I’ve been nervous about Twitter ever since Tumblr, and, uh, apparently we have a little more to be worried about now:
https://twitter.com/JohannesTEvans/status/1390359622100336640
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"twitter removing post crop at the same time as getting ready to allow people to add tip jars to their accounts
why does this smell like the calm air before a storm of “we’re going to ban all the nsfw artists and sex workers and also random queer people”
The Chain of Command must be maintained at all times. However, losses due to death, disease, or retirement are routine among Camps. In the event that an Officer is no longer able to fulfill the function of his duty for whatever reason, his replacement is found and installed at the discretion of the Commander, with the position going unfilled for no longer than two (2) consecutive weeks. In irregular circumstances, a temporary Officer may be used for a period up to, but not exceeding, 180 consecutive days.
- HDC Manual, Section 8 § 14
She hid herself again as the gunfire dissipated into the cool night air. After a few very long minutes, everything was still again. Everything except for her racing heart. Gray blinked, swallowed, touched her lips with a gloved finger. Did that all really happen? She tasted him on her, still, though the pheromone had wafted away. The only thing that felt real now was the chemical fear, and the deep ache in her side.
It took a moment to get her bearings, and when she did she left her hole to find the others. There would be injured. Immediately, she thought of Wesson, positioned with the other sappers so close to the attack.
It didn’t take long to run into two other corpsmen from Green Fox, but she was looking more for her friends. Finch would surely be found nearby, so Gray pressed on in the direction the redhead haddisappeared in, calling out her name. Beside a cluster of prickly brush, she found the sixth-year. Even in the darkness Gray could see the younger girl clutching at her arm and breathing shallow.
“Some party that was,” Finch panted.
Gray frowned when she carefully reached out and felt the sleeve of Finch’s shirt soaked through.
“C’mon,” Gray said, grabbing the younger girl’s fifteen–pound gun. “Gimme that. Can you walk?”
“Yeah… yeah. I can walk.”
“One of you get me a med kit and a goddamn light!”
One of the Green Foxers, she didn’t know his name, rummaged through his pack and produced a small box in one hand and then the beam of a flashlight was focused on Finch’s arm shortly after. It was bad.
Gray used her tac knife to cut off the sleeve of Finch’s shirt, and proceeded to clean the wound to the best of her ability. The ‘Nak bullet had only grazed her, but it took a chunk of flesh with it. One lucky inch was the only reason she still had an arm.
Gray tied off a tourniquet to help stop the bleeding, and put two little white pills into her friend’s mouth. They weren’t morphs or codys, but a standard-issue field medicine that would make you nauseous if you took too many.
“If you think you might puke, let me know. We’re gonna get you home one way or another, alright?”
Finch rose slowly to her feet. “I’m done for,” she whispered. “They’re gonna sew me up and leave me for the fucking coyotes like all the others.”
“No they’re not,” Gray hissed. “Now shut up and save your strength for the ruck, alright? Getting home is half the proof they’d need to keep you.”
Gray said it like she meant it, but she wasn’t sure. A different kind of fear knotted her stomach.
* * *
It didn’t take long to find a captain directing soldiers. He represented Blue Fox.
“Get back to the mouth of the canyon,” they were ordered. “And wait until sunrise. If the ‘Naks come back, I don’t want more than a hundred of us out here.”
“What about the injured?” A Green Foxer asked.
“I’ve got fifteen out looking now. To be frank, I don’t think we’re going to find many. You’re dismissed, corpsmen!”
In their exhaustion, not a word of disagreement was said as they turned and headed towards the dark silhouette of the mountains, east. Eventually they stumbled across Saiyeh and the others and continued as a group of seven.
It was slow going. Gray checked her watch for a third time: it was about 0300 hours, and they still had, by her count, almost four miles to go. A pack of coyotes yipped and yowled in the distance.
Finch, succumbing to the pain, was sweating badly. They took turns putting her good arm around their shoulders to keep her steady. Their destination was reached after two hours of this.
“They still dusted us,” somebody muttered, breaking the silence as they all settled down on a strip of soft sand. “We had the advantage and they still fucking dusted us.”
“Their line trailed more than we were expecting,” Gray muttered. “We could only blow up so much road, and half were still on their feet after the charges went.”
She’d been witness to so many defeats, big and small, that getting so upset seemed meaningless. What you did was leave the dead, pick up the living, and make sure to hit harder next time.
“My best friend died tonight.” Another corpsman paused to suck in a breath. “They didn’t even put a bullet in him. Just pulled out a knife and…”
Everyone was silent. He didn’t need to finish.
Gray couldn’t have mustered much of a response anyways. While her body was spent, her mind was buzzing. She couldn’t stop imagining that Anak’s face in the darkness. In a very real way, she’d looked on the face of death itself and survived. This meant that she’d kissed death, too. Gray licked her lip, tasting salt instead of smoke.
