The commander allowed his countenance to darken as he looked up from his study of the woman’s hands to again peer into her glittering eyes. “Your friend was just about to bare his soul to me,” he said, finding comfort in the speaking of his own tongue. “You prevented that from happening. Why?”

Kael’s lips curved into a sneer as she refused to look away from his direct gaze.

The two engaged in a silent battle of wills for long moments before Al-Hassein found himself unbelievably having to look away from the deadly glare of his prisoner. Clearing his throat against his discomfort, the commander gestured to his men, who raised their weapons. “Unfortunately, you did a very bad thing and must receive the proper punishment. It’s not something I want to do, believe me. But even I have my orders.” He tried to make his voice sound sad, but failed miserably, so off balance was he by this strange woman sitting in his office as if she, not he, were the interrogator. He nodded again, a savage shake of his head, and watched interestedly as the rifle butts came down upon her unprotected hands, crushing the bones beneath the smooth, silken flesh, his ears awaiting the wonderful sounds of her screams of agony.

There was only silence. He forced himself to look up, knowing the woman had passed out just as her compatriots had before her, and irrationally disappointed because of it. Looked up to find those eyes still staring at him, the sneer still curled about the full lips of his captive.

“Is that the best you can do?” the low, melodious voice asked without a hint of the agony she must surely be feeling.

Al-Hassein forced himself not to gasp. Surely this woman was not human. “Who are you?” he breathed, barely aware that he was speaking aloud.

Kael chose not to answer him Instead, she leaned back against the chair, actually crossing her legs as the smirk on her face became a half smile of amusement. She was holding all the cards and she knew it. Worse, she knew he knew it as well. Her deceptively casual posture was deliberately designed to prod him into making a mistake.

Closing the distance between them, Al-Hassein’s wonder was evident on his face as he pushed a large thumb down onto the warm flesh of her crushed left hand. He stared at her face, determined to see some sort of reaction to this. There was none. Not even the involuntary tensing of her jaw muscles or the contraction of her pupils betrayed her pain. The amused smile remained. Her eyes seemed to laugh at his discomfort.

The commander removed his thumb and moved slightly away, trying to regroup. He was totally non-plused and reeling off balance. Al-Hassein was a competent military commander with many skirmish victories under his belt. None of his experience, however, had prepared him for this. His mind whirled. His broad shoulders raised, then settled as he wiped his hands down his uniform, huffing out a soft sigh of air.

The look of false compassion returned again to his eyes. “It doesn’t have to be like this, you know,” he said finally, gesturing to her hands. “You understand my position. It was only business. You took something of mine so I had to take something of yours. Now that we are again on an even field, as it were, we can begin anew.” Reaching outward, he used a fingertip to gently caress Kael’s square jaw. “All you need do is answer my simple questions and I can promise you that this interview can proceed most …pleasantly.”

Kael’s smile of amusement turned to one of outright seduction. Her glittering silver-blue eyes darkened and narrowed wantonly, causing the Iraqi’s entire body to respond quite against his conscious will. “Perhaps,” she replied softly, her own eyes blazing a path down Al-Hassein’s uniformed body, coming to rest on the area between his legs. An ebony eyebrow curved. “If you’re sure you have the stamina for it, that is.”

His jaw opening in shock, Al-Hassein stepped back again. Reaching into the breast pocket of his uniform, he pulled out his ever-present handkerchief, wiping his fingers furiously as he stared at the prisoner still wantonly eyeing him. “You Americans are amazing,” he choked out, stuffing the rumpled, damp cloth back into his pristine uniform coat. Used to the covered deference of Muslim women, the commander was out of his element and he knew it. The line of seduction he had just laid on the American would have been an affront of the most horrid to one of his own, yet she accepted it as if it were her due and even had the utter gall to chastise his manhood.

Black blooms of rage flared up behind his eyes as he stared at his prisoner, grinding his perfect teeth in rhythm to the clenching of his fists. Well groomed nails dug divots into the warm flesh of his palms causing dots of blood to well up and surface.

Keal kept up the act, knowing she had the Iraqi on the ropes. One more blow and he’d go down in a heap. In a deep, throaty voice, she purred, “Are you sure you’re man enough to take me on?”

Bellowing in rage, Al-Hassein threw up his right arm, intending to strike the impudent woman’s face with all his strength, determined to mar the beauty she was so effortlessly using against him. The blow never landed. Instead, it was easily deflected off a rock hard forearm as Kael ripped from her bindings with ease, blocking the thundering blow and the one that followed it. Standing, she drew back her head and butted the frozen commander while at the same time urgine a sharp knee into the manhood she had just mocked. Al-Hassein went to his knees, wheezing and retching as his stunned guards looked on with wide eyes.

“Guess not,” she sneered, landing an elbow to the muscled mid-section of the guard to her left, causing the weapon to fly from his tight grip. In her zeal, Kael had forgotten about her injured hands and the weapon fell from her grasp to clatter onto the tiled floor of the office. Turning quickly, she threw a sweeping round kick at the second guard, connecting with his upper chest and sending him to the ground beside his commander.

The first guard regained his footing, clamping a huge hand on one broad shoulder, intending to spin the prisoner around to face a right cross he was readying. Instead, his nose met with a backfist and he released the woman, howling and clutching at his face as streams of blood sprayed through his clenched fingers.

