The Untitled Belinda Valory Epic
an excerpt

Belinda woke up with her wrists aching. The world swam before her eyes, a jumbled mess of brown, light and dark melding together to form blurry half-images that made her head ache. She didn't know how long she'd been out, but it had been far too long. Her wrists felt like they were on fire. She closed her eyes and tried to bring her hands around in front of her, but she couldn't. They were bound tight with a rough rope, on the other side of the cold, metallic pole she could feel pressed against her back. She tried to move her arms around a bit more, but it was too painful. Her forearms were screaming with the effort. She moved her feet to see if they were bound as well, then thanked her minimal luck that they weren't. She moved her legs out from where they were uncomfortably bent beneath her. Her knees would have sighed with relief if they could. As it was, she could tell they were thanking her profusely. She wiggled her toes. All good. She tried to open her eyes again but it was too much. She shut them again. She was going to be sick. she was sure of it. She was going to be sick all down the front of her already-filthy uniform, and no-one would help her. She knew what Stralians were like (for she realized, by now, that she was in a Stralian tent of some sort). She'd heard all about them.

She might have cried if she was the sort of girl who let herself do that, but she wasn't. Instead she tried opening her eyes again, willing them to focus on something. Anything. The ground swung in and out of focus. She blinked a few times and finally, thankfully, her eyes focused, locking on the hard, dirt floor. She examined her legs, next, the gray-blue pants that were so covered in dust they might have been the same color as the floor. Her boots, equally filthy, and her feet inside aching to be free of them. She tried to wriggle her leg enough that the boot might break loose, but no good. She cursed Lionel for teaching her how to tie her boots so well, and then felt badly because Lionel was dead, she remembered that, and he didn't mean for her to get stuck there. He would never have wanted her stuck there.

She knew she couldn't count on a rescue. She couldn't even hope for a rescue. She was dead, and all the worse because no one would ever know. No one who mattered, anyway, but these Stralian assholes, and they wouldn't care. Another one bites the dust, as they say.

Now that she was certain the ground wasn't going to careen out of focus again, she let herself look up and evaluate the tent itself. It was brown, as she'd noticed before, the same brown as the ground, and it seemed to have been built either in a very great hurry or by a very unskilled builder. It was really less of a tent than a huge piece of brown fabric held up by four randomly-placed poles and tied to the ground in sometimes-suitable places. There was what passed for a door on one side, but the ceiling hung lower than any decent tent ceiling she'd ever seen, low enough to skim the heads of those who walked through. No one was walking through just then, though. There were only four people in the tent, aside from Belinda herself, and they were all kneeling in the far corner. Three of them were men, and the other, the one whose face Belinda could see, was a hard-faced woman. They were talking in low whispers that she could only catch snippets of, and the woman kept casting nervous glances at something on the ground in front of them. There was also a low table beside them, and laying on it every sort of gun Belinda had ever been taught to use. There was also an ancient two-way radio, but it was only emitting static just then.

Belinda blew a strand of wayward hair from her eyes, trying to ignore her stomach flip-flopping and her wrists screaming. She'd been told once that pain was just her body's way of telling her that something was wrong. Well, she knew something was wrong. She knew exactly what was wrong, so she didn't feel the need to be bothered by her body telling her so just then. She ignored it and let it fade to a dull throbbing in the background of her attention. She strained forward, willing her ears to hear the conversation, but still all she could hear was their low mumbling, interspersed with clear, understandable snatches.

"mumble mumble... Corps... mumble mumble... survivors...mumble mumble... get help... mumble mumble... wakes up... mumble mumble... answers... mumble mumble..."

Finally, her wrists couldn't endure it anymore and she slumped back against the pole, breathing hard.

"Ah!" said the woman, and Belinda looked up sharply. She was looking directing at her. "She's awake."

"Oh?" said one of the men, and they all turned to look at her. She suddenly felt like the lion at the zoo.

She opened her mouth, though she wasn't sure what she would say, hopefully something valiant like "I'm not telling you nothing, you dirty scoundrels!", but all that came out was a dry gasp and a harsh croak from the back of her throat. She tried again with the same result. Her eyes began to water with the strain, then tired tears began streaming down her face, mixing with the dirt on her cheeks to form muddy tracks down to her chin. She tried to bring her knees close to her chest, but they revolted and she ended up flopping about like a fish out of water, croaking and gasping and struggling with the rope behind her, her wrists screaming furiously at her for all the good it did them.

Dimly, somewhere far away, she heard someone say: " Christ, is she dying?" and then someone else say "I don't know, get her some water or something."

Something wet hit her face and then she saw no more.