightened her broad shoulders and strode out the doors with her retainers following in tow, just as a group of Shakanar fighters now flanked their mothership.
Napolipolita-Daitokuji wiped her bloody nose with the back of her hand, and gestured at the wall. "Dammit, Dee! It's bad enough that these Terrans think our Sacred Labrys belongs to them!" She sprang forward, yanking another double-ax from the wall. An Amazon guard stepped forward, as if to stop this interloper. Napolipolita-Daitokuji bared her teeth and gave the woman a firm but sisterly shove.
"Now," the Cygnan panted, watching Deesha follow suit. "Let's show these Amazons what real fighting is like!"
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Akana had more than her share of trouble in finding her baby brother. She thought she had found him three times; the fact that she had been wrong every time had driven her to blind panic.
Something - perhaps the memories of her own youthful play - suddenly gave the young Cygnan the idea to look vertically instead of horizontally. Within a few moments, she had spotted her baby half-brother in a grove of olive trees. The cunning little green-headed tot had climbed up one of the taller trees and had hidden himself in the great tree's deep green mantle.
"Oh, Hikiri!" Akana gasped, tears of relief and gratitude welling in her green eyes. She ran over to the base of the tree. "Come down this minute. I need to get you back inside the Palace!"
Kir's only reaction was a gleeful laughing fit.
Over the next half-minute - while the shrieks and thuds of implosion bombs filled her ears - her promises of threats and even more promises of treats failed to budge the little boy. Suddenly, Aki realized that he was unable to get down, but was too proud to admit it.
The young athlete soon found herself shinnying up the tree trunk, angry as hell with her brother - at least, until she saw the fear in his young face. He was only two years out of diapers, but already realized that his dignity demanded he keep his alarm hidden from Aki's notice. As dignified as he tried to be, he couldn't hide his expression of relief as he caught the sight of his big sister climbing up to rescue him. The moment he was in his big sister's arms, Kir's brave demeanor crumbled. He began to cry, as all small children his age are wont to do.
Seeing his distress, Akana kissed his cheek and asked, "Is that any way for a brave warrior to behave?"
"Shiiko and Mitsuko say there no Leptonian boy warriors," he responded indignantly.
"How many times have I told you not to listen to them? Hasn't Auntie Dee told you again and again that you're special? That you're different from any other Leptonian boy?"
Kir placed a finger in his mouth, wanting to keep his own counsel.
"Besides, you're half Terran, and you are your father's son!"
He now nodded, a smile replacing his quivering lip as courage drove his fear away. Hanging on to his "big sissy's" neck, they made their way down the tree.
Once safely on the ground, brother and sister ran hand-in-hand back to the Royal Palace Compound. They had almost reached it when the second wave of the Shakanar attack began.
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The first warning they had received had been the hissing sound from heavy weapons as the Shakanar sent pulse after pulse of high-intensity laser fire into the roof of the Temple of Apollo. Akana pressed Hikiri's face against her chest as she dropped in a squat, curving herself over her brother, and looked in horror as the massive marble structure exploded. Dazed, she watched a severed Corinthian pillar pinwheel across the blue sky until it finally split in two and buried itself on top of a war chariot that had held two Amazon soldiers.
"Oh Great Mother help them!" the girl thought frantically. "And us as well!"
Aysha Napolipolita-Daitokuji screamed when she saw the temple shatter. "My babies are out there!" she shrieked, running toward the sound of the screams coming from underneath the now-collapsing debris pile, soon to be the length of twenty city blocks.
Dee immediately tackled her and flung herself over her former commanding officer's body as splinters of sparkling white rock shot over their heads at maniac speed. "Get off me!" Aysha spat, wriggling her way from underneath her friend and bodyguard, her clawing fingers digging furrows in the soft earth of Themyscira as she did so. "You don't understand! You don't have any children!" Dee instantly jerked up and off of her.
Napolipolita-Daitokuji instantly regretted her harsh words when she realized their import. "Oh," she now said, getting back on her feet and trying to hug her old friend. "Oh. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't - "
She watched Dee's shaggy head jerk upward, and both now looked directly into the housing of the Shakanar pulse cannon hovering some fifty feet over their heads. She thought she could even see a flash of the red armor worn by its pilot and the death's-head insignia it bore.
