[b]The Mosquito Coast[/b]

Jay Holden carelessly flicked a spent cigarette into the luminous turquoise water that lapped against the ARC Velez. The Velez was a Columbian destroyer, a sharp-angled Zumwalt Class designed for stealth, gifted by the American Federation as part of the World Peace Commission's effort in taming the war-torn anarchy in Central America. Jay had only served in the last few years of the war, where he saw action on the Ivory Coast. What he had saw there would stay with him. When the war arrived in Nigeria, it tore the country apart. He had saw entire villages slaughtered and burned. He had saw refugees, starving and maimed, cross burning grasslands to get away from their patrols. In Abuja, he saw a man literally explode has his blood quickly boiled from the heat of a thermal missile going off beneath his feet. When that had happened, he had wore that mans blood for days before getting the opportunity to wash it off. And they said Nigeria had been a skirmish in comparison to Central America. 

The sun had all but set, framing the darkened coast in red flame. This must be what it had looked like during the war, when the entire region burned. Even now, a year after the fighting had officially came to an end, they could see pockets smouldering amongst the new growth. In the daylight, the scars of war had been visible. The landscape was marked with unnatural valleys and ravines where new jungle growth was only now starting to take hold. In other places, growth refused to take hold at all. They had said that strips of the landscape were permanently blackened where the soil was too poisonous to host plants. It was true. From what Jay could tell, the entire land looked poisoned. The jungle looked sick, filled with trees that reached a certain height only to die. During the day, it had looked noxious and unnatural. At night, it looked evil.

Their mission was on behest of the Peace Commission. Ricardo Palacio Delgado, the Director of the Panama Zone, had insisted on aid in patrolling the wild coast of "The Tears." His recent declaration that the Tears were rightfully his territory, and his ploy to win support with such antics as naming a young girl who had been maimed in the fighting to the nothing-office of "Vice Director", and changing his name legally to "Mister Promises", had caused the Peace Commission to reconsider his sanity. Panama was a laughing stock to the international community, but the eccentric Director was popular with his own people. 

Jay flicked a second cigarette into the water. Had it been that long? The war had made it difficult for him to sleep. He found himself spending a lot more time staring into nothing, thinking about just as much. The moon was rising in the east, and the coastline was enveloped in blackness. Jay rounded the bridge and found his way to the other side of the destroyer, where lights were propped up around a gathered crowd.

Most of the sailors were Columbians. They had lived a hard life, their country ceasing to exist early in the war as revolutions within revolutions tore at each other for a decade. There were more men with burns or scars than there were without. Some of them were missing digits, or hands, or features on their faces. Jay had talked to a man who claimed to have survived having his throat slit, and he had the scar to prove it. Most of them had fought against one another during the war, and old loyalties still divided the crew. The captain had decided that an outlet was needed. That was how they came to organize the fight.

There were soldiers in the crowd as well. Some where American, some German, some British. They came from everywhere that honored the Peace Commission's interests as a gesture of adherence to the Treaty that ended the war. The old rivalries had been less of a problem with them. Even those who had fought each other had somehow learned to hate the war itself over their enemies. Disturbingly, Jay had found himself far more comfortable with old foes than he did with his family back at home. The war had fashioned it so he had more in common with the people he had tried to kill than the people who had raised him.

Between them, a makeshift ring had been fashioned out of rope and orange rubber cones. Lights focused on the two sweaty combatants, a hispanic man - one of the Colombian sailors - and a white woman. They were roughly the same height, the woman being an inch or two taller. The sailor had taken his shirt off, revealing a somewhat flabby torso with little more than a tuft of hair in the center of his chest to match the tuft of hair on top of his lip. He was smiling like a devil despite the blood oozing out of his busted lip. It looked like he hadn't had more fun in his life.

Jay knew the woman. She was a Dane, though the war had saw her fight for the Germans as well. Soldat Heidi Raske. She was more comfortable with the men then most female soldiers he had seen. Her dirty blonde hair was kept in a tight bun behind her head, simple and out of the way. She had lost her leg during the war and gained a cybernetic replacement. Most people wore a skin-tone sleeve over their cyber-limbs, but she never did. She said it was too difficult to clean.

Her nose was bent slightly, a product of it having been broken one time too many. Even now the fight had left it bleeding. Her cyber-leg looked like something that belonged in the engine of a car, with blackened steel parts formed in such a way that was reminiscent of the muscles they had replaced. Wires protected by thick rubber ran up and down the struts. The feet, more delicate than the leg, were protected by a black leather "Shoe" shaped vaguely like a foot. 

She was enjoying the fight as much as the sailor, though Jay considered that it was likely for different reasons. These men hadn't seen many women like Soldat Raske. When her opponent took off his shirt, she had followed suit, wearing a simple military training bra. It didn't reveal much, but it didn't take much for this lot to take interest. 

Every time Raske landed a shot, the rest of the Peace Commission soldiers cheered. The Columbians cheered anytime somebody was hit, and twice as much when there was blood. The sailor wasn't afraid of hitting her, but he did look distracted none the less, so it was no surprise when a leeward glance ended in an upward strike to the jaw. He looked like he flew before he fell, and it was over.

Jay joined the rest of the soldiers in congratulating her. They surrounded her, clothed in a variety of different uniforms. There were greens and greys and grey-greens. A few were dressed in camo, and a few is straight black. They represented different nations, all unified here off the coast of a place that had lost all unity to them and the weapons that had been brought under their flags a decade ago.