That’s when it occurred to her: the enormity of not just being kissed by an Anak, but that he desired it.
That he knew how.
Gray thought back to the mysterious Signy, and froze at what her mind was putting together. The knot in her stomach tightened.
She’d heard stories—rumors, really, or legends—about Anakim passing by civtowns and demanding favors from the local humans. Or abducting them. Though it was supposed to be that they were celibate, since no female ‘Nak had ever been known to exist and what was the point of giving a clone a sex drive? But if the same stuff that made them vicious, brutal soldiers is what made them men, and decidedly so, then it would follow that they’d have needs. Maybe very human needs.
“Something wrong?” someone asked.
Gray almost jumped. “Just… thinking. I heard the local sentinel call off the attack and I want to know why.”
“Christ.What fucking idiot would leave survivors after this?”
“An idiot that wants us to stick around.”
* * *
The sun was just skirting the horizon when the ragged group began to pick themselves up to leave. More survivors had trickled in over the last few hours of pre-dawn, and they numbered in the dozens now. But they paused as the latest group came up the ravine, probably two-hundred strong, with several limping or clutching at bloody bandages. There was one captain leading them, leaving another four unaccounted for.
“Any sign of a ninth-year sapper named Wesson?” Gray asked when people started sitting down to rest. “Wesson? Anybody?”
Most of the corpsmen were too exhausted to pay her much attention, but a few others exchanged looks and shrugged. Eventually someone spoke up. “Tall, blond guy, right? Slashed ear? There’s a salvage team combing the debris out there, mostly sappers. He could be with ‘em.”
That was a pretty big “could”, and Gray was nervous.
Another twenty minutes brought in a few dozen more corpsmen. There were two more captains among them.
“Did Captain Burke make it!” someone shouted over the crowd.
“Yeah, where’s our Brown captain!”
“And Hastings, too!”
“Brown and Red didn’t make it,” a ninth-year replied as he shoved tabs of cody at his injured downrank fellows like candy. “Green and Gold are still at the wreckage. There’s a lot to get through.”
“Fuck.”
Gray returned to her original group and sat down again. There was nothing she could do at this point but wait. She wanted a cody too.
The wounded, now led by ninth-years, eventually picked themselves up to head back to Fox. A few of the badly wounded could barely be coaxed to their feet—it was hard to look at them. Many were as good as dead.
It was past noon when they’d finally reached the first guard station at the edge of camp. A few of them were sent in to fetch medics and litters, and they were quickly received by a dozen medical staff who rushed the wounded into the big white tent, Finch among them.
“She’s gonna be OK, right?” Gray asked, following the medic who had taken a first peek at her friend’s arm.
“She’ll live, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied, knowing full well that was *not *what she was asking. “Come back in a few hours and I’ll tell you if she’ll be able to aim a kicker ever again.”
With that, he hefted another gurney up off the ground with the help of a second medic, and they disappeared inside. Gray ran a hand, crusty with dried blood, through her matted hair, and thought of the spare few fridays she had stowed away under her mattress.
But first, Harper. She had to find Harper.
* * *
Spending two fridays with the wireman didn’t help much, but they killed as much uneasy time as they could. In the Manual’s short annex on psychiatric hygiene, it was recommended that corpsmen who were MIA should be assumed dead until proven otherwise. It was necessary to move on as quickly as possible. Harper himself was struggling with the guilt of not having been sent out at all, stationed at the comm instead, and said little. Swallowing grief down whole to maintain the famed Corps stoicism was a common sight, and Harper was doing his best. Gray put a hand on his shoulder.
“Sentiment is the enemy of survival,” she said, quoting the mythical figure of General Pierce, the Corps’ first commander and leader of some of the Disruption’s greatest battles. It was painful advice, and a number of younger corpsmen took offense to it. But as the years trudged on, Gray only found it more and more salient. Others usually did too. Life was hard, and the Corps made no promise to anyone that it would ever get better. There was something approaching beauty in that kind of honesty.
“Thanks,” he muttered.
Gray threw back her shine. “Look, I know you were shaking sheets together, it’s harder than you want to admit.”
“Just… don’t.”
Gray eyed him. “I had Graham,” she said, letting the name linger in the air for a second. It had been, what, four years? “And don’t forget, Finch is my fuckin’ friend too.”
Harper looked down at his drink and scowled. “Well we’re two of us down, anyways.”
Gray sighed hard. She refused to believe that Wesson was dead. He was good at this, the whole marching and shooting and taking orders thing; he didn’t survive nine and a half years with the Corps for nothing right? Munez was the statistic, not Wesson, he couldn’t be.
“I’m sure he’s having the time of his life sorting through ‘Nak trash. It’s Finch I’m worried about,” she said stiffly, giving the three–fingered salute to the wireman as she rose. “I’ll see you outside.”
She didn’t really know what to do with herself. It was a bright and sunny Southland afternoon, a few clouds dragging long streaks across the sky. She should have slept.
