To Burn With Desire
11 Jul 2018Yolanta Bonita Riveiros Purpura
"To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves."(Federico García Lorca)
Yolanta Bonita Riveiros Purpura lay on her back, hands crossed beneath her head, and gazed up at a crack in the ceiling. There was little else to do, for a prison cell has no luxuries. Not even an Imperial prison cell.
The woman was young, twenty-four and with hair as dark as her eyes. Her olive skin was as clear as her purpose; the same purpose which had led to her current situation.
She’d known luxury, once upon a time. Her Imperial upbringing on Keytree, a planet in the Cibola system, had been privileged. She was the eldest daughter of Juan Diego Riveiros Perez, a patron. Juan Diego represented the interests of a block of wealthy clients in the city of Nueva Tarragona, an Iberian settlement. Whilst perhaps not as prominent as a senatorial patron, Juan Diego was a man of influence nevertheless, and enjoyed the considerable benefits which his position afforded him. He had transformed the income from owning a large vineyard into the vehicle for his political career. Parties, functions, dinners and entertainment were almost daily occurrences, and the young Yolanta frequently wondered how her father found time to do any actual work. Little did she know that for a patron, smiling and presenting oneself properly both to betters and underlings was most of the work. A patron who couldn't navigate the maelstrom of elegant subtleties that was Imperial ballroom politics was no patron at all.
To this end, Juan Diego always took his three daughters to the various social gatherings and charitable events he attended as part of his duties. He took pains to show the girls off with evident pride, knowing that it portrayed him as a loving family man, a quality greatly appreciated by the admiring citizens of Nuevo Tarragona. Yolanta and her younger sisters, twins Isabella and Renata, dutifully performed their parts by laughing and chatting to visiting dignitaries and ordinary citizens alike. They wore the latest fashions, they sipped the finest wines, and their smiles were charming but assuredly unchallenging. They were their father’s perfect daughters.
But the public image of Juan Diego Riveiros Perez was a sham. Although he was highly effective in his duties as a patron, he was terrible as a father. In private he was a sour-faced, impatient man with a quick temper and a fiercely unforgiving nature. Whilst never physically violent to his daughters, he had unleashed his verbal wrath upon them on numerous occasions. He demanded of them nothing less than absolute perfection, and no fault was too small to escape his condemnation. A single out-of-place hair, a glass of wine held at the wrong level or sipped at the wrong time, or a smile that too closely resembled a grimace were akin to dire failures. Families had risen or fallen on such subtleties, he ranted, and the Riveiros family would not suffer on account of its daughters. Yolanta and her sisters had learned to keep themselves to themselves whilst at home, especially since the tragic death of their mother in 3294.
“Home” was a classically grand villa in the fashionable semi-rural quarter of Nueva Tarragona. Whilst not exactly a palace, on a mainly agricultural world like Keytree it was practically the next best thing. Lush-lawned, rose-flowered grounds lay behind high walls of white stone, resplendent with bougainvillea. To one side of the house was a swimming pool and a small but well-kept olive grove; up on the roof, a landing pad for private aircars. Beyond the north wall of the estate lay an expansive vineyard tended by numerous slaves, working in the traditional style using time-honoured methods; no auto-harvesters or cloning vats would do for Juan Diego. It was a custom of his when home to eat a light lunch and stand at the balcony of the Master’s Suite, watching his slaves toil from his lofty perch. When face-to-face with one he never failed to show due masterly respect, especially when there was a visiting dignitary on-hand to witness him do so. That his personal assistant always needed to whisper the name of the slave into his ear beforehand was a trifling detail at best.
It was all a far cry from the cold prison cell in which Yolanta now lay, just over one hundred light years from Cibola.
Though she had enjoyed the trappings of Imperial home life, Yolanta had long yearned to escape its stultifying boredom. Her opportunity presented itself in 3298 when, at the age of 18, she was sent to one of the Empire's leading universities at Cubeo to study socioeconomics. The course taught her much about the political and social workings of the Bubble, revealing a multitude of shortcomings. She met other students who were similarly disenchanted with many aspects of the Imperial regime. Rebellion and revolution became regular topics of conversation, so that by the time Yolanta returned home, three years later, a passion for change burned within her heart. Filled with a desire to campaign for social change amongst the stars, she had paid for flying lessons and bought herself a Sidewinder. As a patron’s daughter, she was never without a generous monthly stipend when away from his roof. Little did Juan Diego know that she had been channelling it toward a more private education than even he’d envisioned.
