Posts made by Kisupure

That’s a dub-con look on her face if I ever saw one.

Introducing the Four Point Touch!

@olo I’m so glad you noticed that little detail LOL

originally it was “get the arm out of the way”, and then “if I’d just thrown myself to the ground, I’d be making sure the very heavy metal thing on my back wasn’t swinging around to hit anybody in the face or throw off my balance” but now that you mention it, hand-packed mags are probably a HUGE liability when you have things exploding near them.

Make sure the gun is OK and you make sure everyone is OK lol.

That said, I think I made him a foot too tall here sob

@Olo

[[OK, last chapter for a couple weeks. This was a lot of work but I was on a roll - half of it is entirely new material worked into an old scene, so my brain is complete mush now.]]

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CHAPTER 6

The rank of Captain is reserved for Officers who lead a Corps Platoon or Division. A Platoon consists of 150-200 fighting corpsmen and their support, who are designated within each Camp by color. A Division refers to any self-contained department necessary for the functioning of a Corps Camp, such as Hospitality, Medical, or Utilities. Divisions may also refer to combat specialization groups, such as Scouting or Communications. See Annex I for a complete list of Divisions and Sub-Divisions.

—HDC Manual, Section 2 § 2

---

Normally, the Corps would begin picking out potential officers in the months before candidates got their freedom, always transferring the newly promoted to an unfamiliar camp if there was an opening, or if an officer was planning to retire from the corps to return to civvie life.

The benefits for Wesson were worth coveting: provisional freedom without a mark, and promotion to the captain’s office complete with all the rights and privileges of the upranked. There was no pomp for him or the ninth-year from red toon that was also being promoted, just a lot of paperwork, a few symbolic aptitude tests, and an oath-taking ceremony in the commander’s tent. He even got a new uniform. Well, newer.

“So no more philandering with us enlisted, eh?” a fifth-year teased at a gathering behind Harrison’s the next evening in his honor.

Like enlisteds with outsiders, officers were discouraged from getting cozy with their subordinates. Meals were to be taken separately, quarters relocated to the captain’s barracks, and outside of the occasional drink, Wesson would be spending as little free time as possible with the downrank from now on. And this was the last time that he would be allowed to enjoy the company of so many enlisted all at once… so many friends.

Wesson shrugged, a bittersweet smile on his face. The liquor was getting to him.

“It’s part of the price we’ll all have to pay to get our freedom,” he sagely declared. Then, he held up his drink. “To the Corps! May she never run low on lead!”

“To the Corps!” a good twenty voices echoed back.

Gray didn’t say anything when she raised her cup, and when she glanced beside her to Finch with her arm in a sling, the redhead didn’t either. She’d only been allowed to stay one night in the med tent, but from what Finch told her, she didn’t want more than that anyway. It was depressing as hell and too many injured were talking and moaning in their sleep.

“He looks a lot better today,” Gray said, watching Wesson talk to a few others.

“He looks tore,” Finch said flatly.

Gray frowned. “He almost had his head busted open out there.”

“We he definitely isn’t shellshocked. In fact, it seems like he’s enjoying himself. Look.”

Gray looked, and realized it was true. The difference was like night and day. It was as he’d never hit his head at all, and she wondered if it hadn’t been something else that made him seem so distracted. Or maybe speaking to Hitch gave him the confidence to believe that he could fulfill his new role. Being told you were getting a promo after a fight like that was enough to sucker punch anybody. Still, Gray suddenly didn’t like how he was taking up space.

Wesson was engrossed in conversation, but he began to point their way. A moment later he was crossing the distance, talking loudly.

“…And in fact, the first thing I’m gonna do, right now, is come right on over here and say to her, ‘Gray, I want you to work for me’.”

Wesson’s bright eyes were locked onto her. He was always a few inches taller but suddenly the seventh-year felt as if he was as big as a ‘Nak as he stood close, putting his arm around her shoulder. He waited for her answer with a grin. Others hooted, hollered, and clapped.

Gray looked up at him, unable to hide the expression on her face. “Wh–what? You want me to be your clerk?” she said, easing herself away from him. “Do I look like a filing cabinet to you?”

His smile widened and he turned to the others. “If you’ll excuse us,” he called out, “I need a moment to speak with my new assistant.”

With that he ushered them both away, and she noticed that his sparkling smile quickly disappeared.

“C’mon Gray,” he said once they were out of sight. “I’m an officer now, I can pull strings.”

She squinted at him, that blond hair and tanned face beginning to look a little too charismatic. “What makes you think I want to file paperwork and run errands for you all day? You could’ve asked me first.”

He took a quick glance around and gave her shoulder an authoritative squeeze. “I care about you guys,” he said. “You, Harper, and Finch. And if I can use this promotion to help make your lives easier for a while, then I will. And I didn’t ask because they don’t want me to. I’m supposed to tell you what to do and you’re supposed to do it.”