Gray thought about planes—she’d heard them described once as big flying cars—and wondered what the skies looked like when they were full of ‘em. Did they flap around in clusters like birds? Did they need to track along some kind of road through the air like vehicles did? Were they loud? Quiet? Did the ‘Naks ever use them? She stopped, feeling that she was wasting her own time. Planes didn’t exist now any more than elevators did, or swimming pools, or internets. They accomplished so little for being such a burden on resources. Casualties of the Disruption, just like people.
Gray decided to trek over to Burke’s office and glance at the board. See if there was anything for her to do. Of course there wasn’t; the schedule was old, and the captain was dead. What was the Protocol for this? Gray struggled to remember, suddenly feeling uneasy at not knowing what her duties were, or if her time was her own, how much of it she had.
It would be weeks before Alpine could reshuffle the camps and send Fox replacement officers; in the meantime, they’d have to get somebody else to do the job.
Glancing around at the half-empty tent city, Gray decided that she needed to put some distance between herself and the others for a while, so she started walking. When she was finally surrounded by nothing butsteep slopes and dry brush, Gray let out the breath she’d been holding.
Her fatigues were filthy and suddenly stifling. With dirty fingers she undid the buttons to her shirt and tore it off to expose her shoulders and beige compression top. A few scars marked the skin of her sturdy arms, tanned as they were compared to her much paler collar bones – some from her wasteland childhood, others from combat. She lifted the hem of her shirt to glance at her side, which still hurt. That was only a few weeks ago, wasn’t it? Seemed like ages already.
The breeze and the sun felt good on her skin, and her boots came off too. Then after her boots, her pants. A minute later and she was laying on a patch of coarse sand to stare up at the clouds in some meager shade. She sucked in a full breath and found she could do so with less pain.
Gray’s mind drifted from one thing to another, but it eventually circled back to that brown figure in the dust with those blue eyes; the man almost twice her height and her lie as big as Fox itself.
It circled back around to that kiss.
“You’re fucked, you know that?” She frowned and closed her eyes. “Right fucked.”
Gray dozed off without realizing it. She woke up in the shadow of the canyon, and her watch told her that she’d been asleep for almost two hours. It was time to head back. As she shimmied her pants back on, she decided that kiss had saved them all. She still felt sorry for what she did to Kessler, but she had to. The idiot youngyear left her no choice. If he hadn’t shown up and panicked, then she might’ve been able to… to what?
* * *
Gray returned to camp, deciding that she couldn’t put off seeing Finch any longer. The med tent was such a miserable place, and she didn’t yet want to know what the sixth-year’s outlook was.
She ducked into the structure, passing the partition to the third bed on the left. Half covered by a cool, white sheet, Finch rested her head on a pillow and stared upwards. Her eyes were sharp, if distant—Gray’s heart sank, knowing that they hadn’t given her any morph.
“Hey.”
“They’re giving me four weeks.”
Four weeks. That was generous for a sixth-year.
“We’ll get a sider back in your hand in four weeks. How’s the arm?”
“Going to leave a nasty scar.”
“Nastier than Cooper’s?”
Finch looked away and cracked a faint smile.
That’s when Gray knelt down and touched Finch’s good arm. “You’re not getting released, alright? I promise. Harper and I are gonna make sure you make it back out there in one piece.”
The sixth-year nodded stiffly.
“You want anything to eat?”
“Just wanna sleep.”
“Would a little shine help?”
Finch gave her friend a telling look, and Gray nodded.
“I’ll be right back.”
She bee-lined for Harrison’s tent, and when she was inside a small commotion had picked up. Though she couldn’t tell what it was, it sounded like it was coming from the quad. She wished the two corpsmen ahead of her in line would hurry up.
“One please, sir,” Gray said to the enormous, bearded officer.
Unceremoniously, he grabbed her friday and stuffed it away into a lockbox under the counter before holding a cup to to large keg behind him. The alcohol looked deceptively like water at the bottom of the metal tumbler, but already she could smell the difference. It would go down scalding.
But Gray collided with a body as she rounded the corner outside, and Finch’s “medicine” went splashing to the ground.
“No!” she hissed, watching helplessly as the liquor sank into the fabric of her fatigues. “Goddammit, you—“
But when she looked up, there was a familiar face there.
“Wesson!” Gray cried, throwing herself at him. “Wesson, you’re alive!”
“I… yeah, yeah I’m alive.”
He blinked like he’d lost a lot more than one night’s sleep.
“…Are you OK?”
“OK? Couldn’t be better. I’m, uh… getting promoted.”
* * *
“Weson’s what?”
“He’s getting his promo.”
“He’s going to lead brown toon?”
“I… I don’t know. I just… here.” Gray handed over the shine and Finch threw it back. “I’ll see what he has to say, but I don’t think he knows much himself and the man looks like he needs to sleep for a week anyways.”
“So do you.”
