CHAPTER 10
Sentry positions are to be held with the utmost attention paid to one’s surroundings. Speaking at volume, indulging in distractions, and sleeping for more than seven (7) hours per night is indicative of poor performance and may result in transfer to another Corps division. Repeated or particularly egregious violations of good corpsmanship may result in the need for retraining.
— HDC Manual, Section 12 § 18
The corpsman stood there in the dark, straining to see how long her ears could detect him. But he was a talented bastard, and she counted eleven seconds before she lost track of the Anak giant.
Gray went to wipe the Anak’s taste from her mouth, and found her fingers smelling strongly of sex. “Shit,” she muttered, and crouched down to quickly muss her hands around in the dirt just as she heard the plodding steps of the patrol come up the path, accompanied by hushed conversation.
“Hey.” Gray nodded at the pair when they came into view. They paused and eyed her.
“What are you doing up here?” one asked.
She swallowed, trying to look appropriately cool and disinterested. “The usual,” she shrugged. “Trying to think up a way to end the war.”
The other, a ninth-year, snorted and flicked some ash from his smokestick. “Sounds like you’re gunnin’ for a medal or something, corpsman.”
Gray smiled sardonically and began the trek back to camp. “Any metal but lead.”
* * *
She went to bed as quickly as possible that night, as she’d need to ruck out for Wesson’s spiteful assignment at nearly the crack of dawn. In her cot, it was difficult to sleep. Gray felt a little giddy, almost, thinking about whether the sentinel would visit her at the blind, if he could ever steal further into Fox and visit her here. Abduct her from her tent in the dead of night, and drag her off to be thrown against a rock somewhere and…
That’s when she decided her imagination was getting away from her, and flopped over to try and get some sleep. Gray made sure to set the weak, quiet alarm on her watch to give her enough time to barter a friday for a few books in the morning. She was going to need them.
* * *
At 0530, Gray headed over to the Gold Fox tent, looking for a ninth-year named Craft. She found his flap and gave a hiss.
“Hey, you awake in there?”
There was a groan inside, and the creak of a cot frame. “Depends what you want.”
“Looking for some books.”
“What’s in it for me?”
Gray popped her head inside.The ninth-year was sitting up in his cot, rubbing his tired face. She didn’t feel too bad about waking him up, because the lucky bastards were only two to a room, so they had the space to begin accumulating personal belongings ahead of release. She spotted the crates under his cot, fitted with locks, and she knew they were packed to the rim with artifacts from the outside world.
“Friday?” she offered.
“Just one?” Craft held out his arm impatiently, clicking his tongue. “Let’s see it.”
She handed the slip over, and he inspected it briefly before stuffing it into the breast pocket of his beige overshirt. “Alright, you know how it goes, youngyear. Out, out.”
Gray ducked back out, letting the flap close behind her as she heard him unlock the crate and rummage around. “If you had smokes,” he called out to her, “I could get you one that didn’t have pages missing in the middle.” The lock clicked, keys jangled, and the crate was slid back into place before he peeked out and handed her two ragged copies of something. “I’ll buy ‘em back from you when you’re done for two minutes of water.”
Gray sighed. “Deal.”
She turned the books over in her hands as she walked back towards the Brown Fox tent to gather up her gear. They had clearly passed through many hands, smelled like old sweat, and the covers were long gone, but they were just the distraction from her distraction that she’d need for the next few days.
By 0600, she was signing herself out at the checkpoint with a belly full of coffee.
“Off already, huh?” came a groggy, but familiar voice.
Gray turned to see Harper coming along with a cup of his own. He looked very tired; he’d probably been up all night at the wire.
“Yeah, the captain couldn’t decide between giving me the rock or the hard place. So I got both.” She signed her EIN in the watchman’s book. “You won’t be seeing me for another six days.”
Harper sighed bitterly. “I’m sorry, Gray.” Then, he looked tired again. “I’ve been trying to steer clear of him too. He hasn’t been right since the engagement, and Finch…”
She swallowed. “Keep an eye on her this weekend, will you? Something stinks and it ain’t pheromone.”