The family reunion on Keytree in late July 3301 was subdued. After exchanging brief embraces with her sisters, Yolanta had suddenly found herself alone to face her father. Juan Diego had been bitterly disappointed to hear that Yolanta had only managed to scrape a third class degree. Her abject failure, as he saw it, had impacted badly on his reputation as a patron. Worse still was the news of his daughter learning the trade of piloting, flying alongside all sorts of inferior stock. When he heard Yolanta voice her plans for the future, however, his temper had hit the roof.
“I sent you to university to receive an education!” he had bellowed. But if Juan Diego Riveiros Perez had harboured any thought that his daughter was the same meek young woman who had left his household over three years earlier, he was in for a shock. Yolanta Bonita Riveiros Purpura had found her voice, and she was not afraid to use it.
“I did receive an education!” Yolanta had retaliated, her tone vehement. “I learned about life! I learned about freedom, hope and truth! I learned to stand on my own two feet. That is an education worth far more than a framed certificate on the wall!”
“No, Yolanta! You had your mind twisted by idealistic fanáticos.”
“They are not fanáticos! They are people. Interesting people, intelligent people, with their eyes open and their hearts on fire. People who see the galaxy for what it is, and for what it could be. People who see through the lies and false promises of the superpowers. People who want to make a difference. The galaxy belongs to people such as these, not to fat, stuffy politicos—”
“Like me?” said Juan Diego, his face growing redder by the second. “So now you disrespect your own padre?”
“That is not what—”
“Very well, Yolanta. If this is what you believe, then there is no longer a place for you in my house! You have a ship, so take it and go! I will not follow you. Return to your interesting, intelligent friends, and help them to make the difference you seek. But when it all goes wrong, when your precious half-baked ideals crumble about you under the weight of reality, do not think to come crying to me. From this day forward you are no daughter of mine.”
With that, Juan Diego had turned his back on his eldest daughter, both literally and figuratively. His retribution had been characteristically swift and final, brooking no argument. They were in the balcony of his villa, his eyes washing over the slaves in the vineyards, a reminder that he was in control. Behind him, his daughter’s eyes blazed.
“Very well, papi,” she had said, insolently using her childhood name for him. “I will go. Do not suppose that I will beg and grovel to you for forgiveness, because I will not. ¡Adiós para siempre!”
Almost three years had gone by since she had left home. She’d left a farewell note for her sisters, but had never been back. During those three years she had travelled between the stars, trading and working for factions sharing her own ideals, and adding to her already embarrassingly healthy credit balance.
She had also sought out some of her old university companions, and together they had ventured forth in search of change and revolution. Along the way she had made new contacts, new friends, with similar leanings and sympathies to her own. She had learned new things, found new causes to fight for. She had become part of a new family, each of its members as hungry for change as she was. Idealism had rapidly turned into action, and action had led to each of them becoming outlaws. Those whose dedication to the cause wasn't quite strong enough to accrue a bounty were long gone. Yola was among comrades, each trusting the other absolutely.
The much-publicised deeds of Salomé, Senator Kahina Tijani Loren, further galvanised Yola and her friends in their struggle against authority. Their fight had brought them to the Imperial system of Atroco. It was here that Yola joined up with the Night Witches, a brigade of political activists working for an anarchist faction, the Atroco Raiders. She soon forged a strong friendship with Kari Kerenski, the leader of the Night Witches, and the two women spent many hours together devising campaign plans.
But Yola's unswerving devotion was eventually tested to the extreme. The murder of Salomé affected Kari deeply, clouding her judgement and causing the Night Witches to take unnecessary risks. A series of poor decisions had led to a disastrous raid on Watts Orbital, resulting in most of the band being killed. For Yola herself, it had brought capture and imprisonment here, in a dingy cell at Hudson Penal Colony.
Yola Purpura lay on her back, hands crossed beneath her head, and gazed up at the ceiling. There was little else to do, for a prison cell has no luxuries. But she would not exchange it for even the grandest palace in the Empire.
“¡Vive las Brujas de la Noche!” she cried out, raising a defiant fist in the air. There was no room for fear in her heart, filled as it was with conviction for the cause.
“Long live the Night Witches!”
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Author's Note
Huge thanks to the amazing Matt Lehman for his suggestions and ongoing support. Also a massive thank you to Kari Kerenski for the invitation to join the Night Witches!