“I think something happened to him out there. He had this look in his eye.”
“…So do you.”
Gray snorted, turning away to hide the redness creeping up her cheeks. “Since when did you care what people’s eyes are doing?"
Just then, a medic stormed through the partition, and the corpsmen hanging around injured friends paused their conversations. He tapped a pencil against his clipboard.
“Alright, alright, everyone out! Y’all smell like shit, and its hot enough in here without the extra bodies crowding around. Come back tomorrow!”
Gray was suddenly glad for the order to vacate. Finch laughed bitterly as she left.
* * *
Wesson sat on a crate, nursing his own cup of shine as Gray and Harper were enjoying seconds. He’d given them all his last remaining fridays, because officers didn’t need them. Officers were paid.
“It all happened so fast,” he said, sounding breathless just from recalling the fight. “We… we were ducked down when the charges went off, and barely had any time to get our bearings before you all started shooting over our heads. The ‘Naks didn’t even realize most of us were there. They rushed right by, heading for the rest of the corpsmen.
“I took a few down, their backs aren’t armored at all. But as soon as they saw muzzle flash, they were on us. I was all ready to get out and join you, but I twisted my foot, fell, and hit my head. Next thing I know, sun’s coming up.”
Wesson turned his head so they could see the purple lump above his ear. No wonder he looked like he couldn’t even remember his enlistment number.
“Holy shit.” Harper shook his head in disbelief. “Of all the times to forget your helmet!”
“Some blue foxer found me, sorted me out, and once I got some water I was told to get to work with salvage. The captain only wanted ninth-years.”
Wesson took a drink and sighed. His tired eyes had been fixed on the ground this entire time.
“And?”
“Huh?”
“What’d you find?”
“Oh, uh…” He took another drink then frowned, realizing his cup was empty. “Nothing, really. The usual. Guns, ammo. Looted the bodies. Acquisition’s packing it all up now.”
That was indeed the usual. There wasn’t much to loot from a ‘Nak, most of them rarely had anything approaching personal possessions. Some of the gear was personalized in some way, either from embellishment or repair, but Protocol demanded that all “raw materials” were to be sent back to Alpine for processing, including body armor. Camps were allowed to keep half of the munitions spoils.
“What was in the trucks?”
Wesson frowned, looking troubled. “Nothing. There was nothing.”
As Gray watched him, Harper continued. “So what happens now? Are they sending you away?”
“I don’t think so. I think I’m filling Burke’s shoes until the Freedom Ceremony, then I’ll get transferred in the big shuffle.”
Camp Fox currently had fewer than a hundred ninth-years, but Wesson was still the logical choice for promo. He could recite the Manual line by line, the officers liked him, and he never strayed from Protocol. Moreover, he was one of the few who wanted to stay: the Corps was more than just a way out of bondship for him, it was his life.
“Anyways,” Wesson said, glancing at his watch, “They’re gonna ring the dinner bell soon. You guys should go get in line. I’m gonna head back to my cot and get some…”
But dirt crunched behind Gray and she turned to see the commander himself, flanked by a clerk and two captains. The seventh-year instinctively made herself smaller in their presence.
“Wesson?” said Hitch.
He snapped up. “Yes, sir?”
“You’ll come with us.”
“I-I was about to go lay down, sir, my head’s killing me.”
“We’ll get you a cody and a cold pack, son. You can sleep later. There’s a lot of work to do now.”
Wesson’s eyes flicked between Gray and Harper as he stood up.
“I’ll see you around,” he said. “Save me something to eat.”
“Don’t bother,” Hitch replied, eyeing the corpsmen squatting on the ground as he clapped a hand on Wesson’s shoulder. “You’re having an officer’s meal tonight. Hsen, go get his effects. He’ll be moved from the platoon tent as well.”
Hsen, the clerk, dipped his head. “Yes, sir.”
As the group disappeared down the road, Gray heard Hitch ask Wesson how he was feeling.
The pair of remaining corpsmen exchanged looks, mouths open. They sat like that for a beat, processing what they’d just seen.
“Another cup?”
“Fuckin’… yeah. I need another cup.”
I’ll toss my hat in: I’m into endosoma primarily, which is a form of non-lethal vore where the prey is able to coexist, for whatever length of time and by however mechanism, inside the pred’s body. To me it’s definitely a dominance display, but also incredibly intimate and it requires some measure of vulnerability on the pred’s part as well. They are allowing the pray to be enveloped into their soft, squishy insides and working off the assumption that the prey won’t dare injure them (ala the climax of Men In Black or the fight with the hydra in Hercules.)
Complete and unquestionable dominance isn’t my thing, I like characters who have to negotiate weirdness and unfair natural disparities and dangerous situations. So for me, it’s a different kind of D/s kink that gets tickled by it.