“I had to notify Alpine of the visitors, they’ll be staying for four days. Then after that, it’s brass.”
Gray’s brows shot up. He was referring to the majors and colonels, the most lavish of guests that a camp could host.
“And they’re bringing forty-seven bondsmen with ‘em.”
“Holy shit!”
Harper just shrugged. “We’re still down more than two-hundred. We need the boots, and it’s better to train ‘em all at once.”
She couldn’t argue with that. But it would take days to process that many people. And with brass here, the camp would once again be a prime target for ‘Nak hostility. Even brigs would be interested in making off with a few unwary bonds if they could get close enough.
“Not sure if I wanna be here for that or off on another six-day watch again,” she chuckled weakly.
“Wesson will have to clean up his act for the brass, that’s for sure. Especially since he doesn’t have his mark yet, they’ll be holding him to the letter.”
“Just… watch out for Finch. Friday night, especially.”
Harper just drew his mouth into a line and nodded.
Gray handed back the clipboard and exchanged it for a radio. It was a bulky device, about the size of her foot, and its face was fitted with a few sturdy buttons and dials. She strapped it to her belt.
“And send another book with my water delivery, will ya?”
The broad corpsman broke into laughter and Gray smiled back. She had to, she didn’t want her last memory of the place before going back into solitary confinement to be grim and dour. But maybe she wouldn’t be alone after all. There was that chance.
* * *
Dawson by Dusk was, by all measures, a terrible story. It was a typical Westie: characters were either cowardly or stone-faced, and the men were all leathery and tough, while the women either beautiful and docile or shrill and just as leathery as the men. Well, she couldn’t complain too much; corpsmen were a pretty leathery bunch as well.
The biggest problem with them, though, was that they didn’t last long. She’d only been reading for a few hours on her second morning and she was already a third done with the damn thing. When she closed the book, the renegade hero had just come upon the comely daughter of a dredge owner suspected of murdering a U.S. Marshal, whatever that was. Even with the missing bits of context, it was quite predictable so far.
She sighed and closed the book, beginning to settle in. Blind 14 was on an exposed ridgeline with a view of the lowlands, and it was part of a string of solitary posts networked together to keep an eye on movement below, to the south-west. Gray hadn’t done one of these since well before the relocation, and she almost forgot to “check-in” with the other positions at 2130 that night. In the small kit provided, she pulled out a flashlight, snapping on the requisite red night lens, and crept out of the small raised shelter. Yawning, Gray looked to her right where, about half a klik away in the distance, another blind was located. At exactly 2133, she looked hard and against the darkness spotted the all-clear sign: four solid bursts of light. Then turning left, she counted down the seconds until 2134, and gave her own. Down the line they went, a string of 6 posts working together to hold down the territory. A few minutes later, and the signal was communicated from left to right.
If something was wrong, she’d see a different pattern, followed by more information in Morse. Luckily, it looked like things would be quiet tonight.
Gray slipped back into the blind, a small A-frame shelter made from the rough-cut wood of small trees and thatched with grasses. It was better than the unprotected platform up in the tree, but being lower to the ground she would have to hang her rations from one of the scraggly trees behind her to keep the mice away, and periodically smoke the shelter to keep the bugs out. Especially those nasty, fat-bottomed widows. Waking up next to one of their tough, messy webs would give any seasoned corpsman a good scare. She wondered how Rice did it.
Rice. Gray laid on her back and looked up, her belly doing a little tumble at the thought of him. He was out there, somewhere, never too far away it seemed. She wanted to ask him how much ground he was required to cover, how big his territory was. She wondered if he’d tell her. Gray craved him now more than she wanted to admit, longed for him to step out of the night like some supernatural creature to rescue her from her boredom. Gray never remembered being this bored, or this restless. It’s as if her tolerance for quietude was disappearing, and for the second time in her life, she was experiencing a deep hunger for something.
The last time this happened she joined the Corps.