"Shut up and run!" the former Shakanar officer shrieked, giving her former Captain a tremendous shove that got her moving again. Aysha nearly turned back to recover the battle ax she had dropped, until she realized that such a frankly primitive weapon would do nothing to protect them from aerial bombardment.
Both women sprinted toward a stand of trees, neither realizing that the movements of Aki and Kir were nearly identical to their own.
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Akana had ducked for cover much as her mother and Deesha had. She clutched her now-screaming little brother tightly in her arms. She heard the screech of Shakanar attack ships as they passed overhead, blasting everything that moved. She dared not look up, knowing that it would be a useless gesture that would waste precious seconds.
She knew full well that their present position made them an attractive target from the air; what she hadn't realized was that the psychopathic Cygnans prowling the Amazon skies were specifically gunning for little Hikiri. It was just as well; such an awful realization would have shocked her into immobility.
Aki now sprinted toward the sea. She could make it to the docks and take refuge among the pilings; no one would think of looking for them there.
She was no more than fifty feet from the harbor when the blinding white column of a particle beam disintegrator screamed down, striking the water and churning it into a boiling deathtrap for the Amazons unlucky enough to have been in their fishing boats when the attack began. Within seconds, steaming convection currents tossed the ships and their contents into the air.
"No, the sea won't do," Akana moaned. "We have to try for the Palace, honey," she told Kir. "We'll get under these bushes until I can figure out a way to get us there."
Little Kir Azenath of the House of Napolipolita only sucked his thumb, even though he knew it was a baby trick.
The green-headed girl covered the distance in only a few seconds, dropped, and pulled her tiny brother by his arm until he was hidden once again in the sheltering leaves he had originally sought.
"I'm sorry, baby," the girl said. "I am so, so sorry. I wish you were back home, sitting in Daddy's lap. I really do."
Brother and sister remained under cover for a good ten minutes. Then as the din of the attack lessened, brother and sister rushed towards the Palace. Akana had realized that their only available route lay through the open market and past the docks, but it couldn't be helped.
They were making their way past the shoreline when the first of the troop carriers landed at the water's edge.
A horde of oversized Shakanar warriors came rushing out. Each massive, bionically enhanced body was encased in dark red plasticine armor. Each cruel hand clutched a pulse rifle. Soon, other large carrier ships arrived, expelling more troops and more heavy armor.
Aki moaned as she watched several huge three-legged walkers lurch into motion. She could see inside their domed tops at the three Shakanar soldiers at the controls of each one.
"A commander, a gunner, and a driver," she thought frantically.
Other surprises soon emerged as well, including a number of armored monsters that resembled Terran tanks.
As the main attack continued to rain ruin down upon the sacred soil of Themyscira, Akana and Kir watched a streak of red rushing skyward, much too fast to scrutinize. Soon after that, the deadly fire from the sky seemed to stop. With her little brother still clutched in her arms, Aki dropped just in time behind a small sunken garden to avoid a pair of strafing Shakanar attack fighters.
Looking up, the girl saw A-ko's mother deflecting the small craft's fire with her bracelets. And then Diana used her strong fingers and nails like claws, ripping out the bottom of the craft as it passed over her. The last Akana saw of it was the sight of the pilot ejecting from the cockpit just before it crashed into the sea, which was still churning with boiling hot turbulence. Once again, Akana clutched her brother and made a dash for the relative safety of the Palace.
Unbeknownst to her, the eyes, which served as the windows to twisted Shakanar souls, had found both her and her baby brother.
The commander of one of the tall armored walkers had already reported her discovery to her superior officer high in orbit above her.
"We have discovered the male half-breed, Admiral! What are your orders?"
"Standard orders are to kill the abomination," was her quick reply.
"And the green-haired female with him?" the commander asked.
"Another one of Napolipolita 's whelps. Remove that insult to Cygnan purity as well, Commander!"
Admiral Chitai licked her lips, and grinned.
You killed my daughter, Napolipolita.
Now I kill yours.
Fair is fair.