@olo Definitely was envisioning a very real, very large military/paramilitary organization that formed to pick up the slack of the failing nation-state, and as things continued to get worse, it descended into a self-contained feudal society. I like the military metaphor a lot (water is wet!) but I like it because unlike a lot of sci fi tropes we have it now. And it’s already just an extreme form of the social stratification we are all forced into living already.
Haven’t decided how it smells yet! For humans, it’s basically an invisible scent, only really detectable by its effects. For the anakim though, it might just be a bit musky.
I don’t suppose I have to remind you how non-neutered adult human males have historically behaved in prolonged single-sex environments
@i-am-insane That makes a lot of sense. I feel like medical dysphoria is probably a super common thing. My partner felt similar when he was going through chemo and still struggles with it.
@Olo Nobody’s perfect 
@nyx @nephilim re: ““purple”” prose, I’ve done some brushing up on the term and I’m reminded now that it’s a very over-used and misunderstood criticism in the amateur writing world lol. (I remember when many fandoms all kind of discovered the term back in the late 90’s and early 00’s and suddenly everyone was either doing it on purpose or clutching their pearls over it lol).
Like, I’ll say this: Ender’s Game is one of my favorite books, but boy did Card do a poor job of conveying Ender’s anguish in a lot of scenes. Neuromancer, as much of a slog that was for me, was WAY better in the emotional detail department. Even Tom fucking Clancy is decent. (Nephilim, I can’t say I’ve read any Stephen King! Maybe I should get on it…)
But thank you Nyx, that’s heartening to hear. I’ve heard from a couple people who want me to change the writing style to “appeal” to a broader audience, and I’m just like… to what end? How broad of an audience is this ever going to get lmao?
There are lots of us! Like, I pretty much only write stories about giants who consentually negotiate their own sizekink now lol.
@olo NO no, haha. AO3 tbh, though that’s no surprise at all.
@sloppy_amy There should at least be a community engagement officer who goes around to make sure the SWs are being properly molested.
(No Manual excerpt for this chapter yet either. Also, this is essentially a first draft, virgin writing. I’d cannibalized only a couple general dialogue ideas from previous drafts, but this is a version 1.0. It will need work.)
It was five more days up in that tree, climbing down only to relieve herself or grab something she dropped. The only other person she spoke to was the corpsman who came to deliver her water.
By the end, Gray felt like her skin was crawling and she couldn’t wait to get back to camp. A shower, a hot meal, and a bit of shine would do her some good. At 2000 hours she was relieved by a replacement, whoever it was signaling their approach by bird-call.
“Hey-hey, you’re still alive up there!” came a familiar voice. His name was Clark. He was a fifth-year, short but sturdy.
“Just barely,” she grunted back.
The seventh-year threw her pack to Clark’s feet before making her way down the rope.
The young man smiled. “Don’t worry, the smell of a Corps camp in this heat will wake you up.”
She snorted. “Might actually finish me off.”
“You look pretty ripe yourself.”
“Ripe as a peach, thanks.”
While she didn’t know the corpsman well, he was part of Brown Fox too, and thus eligible for the same posts and duties as she and her friends were. He probably would have interacted with Wesson in his new role as acting officer by now. “How’s the captain’s mood been lately?”
Clark knew what she was referring to.
“I heard you two weren’t seeing eye to eye the other night,” he admitted. “I guess that’s why they force the new promos into transferring camps; makes it easier to bark at the boots if you don’t know any of ‘em personally.”
He sighed, pulling out a tinder stick—a cheap cigarette cut with dry grass and shredded paper—to light up. Its harsh smell had long since stopped smelling bad to her, but was nothing compared to the Anak’s rich, earthy tobacco. Clark shrugged.
“You put him in a bad mood for a few days, not gonna lie. But I think he’s had time to cool off. You’re lucky he hasn’t quite got the hang of things yet, or he might’ve given you something worse. Officers learn all sorts of dirty tricks, don’t they?”
That much was true. If Burke had survived the attack, there was a few things she could have done to Kessler for pulling that pin, even without sending him to retraining. She could have erased a year from his service record, forcing him to repeat it; cut off a chunk of his ear; or, more likely, is that she would have sent him on one of the more distant patrol circuits and hoped he just didn’t make it back.
Gray just sighed. “I tell you, serving under a friend fucking sucks, Clark.”
He offered up the stick.
“No thanks, I prefer shine.”
They stood in silence for a minute, looking out over the landscape, all pinks and golds. But it was time to go. She hefted up her gear.
“Well, I guess all I can do is count down the days until this year’s release, when he’ll be replaced by some promo from some other camp who won’t know a damn thing about me.”
Clark nodded, they both knew the way things were. “Can only be one of two things in this shithole,” he muttered around the somestick hanging out of his mouth. “You’re either bound, or free. Still, I’d rather Wesson be tellin’ me what to do instead of some warlord out there in the waste.”
That, she had to admit, was difficult to disagree with.
* * *
When she’d staggered back to Fox, both exhausted and buzzing with restless energy, the first thing she did was grab her punch card and make a beeline for brown toon’s showers.