She tried not to think about her life before escaping very often. The memories were jumbled now, distant, but at points alarmingly clear. She remembered the silky mud between her toes as she helped to dig a grave along the side of the road in pouring rain. She remembered the closest thing she had to a mother: a stern old woman named Cleo, another bond who died from a scorpion sting when Gray was 11. The most remarkable thing about Cleo, though, was that she was a child in the years before the Disruption. When the masters were asleep, sometimes Gray would get to hear stories of the old world, of the house that Cleo was raised in, with its water and electricity, and the machines that made the air cool. She spoke of screens, like mirrors, that could show you faraway places, books, the faces of others instead of your own. She said that everyone always had at least one, and that they were thought of as precious, like water.
Gray wondered if Rice knew anything of the pre-Disruption world. Or if he even cared about it at all.
She rolled over, trying to keep from picturing him, from remembering the way his massive hand felt in her hair. She focused on the sounds of night around her instead, and tried to fall asleep. The crickets helped.
* * *
There was another check-in in the morning at 0800, and another at noon. Every four hours, up and down the line they went, with either flags during the day or red lights in the dark. A wide, three-mile gap in the hills was monitored this way, with as few bodies spared for the job as possible. It was brutally efficient.
Gray finished her first book on day three, and almost found herself wishing that she was a weaker reader just so they would last longer. She knew some corpsmen who would take ten minutes to read a page from the Manual. And that included needing help with some of the more esoteric words.
The sentinel must’ve known how to read; he wouldn’t have gotten very far keeping track of a Corps camp without being able to peek in on duty rosters through a pair of binos. Or maybe he didn’t. Would would have taught him? Was he born knowing?
Behind the blind, in the scattered shade of some wide, scraggly tree she didn’t know the name of, Gray had made a “dust bath” - a spot to cool down when the air just got too hot to do much else. She kicked off her pants, tossed off her shirt, and scraped away at the top few inches of sandy soil to make a shallow trough long enough for her to lay down in. She sighed when she did, enjoying the much cooler dirt against her skin. Gray almost fell asleep.
Almost.
Her eyes flew open at the smell of tobacco smoke, a surge of excitement suddenly invigorating her. But when she sat up, looking around for the man she was sure would be smoking it, she quickly found that the source was a butt on the ground next to her, still weeping a tendril of smoke.
Gray started, immediately noticing that it was still hot. Without thinking, she smashed it to bits with her hand until she was sure that every last tiny ember had gone out. It was a reaction that was well programmed into her: the Corps took fire very seriously. As they were one of the few things more dangerous than an attack, arsonists and their friends were dealt with swiftly and severely, no matter how small the blaze, and turned out into the wastes with a bright red letter A tattooed next to their freeman’s mark. No one wanted to deal with fires, not even the Anakim.
She stood up, eyes scanning the area for any trace of him. This wasn’t how she imagined him making his entrance.
“You ass,” she called out into the bush, and like that, he revealed himself from where he’d been crouched, still as stone. “You know what they’d do to me if this ridge caught fire?”
“Leave you for the brigs,” he called, stepping out from behind a rocky outcrop. “Not much fuel for a blaze here, though.” He kicked at the bare dirt around the tree to prove his point.
She shook her head and sat down in the shade, surprised when a second later he ducked down to sit next to her. Her head only came up to his bicep, but already she was getting used to it. She didn’t want to get used to it.
“A little dangerous to be here in broad daylight, isn’t it?”
She was expecting innuendo, a kiss, something. But Rice just reached into a pouch and produced another hand–rolled stick, lit it and took a drag. Gray watched as he blew the smoke away from her, the faint wisps coiling around in the air and disappearing. Where did he get all of those, anyway? It took a lot to trade for genuine tobacco.
He checked his watch. “Your water delivery left camp about 20 minutes ago, he’s still 2 hours away. Corpsman in blind 13 over there brought a bunch of shine with him and has been sleeping between whatever that thing is that you do every four hours. And blind 15’s practising the harmonica. Be glad you can’t hear it from here.”
“How’d you know all that?”
