Free DJ's Mission by A. E. McCullough

die.”
    The two veterans shook hands and Tony climbed back
into Lucille. As he pulled off and heading away, DJ heard his voice float in on
the nitrogen winds of Titan. “Watch your six, Marine.”
     

 
     
    Chapter 6
    Kaitlyn looked at herself in the mirror for what
could’ve been the one-hundredth time that day.
    The bruises under her eyes were nothing more than
a memory but every time she looked at herself she still saw them in her mind’s
eyes. She was mid-way through her twelfth year and considered herself pretty,
not beautiful but not ugly either. She always thought that she was the perfect
blend of her father’s attitude and her mother’s beauty.
    Kaitlyn glanced over her shoulder at her mother
who was passed out from too much drinking…again. She had been drinking almost
constantly since that first day when Roger had hit them both.
    Kaitlyn replayed that day over again in her head.
    They had been hosting a dinner party when Roger
had taken a call in his office. There had been nothing unusual at that. Roger
was the chief executive for Titan Avionics and pretty much ran the Saturnian
System which allowed them to live like royalty on Titan City. It wasn’t as
glamorous as New Atlanta, Phoenix or even London but it was still nice. There
were stores, shops, theaters, clubs, parks and dozens of other things to do.
With access to the unlimited credits and influence of Titan Avionics, she was
never bored. There was always something to do until that fateful day when Roger
snapped.
    She couldn’t describe it any other way.
    He had taken the call in another room and when he
returned he was pale. Extremely pale. Her mother had asked what was wrong and
placed a reassuring hand on his arm. A wave of rage seemed to wash over his
face and he lashed out. Those first few strikes were etched into her mind.
Right now, Kaitlyn knew that if she closed her eyes and thought about it, the
attack would replay over and over in her mind. She had never considered her
step-father handsome, not with his facial scars, but he did radiate power. She
imagined that was what drew her mother to him. But during that first attack,
the rage seemed to fill him and the aura appeared to grow stronger.  Even as he
struck her mother again and again, Kaitlyn could remember rushing to her side
and the sting of Roger’s backhand connecting with her nose.
    Even though Kaitlyn winced at the memory of her
beating, she was proud that she had fought back.
    In the few years that her real father had lived at
home before going off to war, he had insisted that she learned how to defend
herself. Boxing and gymnastics had been his choice and her favorite activities.
Her mom had wanted ballet and dance. Their compromise was for her to do them
all. Of course since her heart wasn’t really in the latter two, she didn’t
excel at those endeavors. And as much as she loved boxing, once her parents
divorced that sport fell by the wayside. However about that same time she had
learned of an off-shoot form of gymnastics known as parkour and it had become
her one true love.
    Parkour is an extremely physical sport which
focuses on efficient movement over and around obstacles. It is a combination of
martial art moves found in styles such as ninjustu and qing gong while blended
with the tumbling and other aspects of traditional gymnastics. The main purpose
of the discipline to teach participants how to move through any environment by
vaulting, rolling, running, climbing, flipping, tumbling and jumping past or
over obstacles. Practitioners are known as ‘traceurs’ although the feminine
form would be ‘traceuse’ as in ‘he escaped without a trace.’ The name was
coined back in the early nineteen-hundreds but the art truly didn’t develop
into maturity as a martial art until the mid-twentieth century when the French
army and the United States Marine Corps incorporated it as part of their normal
training regimen.
    Kaitlyn practiced parkour daily and it was the one
area in