The wooden structure was freestanding and sheltered by a tarp. There were six stalls per toon tent, each one giving only just enough privacy to wash up, though it wasn’t uncommon to see two (or three) pairs of legs from underneath the partitions, and it wasn’t uncommon to be stuck washing up right next to some of those legs. All you could really do was avoid eye contact. It’s not like you had long in there while the water was running.
It was a relatively simple outfit: a reservoir painted black and baking in the sun all day provided hot water. Every corpsman was assigned a punch card monthly, which allotted them a total of 45 minutes showering time, to spend however they damn well pleased. Some corpsmen preferred to spend ten minutes once a week, but others, like Gray, hated the grime, and preferred short showers as often as possible. The machine that read the punch cards and doled out the water was one of the more complex things that Camp Fox had, but water was so scarce a resource that its strict regulation was worth the hassle.
As she slid the sturdy card into the slot to be read and marked by the machine, Gray thought about the sentinel. She thought about his face, those cutting eyes. She thought about the hot, slick muscle of his tongue.
For the first time, she thought about what something like that might actually do to her.
Gray licked her lips as she stripped and turned on the stream of water.
* * *
It was late by the time she was done, and the breeze felt almost too cold when it hit her wet hair; but cold was a luxurious feeling, and she relished it. Gray had traded an old friday for shine, which she nursed from on top of a metal drum within view of Wesson’s tent. It glowed with a faint light from inside. Eventually, this light was snuffed out, and soon after Wesson emerged, holding the flap open for none other than Finch.
Gray’s eyes narrowed and she took another long sip of the burning, musty, alcohol. The pair paused outside the tent for a moment, not noticing her in the shadows, and she caught the end of a conversation.
“…Friday, alright? 2200, I’ll come get you.”
Finch nodded. “My arm won’t be a problem?”
“Naw, naw. You won’t be playing any games, just sort of… you know.”
There was a thick pause and Gray frowned.
Wesson clapped a hand on Finch’s good arm. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. I don’t want you nervous.”
“Sure thing, ah… sir.”
Gray gulped down the last of the hooch in her cup and slid off the drum. Her frown deepened into a scowl by the time she stormed back to Harrison’s to toss the empty cup into the washing bin with a hollow clank.
Outside, a voice caught her attention. “Hey!” it shouted angrily. “It’s you, that seventh-year brownie!”
She turned to find a pair coming up the path. They were faces she knew, though Gray couldn’t put names to them.
“Yeah?” she said, not sure what insult she’d be defending herself from. “What do you want?”
The one man got right up into her face, and one look at the marks on his collar told her he was a youngyear. “You’re the one that got Kessler in hot, steaming shit, aren’t you?”
She scoffed, and loudly. Didn’t they know anything? They weren’t going to win this.
“Get dusted, he’s the one who pulled that pin. And Burke’s dead, so what does it matter? The reprimand didn’t even make it to his fucking file.”
The young man’s eyes grew deadly serious and Gray’s skin prickled as she instinctively shored up her SA—her situational awareness—just in case she needed to put some distance between them.
“He knew what he saw,” the corpsman said.
Gray swallowed, narrowed her eyes at them both. “So do I. Now be glad I never told Captain Wesson what happened.”
The seventh-year got one last look at the pair as she turned to leave.
“This ain’t over!”
“Yes, it is.” At least, Gray hoped it was. “Now leave me alone, I’ve been in a tree all goddamn week and I’d like to get some sleep.”
* * *
Exercises woke Gray up early the next day. She’d been dreaming about him, those hands, those arms. She was waiting for him up in the dark, narrow canyon, stars wheeling overhead, and there he was. He bent to kiss her. Their passion deepened, and against her thigh was something firm and hot. But when she reached for it, all her fingers touched was metal. Her nostrils were suddenly filled with the faint cloying musk of the pheromone, and consumed with fear, all she could do was stare as he lifted away, capturing her lips in his one more time, before burying a bullet in her chest.
The report of small arms fire wasn’t a particularly regular sound around a Corps camp, and even the most distant pops and bangs were still enough to wake her up. Five years of sentry trained her to sleep light. This was both a blessing and a curse. She wrote off the dream as an early-morning blurring of sleep and waking reality, but her heart was still pounding, and Gray was left wondering why in the hell she felt so alive.
She put her clothes on, rubbed her face down with a cloth, laced up her boots, and headed out to the mess for coffee.
What Gray and all the other corpsmen called coffee might not actually have been coffee, but it’s all any of them knew. It was a dark, burnt, sludgy sort of drink, and it helped you wake up a little. Interestingly, unlike water, a corpsman could have as much coffee as he wanted. Commander Hitch drank so much of it that his teeth were quite yellow. Gray didn’t drink that much of it, she didn’t like the shakes it gave her after a few cups.
