The Language of Resistance

Maren Colt

The mountains bled fire tonight.

Gunpowder burned sharply in the back of my throat, mixing with the tang of damp pine and the copper bite of blood. We hit the Eksese convoy just before dusk, when the mist clung low and the ridges swallowed sound. It was supposed to be routine, but now the forest roared with return fire, green tracer bolts searing through the underbrush like lightning.

“Keep moving!” Rhett’s voice cut through the chaos, steady even with half the hillside exploding around us. He crouched, rifle spitting heat, his light auburn hair plastered to his forehead. Always the golden boy, leading raids as if he’d been born for them. The shallow lines etched on his face were not age, but evidence of what this war was doing to humans.

Trent slid in beside me, panting, holding tight to his cowboy hat. “Colt, left flank! Closin’ fast!”

I stood, breaking cover, and spun to face my target. My revolver cracked sharply against the hiss of alien fire. One of the Eksese staggered, its towering frame collapsing in a spray of sickly green. My bullet had found the joint beneath its metal chest plate.

One shot, one kill.

“Nice shot,” Trent muttered, wide-eyed.

I didn’t smile; this was war, and no one should enjoy killing. This was survival.

I cocked the hammer back again and shifted, seeing that the shot only bought us a heartbeat. There were too many of them, shadows with crests like jagged edges moving through the smoke. It had been three years since their ships blotted out the skies, and still they looked like nightmares given flesh and steel.

And they never stopped coming.

Rhett signaled sharply, and we fell back a few yards at his command. The plan had been simple: hit the convoy, take what we could, vanish before the armor could call for reinforcements. But plans fray quickly when the enemy’s boots are suddenly everywhere.

We ran. For a while, it was almost clean—shots exchanged, bodies hit, and blood soaked into pine duff. Then I heard the shout behind me: a string of guttural commands I didn’t recognize, and like a trap springing, a squad dropped from the tree line to cut the route we’d mapped. I pushed harder, doubled over roots, lungs screaming, but something snagged my ankle—Rhett’s voice this time not ordering but urgent. “Goddammit, Colt! Move!”

I did. I jumped to my feet and moved, returning fire. For a breath, I thought we’d make it.

Rhett’s face in the chaos said the rest before the words did. A few of the guys went down hard, their bodies sliding down the mountainside. His jaw was set like steel when he gave the signal to the flank with the practiced ease of a man who could pretend at cruelty and mean it later.

Everyone peeled off—Trent and the other men—like we’d agreed, like we were a single cattle herd.

Except for the herd split.

A volley slammed into the earth to my left. I spun, searching for Trent’s shotgun flash, his hat—anything to help orient me. For a second, the world narrowed to noise and stinging heat. My ankle was wedged under debris, and I couldn’t pull it free.

When the smoke blew clear, the path back was clogged with boulders and the dark line of enemy fighters cutting off our retreat. A hand closed over my shoulder and hauled—hard—and I saw Rhett, not helping me to flee, but yanking my pack off. I thought he was helping to carry my load so I could recover… but I was wrong.

“I’m stuck, help—”

His eyes passed over me like I was already a corpse. “Go!” he barked, not at me, at the others. “Move! Now!” I reached for him, for purchase—anything—and his elbow shoved me away. His mouth twisted, disgust like a taste. It wasn’t confusion. It was deliberate. “People need this stuff. Not you. It’s how it is.”

“No—” I coughed, throat dry, but a burst of fire knocked me flat on the ground.

He didn’t pull me after him. Trent helped him up the rock, his face flashing at the edge of my vision, hesitating, but he broke into motion too.

They left me.

Betrayal hit hotter than any bullet. I wanted to spit, to scream, to curse them—Rhett, Trent, and every man who’d hung that sneer on his mouth and called it teamwork. I wanted to drag them back by their collars and make them look at what they’d done.

Instead, I shook my foot out of my boot and tried to drag myself into the trees, but a net—slick, alien fibers—fell over me like a curtain.

Hands like iron shoved me down. Fingers dug into my flesh. Pain flared when they struck me; I tasted copper and aching, cold fear.

The Eksese around me were efficient and silent. They didn’t gloat. They didn’t shout. They prodded, inspected, and bound my wrists with a cold band that bit into flesh. I spat at one, and it hissed, a sound like grinding stone, before it backhanded me.

Red warmth trickled down my chin. “Is that the best you've got? Too afraid to hit a woman, you ugly piece of lizard-shit!” Another blow came from a different direction, but I just laughed. They didn’t like it one bit, taking turns with their strikes until...

He came through the smoke.

Taller than the rest, even without his black mohawk, like a Roman legionnaire's plume. He moved like a thing born to command, and the other soldiers fell into line as if pulled by invisible strings. We had only seen him—the Commander—a handful of times, but he had always been present for the major battles. He was the bringer of death, a bad omen if there ever was one.

He stopped above me, having been pummeled into the dirt, and looked down. His eyes—eagle-bright and predatory—held me as if he were weighing meat. I should have been begging. I should have been curled small and silent, but pride is a stubborn animal; it kept my chin up, blood and grime streaking my face and smile as I laughed. He watched me with that sharp dispassion that made me so furious I wanted to claw his eyes out.

He cocked his head, and the bony ridges jutting from his cheekbones caught the moonlight. “You have spirit,” he said in that low rasp, the alien accent rolling into English. The word wasn’t a mercy. It wasn’t a condemnation either. It was a currency. He looked at the warriors around him, then back at me. “Take her,” he commanded.

They lifted me to my feet like I weighed nothing, hands shoving me forward. As they carried me past the ruined ravine, past the smoking husk of what we’d fought for, I saw Rhett up on the ridge, a silhouette against the firelight. He didn’t give a signal. He just turned away.

Abandoned. That word burned into me hotter than any bounds the Eksese strapped around my wrists. I had been left to die by people I’d risked my life beside. That would be a debt I’d collect with blood if I ever came back.