“Gathering information is what I was designed to do,” he chuckled. “Besides, eavesdropping around a Corps camp isn’t that hard. You guys act like no one’s ever listening.”
She narrowed her eyes at the horizon and folded her arms. Why was he being this way? Wasn’t this supposed to be a tryst? “Yeah, well, with you in charge, it doesn’t seem to matter what we do,” she huffed.
Rice grinned wider, holding the little brown stick between his lips as he stretched out his massive legs and put his hands behind his head against the tree.
“You don’t have a damn clue what I do out here, do you?”
She wasn’t sure what came over her, but she suddenly reached up, snatched the smokestick from his smug face, and brought it to her own mouth.
“Yeah, you smoke up and fuck humans, you fuckin’ chucklehead.”
Gray sucked it down, feeling the smoke hit the back of her throat, and exhaled like she knew what she was doing. But a beat later it burned, and she erupted into a coughing fit.
Rice just laughed as she gave it back, hacking.
“Whatever,” she rasped, and coughed some more. “I’m great at sentry. And for the record, the rest of your kind are about as easy to spot as a bull elk in rut.”
“The brownbands?” he snorted, referencing the color of their armbands, of which he wore none. “They’re useless in the bush.”
He took another long drag, held it for a few seconds, before letting it out again.
“And I don’t doubt you do your job well. Unfortunately for the Corps, give a sentinel enough time in one place, and he’ll eventually notice everything.”
Gray sighed quietly, eyes dropping to look at her booted feet. Then she glanced at his: enormous, strong, deeply treaded for traction. She couldn’t tell what color they were supposed to be through the dust. The excitement of his presence was wearing off a little, the warmth in her belly fading for not being put to use. Maybe Rice was only here to chat, if she could call it that. The thought disappointed her.
“So why haven’t you reported us yet? You know our positions, our movements.” Gray just shrugged. There was nothing more to say.
The giant didn’t take his eyes off the horizon. “Because smoking up and fucking humans is a hell of a lot more fun than fighting,” he said, confirming part of her theory.
Then his smoky breath was on her hair when he lifted up her chin, and a moment later he was kissing her on the mouth. Finally.
He tasted like ash. Gray just looked him in those blue eyes, wondering if she should take him at his word. Of course there was a lot he wasn’t telling her. The question was how much.
“You’re a lousy soldier,” she said.
Rice’s expression had a bitter edge to it but he shrugged. “Probably.” Then he kissed her again. There were no gloves on his hands, she realized, when his fingers wandered down to the waistband of her underwear.
She put her hand on his arm, but it didn’t stop him. “If somebody sees us, we’re both dead.”
Rice undid her pants and snaked his fingers slowly down between her legs. “Didn’t stop you last time.”
True.
Gray reached out to palm his building arousal, but he seemed to ignore her as he pushed her into the dirt. He rubbed her through her underpants, feeling her heat. When she spread her thighs for him he pulled the garment aside and stroked her skin directly. Gray moaned.
“Next time I’m going to find us a spot where we can get away for a couple hours,” he said, watching her face as he continued touching her. “Where I don’t have to cover your mouth.”
Gray shivered and tilted her hips into him. “Fuck that sounds hot,” she sighed. Then: “Y-you’re hot.”
He plunged two fingers into her, and Gray gasped. “Never thought I’d hear that from one of you. There’s a lot of fucked up people out in the waste, but I thought the Corps taught you better,” he smirked.
“We’re taught a lot of things.”
“So are we.”
Already she was keening, pushing her hips against his big hand. He worked in three massive fingers, rubbing circles around her little clit with the pad of his thumb. It wouldn’t be long.
“I’ve been thinking about you a lot,” she murmured, the words coming out between little moans. Unfortunately, she realized too late that this made her sound hopelessly sentimental. He cocked a brow at her but didn’t even slow down.
“You have?” There seemed to be a little enjoyment there at her expense.
“You know what I meant.”
Rice scoffed and picked up his pace in just the right way. He had her bucking like a pony, and in no time orgasm rolled through her like a cresting wave of heat.