Gray’s lips became a fine line. Coming from any other captain, this conversation wouldn’t be happening. She would be saying “yes, sir” and “thank you, sir” for the opportunity to be a good corpsman. She’d be grateful for being seen as valuable. Clerk work was clean, and it was quiet; you slept in a tent attached to the captain’s office, and being one more step removed from the fighting ranks of corpsmen put you one step closer to the outside world. The things you learned better prepared you to deal with civtown.

But Gray still didn’t want it. She didn’t want the strange, special treatment. And nobody liked the clerks anyways. They were odd, and rude, and smoked so much they could barely ruck.

“I know I bitch about it, but I actually like scouting. I don’t want to be transferred to records, even if it is easier work.”

He gave her a look she had never seen outside of battle, slate eyes suddenly cold. There was an edge to his voice as he spoke, and his hand held firm to her shoulder.

“I can keep you safe, Gray.”

“Is this… is this an us thing?” she blurted. “Are you trying to win me back or something?“

“It’s not. I promise.” Wesson chewed his lip and thought for a moment. “This last fight made me realize just how awful it is to lose people this late in the game. It’s just… it’s more dangerous out there than any of us realize. But I suddenly have the power to protect you now.”

Gray swallowed.

“What about Finch?”

“Finch will get her chance, don’t worry. I could always try setting her up with hospitality.”

Hospitality was where the wastelanders were, and officers from Alpine: clean men and women in clean uniforms, decked with colorful ribbons and polished metal.

But keeping visitors fed, watered, and entertained during their visits was a secretive task. The Manual said it was “distracting” work for the average corpsman because of the gossip, the rumors, the foreign culture of the outsiders. Most were not fit for it.

And if Gray knew Finch, she wasn’t fit for it either.

“That’s even worse than records,” she said.

Wesson threw up his arms. “Who cares! If she wants to live to kill another ‘Nak then she’ll need to get away from the front anyways. She doesn’t stand a chance right now.”

“Then make her work the office!”

He shook his head. “No, we make a better team. I want you in there. She knows card games, she’ll do much better keeping outsiders happy.”

“With all due respect, I don’t want her waiting on outsiders any more than I want to wait on you, sir.”

The Manual recommended prefacing opinions with those words to avoid coming across as insubordinate. But Wesson knew inter-rank protocol just as much as she did, and his silence told her that she should have kept her mouth shut.

He straightened.

“I’ve always told you to watch what you say after you’ve had too much shine. It’s going to get you into trouble one of these days,” he said, turning away. “Think about my offer, Gray. Don’t be stupid.”

* * *

She laid on her cot and stared at the flapping canvas above her head. The night was almost warm enough to roll up the sides to let air in through the bug netting, but the beads of sweat on the nape of her neck had nothing to do with the approaching summer heat.

“Captain Wesson,” she mumbled to herself. “Yes sir, captain Wesson sir.”

Gray groaned and turned over onto her good side.

The next afternoon, she checked the board for Wesson’s first duty roster. Juggling the schedules of 200 corpsmen would be the first thing he’d learn to do. Glancing at the other names, it didn’t look half-bad for a first try. In fact, it probably took him all night. But as she found her name, neatly typed on its own row, her stare turned to gawking, and her gawking soon turned to indignation.

S        M        T        W        T        F        S

[SS12C]---------------------------------------[SS12A]

“SS” stood for “solitary sentry”, the number designated her blind, and the letter told her when she was to ruck out. This wasn’t a duty roster, this was a sentence. A week up in a tree. These shifts were supposed to be three days long, and the most she had ever heard of was five.

The asshole did this on purpose.

Gray stormed away from Captain Wesson’s new office, and back to her toon tent.

“Did you see the board?” she said, walking in on Finch on her cot as Harper dabbed a clean rag on her wound.

“No,” Finch snorted. “Why would I? I got four weeks off.”

“Hardly. They’ll have to give you something to do starting next week,” Harper said.

Gray ignored them. “Is this was he always wanted? To order people around? I feel like I don’t know the guy anymore.”

Harper shrugged. “He wanted promo, you knew that.”

“He’s got me on seven days of solitary. Seven!”

Finch chuckled. “You’re always going to lose in a fight with an officer.”

“Piss off, this isn’t funny.”

Gray sat down on a cot and rubbed her face.

“It’s whatever, Gray. You guys got into an argument, you probably said something dumb, and he’s doing something dumb to get back at you. Be glad it’s just sentry and that he’s—ow!” Finch hissed as Harper helped her arm back into the sling. “Be glad he’s not making you scrub toilets for a week.”

Gray sighed. Maybe Finch was right. Maybe she was blowing this out of proportion and being unable to say ‘Captain Wesson’ with a straight face was her problem.

“Any of you miss Burke?” Harper said.

“Didn’t really know her.”

“The officers don’t really want *any *of us to know them, do they?”