Tears of pain stung at Kael’s eyes as her crushed hand made forceful contact with the guard’s face. She blinked them back savagely, a feral grin blooming on her face. The second guard scrabbled for his gun, only to be stopped as the heel of Kael’s combat boot crushed his hand. “Paybacks are a bitch, boys,” she taunted, swinging around and leveling the still keening Al-Hassein with a front kick to his face.

The guard whose hand she crushed managed to grab for her long robes, pulling her off balance. As she struggled to right herself against the desk, her bracing hands screamed out their torment, refusing to bear her weight as she tried to kick her captor off. Snarling in rage, she gathered herself and kicked out and back, grinning wildly as she heard a howl and a satisfying thud. The guard flew halfway across the room, a large swatch of her tattered gown still fluttering in his uninjured hand.

Dodging to her left to avoid the screaming Al-Hassein, Kael gathered up the remnants of her robes, making for the door. The first guard managed to pick up his submachine gun, trying desperately to aim at the retreating figure through the haze of blood filling his eyes. His shots went low, splintering Kael’s shins. She went down, her weight landing on her injured hands and the world greyed out around her momentarily.

Seeing the demon woman go down, Al-Hassein struggled to his feet again, holding together his badly torn chin and gagging at the blood that pooled in his mouth. Stumbling over to the prisoner laying on her side, he watched as she continued to weakly struggle toward the door and freedom. A flush of rage suffused his features as he lashed a booted foot into her abdomen and chest again and again until she finally stop moving. With a final kick which felt as if it had ruptured something internally in the woman, the commander dropped to his knees, panting, his blood streaming from his face to land on the once white robe of his prisoner.

Five heavily armed soldiers burst into the office, their weapons held at the ready.

Saliva frothed from Al-Hassein’s mouth, so complete was his insane rage. A woman had nearly defeated him. A woman! A stupid, useless American woman. Rising, he took out his rage on the squad of guards who stood blinking stupidly at the bloody scene before them.

“What were you waiting for?!” he screamed, his eyes bulging from their sockets. “Allah?!?” Up and down the line he went, raining down blows on each of his men until he was too tired to lift his arms. He looked down at the huddled form of the prisoner at his feet, kicking the body again once more just for the sheer pleasure of it.

“Get this carcass down to the cells and bring me back the skinny pig. Five corpses will decorate my prison by the time this night is over. Do it! Now!!”

Two of the soldiers bent over and grabbed Kael under the arms, a third leading the way out of the office. Kael’s shattered legs trailed limply behind her, a trail of blood marking her passage through the bunker.

Reingold was ready for action as he heard the guards troop down the hallway. He had heard the sounds of gunfire above his head and knew something had gone horribly wrong. At first, he had entertained the notion that Kael had gotten free and taken care of business, but the sounds of many booted feet dashed that fantasy, leaving his muscles coiled and ready for anything.

The door pounded open and his commander was thrown in, the front of her robes painted red with blood. Black power burns told him who had borne the brunt of the weapons fire he had heart. His heart constricted sharply and his vision trebled as a snarl twisted his face.

“You fucking bastards!” he screamed as the first of the guards reached out to grab him. Carefully laying Kael’s body on the ground, he pistoned upward with his legs, giving his blow the strength it needed to release the gun from the guard’s suddenly nerveless fingers. “What the fuck did you do to her, huh?” Reversing his grip on the gun, he clouted the guard under the chin, flipping him into the man behind him. Flipping the gun in his hands once again, he raised it to high port, taking a split second to aim. Bullets sprayed out from the weapon’s muzzle, cutting into the two fallen men. He looked up into the barrel of a weapon pointed directly at his head.

Tongues of fire leapt from both weapons at once. American and Iraqi alike went down, dead before they hit the ground.

All was silent for a long moment until desperate knocking was heard from the adjoining cell. “Gunny? Shooter? What’s going on in there?”

Only a cold silence answered the two Marines.

Continued..Part 2

Return to The Desert Storm Main Page

DESERT STORM

Part 2

by: SwordnQuill

SwordnQuil@aol.com

Disclaimers: The characters of Xena, Gabrielle, Lao Ma, Alti, Borias, and everyone else who sounds familiar belong to Pac Ren and Universal Studios. I am not making money off of this story.

Genre Disclaimer: Ok. Bear with me, please, because this is kinda tough to explain. Sometime last year, I read a story on the internet that moved me so much, I was inspired to write a sort of companion piece to it. That story was “Lost Soul Walking” by DJWP. In her words, “This is NOT UberXena fiction. It just starts out like it is.” The same can be said for this piece. While not directly related to “Lost Soul Walking”, “Desert Storm” can be considered a sort of prequel to it. It is a story, if you will, about the lifetime before the one depicted in that fabulous, outstanding story. (Can you tell I loved it?) In addition, this is somewhat of an ambitious piece of fiction, in that I am attempting (don’t know if I’ve succeeded, but I’ve attempted) to take the entire X:WP universe and modernize it. We start, in updated terms, with my version of Xena’s betrayal by Caesar (seen in “Destiny”), and continue up through the X:WP episode known as “Remember Nothing”. The plot will be very recognizable to you. It’s meant to be that way.

Special note: Because of this, Gabrielle does not appear, except in offhand mention, in a great deal of the first half of this story. Do not look for her, because you won’t find her. After all, she was not a part of ‘evil Xena’s’ life. If she were, things might have turned out differently, but because this is based on the premise of “Lost Soul Walking” it cannot happen differently. Gabrielle will, however, make her presence known, and that quite strongly, in the second half of the story. If you can hang on till then, I believe that you will not be disappointed.