Squirming, panting, mewling, she came against him, until all that was left was that hazy warmth as she lay limply in the dirt, looking up through the leaves at the clear blue sky. Gray glanced at Rice, who brought his hand to his mouth and stuck his finger in to taste her.
“Bet you’re even sweeter after a shower,” he said with a grin.
She blushed fiercely and yanked her underwear back into place. “Thanks, asshole. You don’t look so fresh yourself.”
He laughed, which made her scowl even more. “Yeah, no kidding. That’s why I’m not whipping it out for you.”
Gray sat down again and looked out at the view, thinking. She was struggling to reconcile her image of him, and who this… Anak actually was. Somehow, deep in her bones, she knew she could trust him. But she still had no idea what he wanted. And that not knowing was making her uneasy this time.
“What the hell is your deal, Rice? What is this game you’re playing with me?”
The giant looked at her and his smile disappeared. He rose, ducking out from under the tree, and wandered over to her blind, taking another long drag of the stick. Then he reached inside and pulled something out, something dwarfed by his huge fist. A second later and there was a sider tossed in the dirt between her feet. The look in his eyes reminded her that he was a ‘Nak.
“Humans play games too, don’t they?”
She looked at the dusty weapon for a few silent seconds, picking it up and turning it over in her hands. She set it down again. “Guess we are pretty shitty soldiers.”
Rice’s eyes narrowed at the horizon. “No, we’re good soldiers. It’s this war that’s shitty.”
Suddenly, a few more pieces clicked into place, and she looked at him, feeling a bit smug herself for figuring it out. The way he spoke to her earlier made her want to get one up on him, even the smallest bit. “So you’re a rebel, then? Get your kicks from giving the middle finger to the Algo, shirking orders and doing what Rice wants to do.”
He was quiet for a minute, and she saw his expression beginning to harden. “Sounds like you know me better than you thought.”
“What I don’t get is the interest in me,” she boldly continued. “It’s not personal, is it? It’s just ‘cause I’m the first corpsman that hasn’t shot you yet. After so many years, you’ve finally gotten to fuck the uniform.”
“You really are fuckin’ dense.”
There was something in his voice that shut her up immediately. Something dangerous, authoritative. A knowing. Rice checked his watch, then began to walk away.
“W-where are you going?”
He was already making his quick, silent way down a game trail and she found herself trying to keep pace as he disappeared into a small copse of red, wiry manzanita shrubs.
“Slow down!” she called after him.
Rice stopped and when she caught up she was suddenly in the air, and then there was a very spacious, but very uncomfortably armored shoulder under her belly. It was not a fun ride when he picked up his pace again, and it wasn’t without some protest.
“I’d let you walk, but you’re too slow and too loud.”
“Where the hell are you taking me?”
“Far enough to be out of sight of those blinds. Got something to show you.”
It was one thing to watch him walk, but another thing entirely to be slung over his shoulder like that as he took his long, swift strides across the soil, expertly sidestepping noisy brush and the small, flat leaves of the sparse manzanita grove. Most of the plants only had a few inches on him, but the Anak seemed to move with all the deftness of an animal through the landscape and she knew that he would be difficult to see for sure.
After a good amount of time, long enough for her side to start hurting again and then some, they came to a dry stream bed, and followed it for a few hundred yards as it cleft its way around a small bluff. In the shade of a single old oak tree leaning precariously over the edge, he finally set her down.
“Get up top behind that tree. Don’t move, don’t make a sound.”
Gray nodded, desire gone and replaced with the edge of a trained soldier. Finding purchase along the face of the bluff, she carefully made her way up and waited in the tall grass at the base of the oak.
They waited a while, probably ten minutes. Rice stood, lit up a third stick, his eyes studying the ground in silence. Then she heard it: heavy boots. And soon after, she felt it. Pheromone. Rice had stopped suppressing.
She watched him, noticed the small changes in body language. He squared his shoulders, set his feet apart, folded his arms in such a way that made them look absolutely huge. Was he signaling uprank dominance? He had to have been. What was curious is that it looked more to her like it was deliberate more than instinctual, a finely-tuned image of what he was expected to be.