Today was her day off, and she knew as much without even being told—it’s what she was due after such a stretch of shifts by writ of the Manual—and it was exactly the thing she needed. After watching the sun come up over the distant mountains, she went to kill a little more time at the toon board before seeing if Finch or Harper was awake. What Wesson was up to was no longer any of her business.
Squinting in the hard morning light, Gray scanned down the pages pinned to the wood, neatly typed in black and white, and saw nothing but “TBD” beside her name.
TBD. What was TBD again?
Gray’s eyes settled on Wesson’s office, knowing he’d have at least one copy of the Manual in there, but she didn’t want to sneak in to look at it. She was supposed to know what the acronym meant.
With a growl, Gray quickly returned to her tent, reaching for a box under her cot where she kept her Manual. When she took it out, looking at it for the first time in a few months, she couldn’t help the sigh. The Manual was more than just a brick of a book three fingers thick, more than the dust collecting on its fragile, cracking cover, it was the law, harsh and unforgiving, that governed her life. And over the years, she had learned to trust that law.
“Alright, appendix eye-vee…”
She flipped to the very back of the book, running her finger along a reference table printed with very small letters. There: TBD.
“To be determined; undecided.”
Gray frowned. Undecided? She stared at the page a moment longer before shoving the book away again and all but kicking the box under her cot. She knew now that this was a coded message: come talk to me. That’s an order.
“For fuck’s sake,” Gray hissed.
* * *
Finch was just sitting up in her cot when Gray came around, peeking her head in. She nodded her good morning to the other waking corpsmen, and turned to her friend.
“Oh, you’re back,” Finch mumbled, yawning. “Easy shift?”
“Uh, sure. Listen, meet me in the mess in five?”
“I haven’t even made it to the latrines yet.”
“Well get in line and I’ll grab you a coffee.”
Finch snorted. “Yes, sir.”
Back in the big mess tent, Gray filled two cups and thought about what she was actually going to say. She wanted to know what happened while she was gone, what happened last night. She found an empty table in the corner and waited, now sipping nervously.
When the redhead finally sat down almost 10 minutes later, Gray started with something inoffensive.
“How’s the arm?”
Finch flexed her fingers and was able to make a loose fist with a wince. “Still ugly. I won’t even try to hold a sider until next week. Harper says I should wait at least a month before I can even try shooting. The recoil is going to hurt like a bitch.”
“That’s more time than they said originally. Wesson pulled through for you after all, then?”
Finch looked at her coffee in an uncharacteristic moment of thought. “We talked and I see where he’s coming from now.” She shrugged with one shoulder. “He found a use for me while I heal and so… I get to stay. That’s about it.”
Gray bought some time by fiddling with her half-empty cup. “Has he said anything about me?”
“He doesn’t see why you won’t let him help you too.”
“But that’s the thing, Finch. I’m not injured. I don’t need his help.”
“To him, it’s just a matter of time.”
“We’re all gonna die someday. Is he trying to protect me from that, too?”
Finch continued looking at her coffee. “He knows stuff now.”
“Like what?”
“He can’t say. But there’s been things explained to him, he says. You just need to trust him.”
Gray rolled her eyes. “I know how this place works. It’s not complicated, and that’s the beauty of it. Corpsmen get hurt out here, and sometimes they die. If you’re lucky, you make your ten years like Wesson did. And I’m happy for him, really. But he…”
She had to stop herself there.
“The point is, I trust the Corps as much as I need to. We’re not fuckin’ Moonies. I don’t see Hitch wearing a crown.”
Finch snorted.
“You know what I think?” Gray continued. “I think he’s mad that I’m not tripping over myself to get back in his cot.”
“Oh come on. Really?”
“Really. Did you see the duty roster?”
“He had me take a look while he was writing it, but…”
“I’m TBD. He’s making this weird on purpose, Finch. Can’t you see what he’s doing?”
“He’s not doing anything. In another couple months I’ll be out on patrols shooting ‘Naks again. He said so himself. You just need to lighten up a little.”
Gray frowned, and after a minute, she decided to switch gears.
“What’s going on Friday?”
It was Finch’s turn to frown.
“Nothing. And how did you know?”
“Word gets around,” Gray muttered.
“It’s cards, OK? That’s it.”
“Just you and Wesson?”
“Basically.”
Finch checked her watch then and stood.
“I gotta head to the med tent for a bit,” she said. “Wesson should be in by now, if you want to talk to him.”
“Guess I’d better.”
They both rose and left, but Gray took a moment outside to let out the breath she’d been holding.
What the fuck happened here while she was away? All it took was a week and Wesson had managed to… to do something to Finch. The fifth-year just lied through her teeth for him. How could she?
Sure, Gray had lied once too. But this was different. It had to be.
