1. Dick and Jane
Roku was late for class again. Her heels echoed as they clicked down the cavernous corridor that connected the school's central cloister with the Social Studies classrooms. She should be running, but knew she'd twist an ankle if she attempted it. Stupid fucking shoes... The two inch heels served no purpose but to stick her ass out from under the ridiculously short pleated skirt of her uniform. She couldn't reach over for as much as a pen without flashing her panties at the whole world. But Roku guessed that was the whole point – the tight cotton shirt hugging snuggly to her breasts, the white knee-high socks contrasting into the black of her fuck-me pumps – the Matrons were a bunch of fucking perverts, all the way up the chain-of-command. Even the bureaucrat, hidden away in a small office somewhere in the capital, must have been masturbating frantically when she conceived of the school uniform dress code. Just the thought of every pubescent girl in the world showing off their ass – you could just see her fingers buried up to the second knuckle, deep in the wet warmness of her Jane...
...Thinking like that wasn't getting Roku to class any faster.
She took the next corner too fast and her feet gave out underneath her on the marble floor. An ankle buckled and her arms shot out to balance her. Her history textbook went flying, along with her leather folio. Shit! She cursed to herself. She'd better be careful with that. The folio contained her tablet and stylus, as one might expect, but it also doubled as a secret holster for her burner – the small plasma handgun she'd, as a Hatchette, been issued. If that thing went off at school... Well, her cover would be blown for sure. Eighteen year old girls don't carry around energy weapons, and her mission would be over before it even started if anyone found out she'd been surreptitiously recruited as a Hatchette.
Gathering up her things, she hopped the last few meters to the door of her history class. She sucked in a deep breath and turned the handle of the door. She hadn't made it one step into the room before Matron sent the black, heavy battery pack flying. This was the normal punishment for tardiness: A spare battery pack for a tablet thrown, full force, by the Matron at the offending party's head. There'd be more punishment later, of course, but the blow to the head was supposed to instantly punctuate the Matron's displeasure. Roku could have caught the battery pack... Even taken by surprise, the door still only half open, she could have reached out and caught the black block in the air – all Hatchette's reflexes were artificially enhanced and augmented – but she let the battery smack her in the left temple. She was late, she knew she was late, and she'd have to take her punishment. Now and later.
"Late again, Roku?" The Matron asked, not expecting and answer. The other girls, already in their seats, tittered like the school girls they were.
"Sorry, Matron." Roku replied, trying to sound contrite. Roku held her hand to her head in an attempt to make it look like the blow had caused her pain. It hadn't. Her body registered the injury, that was all. Pain was irrelevant to Roku.
"Pick it up." The Matron ordered, and Roku knew that this was the second part of her punishment. She bent forward and reached out to where the battery had landed. She had the top three buttons of her shirt undone, as all the girls did. It was the style and an unofficial part of the dress code. She knew the Matron was now getting a good solid look down her cleavage, the smooth flesh of her C-cup breasts pushing out of her shirt. Roku looked up to see the Matron smiling. The pervert! The hint of a tongue emerged and licked the bright scarlet of the Matron's lips. Roku stood up and walked the short distance across the classroom to the Matron, letting her heels click on the stone.
"See me after class, Roku." The Matron said, taking the battery pack. Roku turned and skulked away, but she could feel the Matron's eyes burning into her rear. She found a seat in the front row.
The Matrons were supposed to be chaste – they belonged to an ascetic order – but they treated the schools as little more than their own personal harems. Punishments, as Roku knew, were usually sexual – pain an pleasure all wrapped in one.
All the Matrons were insane, Roku thought, draped from shoulder-to-toe in their long block robes, a tight corset worn on the outside to give their middle-aged frames shape; with white pancake makeup apply generously to their faces, giving them the appearance of some sort of crazed kabuki actresses. They were rapers of teenage girls, pure and simple, but the Order gave their acts an air of godliness. But the Hatchettes didn't exist to punish the Matrons – no, that wasn't Roku mission. The Hatchettes existed to hunt down and destroy a much worse form of predator. The most evil predator of all: Men.
"As I was saying before I was interrupted:" The Matron continued, shooting Roku a glance that was half disapproval, half lust. "The Dick and Jane Wars were the seminal events that created our civilization, and this semester, we will be studying each of the wars in great detail."
Roku pulled her tablet out of her folio and turned it on. The Matron's lecture notes appeared on the screen.
"As strange as it may seem to all you young girls." She said with a tone that only a middle-aged deviant could obtain. "There used to be two sexes of humankind: Male and female. But at the end of the last century, after countless generations of subjugation, the female sex rebelled.
"There were six wars in all – but that is misleading... Though we distinguish between the separate wars, they were all part of the same struggle: The liberation of womankind, the end of male hegemony, and birth of our Great Society." The Matron paused to let her rhetoric settle into the ears and impressionable minds. "Now, if you'll navigate your tablets to entry fifty six, we can begin this lecture with a discussion of how technological advancements in ex-utero fertilization led to..."
And Roku switched off her brain.
The Matron went on to describe how the creation of the birthing centers had given womankind the ability to control its fertilization without relying on the male of the species for genetic material – how men had used this detail of human biology to always oppress the female – and how once this biological link between the sexes was broken, relationships between men and women degraded quickly into open warfare.
Those were the Dick and Jane Wars. Roku had studied it all in Hatchette training. The real history, though, not the propaganda that the Matron's peddled straight from the Commissariat.
The Janes eventually won, driving the last of the male species off the planet. They still existed, of course: The men, on other planets in the solar system – colonies and moon bases and so on. But the earth, for a hundred years, had been Dick free. It had been the birth of the Great Society. Freedom for all Janes. The end of male oppression. But the Dicks had not taken their defeat lightly. No, they were determined to return from the cold blackness of space, and retake their place, once again, as the self-appointed masters of the earth. All that stood between womankind and a return to subjugation was the collective will of all women. The collective will, and the Commissariat...
The Men had assaulted the orbital defenses a number of times, but always they were sent back into the blackness, defeated. So they had begun to connive and attempt to assault the earth from within. They send spies. Terrorists. Male terrorists, yes, but converted. Pumped full of estrogen, breasts augmented, they came to the earth as transsexuals, able to hide amongst the Janes and move around freely. The early spies had been easy to catch – poor imitations of women – but their techniques had become more refined. The Dicks had succeeded in pulling off some high profile attacks. Attacks on governments installations. The threat had begun to panic the population. This was the genesis of the Hatchette Project: Recruiting young girls into the ranks. Spies for the spies. Counter spies. Thousands – millions all over the planet, seeking out the Dicks wherever they could be found.
The bell signaled the end of the hour.