Off to her right came three brownbands. An odd number like that was strange, she’d never seen it before.
“Late,” Rice said. His voice seemed louder and harsher, but she couldn’t be sure if it was the pheromone playing tricks on her.
“Sorry, sir. We got your delivery.”
One of them was carrying something special on his back. Rice sat down on a boulder, undid the straps of his vest to let it fall away, then pulled up the side of his shirt to reveal those tight muscles that Gray had enjoyed so much the week before. The same brownband that was carrying the pack got closer, kneeling beside him. Rice felt around the side of his abdomen with a pair of fingers, looking for something. The corpsman watched, fascinated. Something told her that she was witnessing an exchange few humans got to see.
The attending brownband handed Rice something, a small spray bottle, and he gave his skin a spritz as the other Anak readied a tube connected to his pack, and replaced a head on it. When Rice was ready, the nameless Anak pushed the tube to his skin, and a beige liquid proceeded to flow from the pack.
Rice held still, eyes closed, and he breathed slow and steady. Gray could see from here that he did not enjoy what was happening, and that he wanted it to be over with. What was this vaguely grotesque ritual?
After a minute passed in complete silence, the brownband with the strange contraption pulled out the tube with a single, decisive motion, and Rice was quick with a rag at the spot. In the split second between them, Gray saw blood.
Rice wasn’t concerned by it, and after dabbing at the spot a few times, he pulled his shirt back down and stood.
“Alright, your orders from Central,” he said, and the three brownbands stood at attention.
“557, you’re to go rendezvous with the 44th company by tomorrow. You’ll be replacing their Gamma. Be ready to receive new instructions within the week about your new section.”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned to the brownband with the special ruck.
“619, report to G Waypoint, also within the week. You’ve been deemed worthy enough to be put in the queue for pairing.”
Pairing?
“Th-thank you sir, it’s an honor. If you can tell Central that I—“
“Central doesn’t care what you have to say, soldier.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rice then looked to the last of them.
“And as for you, 701, Central acknowledges your attempt to organize outside the command of your Alphas, and has deemed you unfit to serve.”
This Anak looked taken aback, and Gray saw him begin to panic.
“S-sir, I… it was a football game, sir. A simple game!”
But the sider was already in Rice’s hand, and a second later, the insubordinate giant was flung to the ground with a hole between his eyes. Gray covered her mouth with her hands to keep them from hearing her horrified gasp.
Rice ground the last of his smokestick under his heel and turned to the remaining pair. “We’ve been having problems with the Tobins lately,” he said dispassionately. “Report anything unusual about them to your Alphas and Betas. Central is working on a gene patch in the meantime.”
Gray couldn’t tell if it was the strange cruelty she had just witnessed, or if it was the accumulating pheromone, or something else altogether, but she didn’t want to be here anymore. But she had to be. And not even for the fact that she’d be dead the instant any of them saw her. It was because Rice had specifically wanted her here.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now get him out of here. Dismissed.”
Quietly, the pair of brownbands lifted the immense weight of their dead comrade, and hauled him away. As soon as they were out of sight, Rice took a moment to consider the red stain sinking into the dry, pebbled earth, before heading around and up the bluff. He didn’t go to her, though. He passed her by and, on the other side of the tree, was his pack. He dug through a small pouch on the top and pulled out something no bigger than a poker chip, connected to the pack by a curly wire. She realized that it fit snugly into the shell of his ear.
“This is R-402,” he said out loud, just as coldly as before. “Current assignments complete. C-557, A-619, and T-701 all green. C-557 and A-619 moving now to assigned sections.”
A pause.
“Understood. R-402 underway.”
He returned everything to its place and stood to lean back against the trunk of the old tree, staring out, though it didn’t appear he was looking at anything. Gray saw that his fists were closed, but restless. He didn’t acknowledge her for a few long moments.
“Rice?”
The giant blinked, glanced at the time once more. “Let’s get you back,” he said quietly.
(Answer: a slightly less cluttered forum.)