Up ahead, behind the brown-gray mountains, not quite majestic but still good in their mountain-ness, a thick tower of clouds gathered. Was it a storm? She wondered if Fox would see any squalls this year, or if the dry spell would last through autumn. Tensions ran high through the summer season as everyone anxiously waited for the catharsis of rain. And you could feel it coming. The sudden rush of wind, the weight in the air. The smell. It’s like rain had a pheromone too: one that calmed the nerves and made everything feel new again.
Off to her left was brown toon’s office. Eyes on her boots, Gray went over to see if the captain was in.
She didn’t have any words planned, but the anger and unease churned. Like the sound of ‘Nak boots on gravel, though, the sight of another officer standing with Wesson had her stop dead in her tracks and think of nothing else but survival.
“Sirs,” Gray mumbled, clasping her hands neatly behind her back.
The officer, one of Black Fox’s support staff, shot her a look and made sure to finish speaking.
“So just remember, form C22 needs two requisitions for filing, D22 needs three, because you go to the head of records for that one. Make sense?”
“Yeah,” Wesson said, nodding curtly. “Yeah, OK, I get it now. Thanks for the help, Devora.”
“You’re in for poker tonight, right?”
“Oh, you can count on it!”
The man from Black Fox circled around to the tent flap. Gray dutifully stepped aside, and nodded at his leave. As soon as the canvas fell back into place, she sucked in a breath. Wesson finally looked at her.
“First off, perfect, thank you. Those guys love it when I look like I have my shit together.” He chuckled and straightened a few stacks of papers. “What d’you need, Gray?”
Fuck, it was like holding in a full bladder.
“If you need to talk, you know where to fucking find me,” she hissed.
“Hey, whoa, what?”
“The board, Wesson. What are you mad about? Last week, or three years ago?”
“Four years ago,” he corrected.
If it weren’t for the conversation, he’d have looked every bit as comfortable behind that desk as any other officer. Even the dark rings under his eyes from the late nights he was spending here were worn like a badge of pride.
“Where’s my schedule?”
“You have a couple options, I just wanted to see which one you’d prefer.”
Gray narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re playing with me. Give me whatever, sir.”
“So my friend doesn’t want my help at all.”
For some reason those words hit her particularly hard.
“I’m a sentry. Give me sentry.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t want something easier?” Wesson thumbed through some papers on the desk, possibly for effect. “There’s laundry this week, a patrol circuit…”
What was he doing? His words were plain, but they were slippery, muddy, hiding things. Is this how he talked to Finch for a whole week? He made this seem so strangely urgent, like she was running out of time.
Running out of time to get used to his new power over her life.
“This is your last chance, Gray.” Wesson rose from the desk and put his hands down on it. “Stay close to me and you’ll make it. And I can’t keep arguing with you like this… someone’s going to find out and then they’ll expect me to give you the lash for it.”
She didn’t say anything.
“You have no idea how hard this has been for me, G. They’ve been putting me through my paces so I’d have to prove myself with extra work, and now they expect me to host the visiting wastelanders this weekend. They’re an important cartel and it’s my job to impress them.”
Gray’s heart sank as she put 1-and-1 together. And her face hardened.
“Whatever sob story you told to Finch, won’t work on me.”
“Alright, fine. You came in here to get your schedule. Here you go, how does another six days of solitary at blind 14 sound?”
Blind 14 was… to the northeast, on a rocky hill. Blazing hot in the late afternoon.
She clenched her jaw as she spoke. “Great.”
“Yeah? Alright, you can have it next week too.”
“Perfect. Am I dismissed, sir?”
“I still need to debrief you.” The young captain reached into a drawer for a form. He filled it out.
“Did you, at any time during your shift, leave your post.”
“No, sir.”
“Did you, at any time during your shift, see, hear, or otherwise notice any suspicious activity in your vicinity?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you interact with any civilian human during your shift?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you fire any shots?”
“No, sir.”
“Would you willingly submit your weapon to a bullet count?”
“Yes, sir.”
He scribbled down one final note at the end of the page, and tucked it away again.
“That’ll be all, corpsman,” Wesson said. “Kim will be inspecting your weapon at the armory.”
Gray drew her lips into a fine line; if you hadn’t fired a weapon, the question was a formality. She’d never been subjected to one otherwise.
“Enjoy the rest of your Saturday,” he said cooly. Then, reaching into a drawer, produced a white slip stamped with blue. “Have a drink on me.”
Gray snatched the friday out of his hand, crumpling it up into her fist and said nothing more as she left. Outside, she reeled, hands trembling.
What just happened?
Who was that man behind the desk? He looked like Wesson, sounded like Wesson; it seemed like an impostor wearing his skin. Or maybe she had it all backwards. Maybe this was the real Wesson, and the corpsman she’d come to know for the past seven years—the corpsman she’d almost fallen in love with, laid herself bare for—had been the lie.
But all of that needed to be stowed, because if nothing else, Wesson had just done her an immense favor: he’d reminded her that it was Saturday.
He’s being very careful with that building! Which is smart, if he wants to continue getting permits for this, best not to piss off city council…