Gray scoffed. “I wouldn’t either, if I were them. We’re numbers until we get our freedom.” A pause. “Maybe he just needs some time.”

A man tapped on the flap before letting himself inside. It was one of Burke’s old staff. “Finch? Fifth-year?”

“That’s me.”

He handed her a folded piece of paper and ducked out.

Finch’s eyes narrowed as she opened and read the note.

“Holy fuck, I’m going to be Wesson’s new help,” she said, dumbfounded. “It’s been approved by Hitch and everything already. I’ll be transferred to records when my arm’s healed.”

Harper stood up and grabbed the paper from her. Gray winced, remembering their argument.

“He’s trying to help you out.”

“Jesus Christ, Gray, this isn’t a week of sentry, this is for the rest of the season! And when we get a real captain in there, they might even keep me!”

“It’s either this, or you risk release,” Harper said. “Think of it this way, he just saved you from a death sentence.”

“Yeah, and saved a bunch of fuckin’ ‘Naks too. I’m gonna be one of the last people to go out on a ruck, now.”

“In forty-seven months you get your freedom and that’s all that matters. You can kill as many of ‘em as you want when you’re out of here.” Gray was trying very hard to scold the younger corpsman into being thankful, but it was a hard sell.

“That’s all that matters, huh?” Finch set her jaw and stared at the ground. “I’m not like you. Not like any of you. I’m not here for promo, and I’m not here to get out. All I want is revenge, and up until now, the Corps made that easy for me.”

“Yeah, well, it’s looking like the only person getting what they want around here is Wesson.” Gray stood up to leave. Finch was awful to be around when she was in a bad mood. “I’ll see you in a fucking week.”

* * *

After a 4-minute shower, 1900 hours rolled around and it was time to hit the trail. Scowling, Gray signed off on the board and rucked out from there to her post without saying a single word to anyone, the captain included. At this point, part of her was looking forward to getting away.

“What is wrong with him?” she muttered. “Why does it feel like he’s taking this personally?”

But underneath her indignation there was hurt, she realized. Did she feel like Wesson had somehow cheated the system to get out early? Maybe he did—the Corps wasn’t without its petty corruption. Sometimes you heard about protection contracts being paid off with warm bodies instead of goods or money. The money, too, worried her. Would he flaunt it, or would he try to pretend like it didn’t matter? He could even spend it out in civtown if he wanted. Because he was allowed to leave on errands now, too. Or maybe that was a privilege reserved for true freemen. She didn’t know. She almost didn’t care.

As she reached her post and began the climb up into the tree, Gray pondered the Corps in the abstract. Just what *was *it? And what did it do to people?

The Western Human Defense Corps, as the militia was once more formally called, was a machine at its heart. Its moving parts were made of muscle, and it was lubricated by the sweat of its corpsmen. Its ranks were filled with bonds brought in from the wastes; some of them runaways, like her, and some by purchase. And they were brought together for a single purpose: to keep the enemy at bay, an enemy that didn’t discriminate against any human.

The Corps prided itself on offering its enlistees more than just survival training; it offered dignity, and a chance for you to leave a stronger, smarter person than you were when you arrived. It was like a still, turning mash into shine.

Unfortunately, a lot of mash went into making even a just little shine.

Wesson wasn’t under any delusion that this was a hard life, but he leaned heavily on the mythology of the Corps—General Piece, the Manual, the early victories of the Disruption—while Gray and many others did not. For her, the Corps was a means to an end. In twenty-eight months she’d be packing up her bags and heading out to civtown where she could decide who to work for. That was all the freedom she ever wanted.

As she took a swig of water, Gray’s thoughts turned back to that sentinel again. His apocryphal existence was in diametric opposition to the life of a Corps officer. The sentinel lived and worked alone, something Gray could barely fathom. No rosters, no drills, nobody breathing down his neck telling him when to eat or sleep or shit. Unlike Wesson, whose confidence came from knowing people, the sentinel stood alone.

Strong. Clever.

Handsome.

She found herself sighing wistfully, then laughed. Gray knew better than to romanticize that kind of life. He was probably often hungry and thirsty, and half–nuts from the isolation. If the Anakim were as social as the humans they were modeled after, she guessed that loneliness could eat away at them just the same.

But hunger and thirst was freedom too, wasn’t it? She contrasted the sentinel’s hard, rugged face in the dust with Wesson’s newfound authority, washed and fed. Gray knew which face she preferred.

She knew who was the better kisser, too.

There was a faint throb between her legs and she wiggled a little to release some of the tension with a sigh. Noncommittally, Gray thought about those hands again and their bruising strength. She recalled those lips, that tongue, thought about what it would have been like to be flipped over then and there, with bullets flying over their heads in the dark, to have a neat hole ripped in the seat of her pants and…

Gray’s breathing quickened, heart picking up. Her fingers hovered over her fly, half undone. She was remembering now how small she felt, too, how the pheromone made her feel like he could kill her with a word. But he did no such thing. His word had saved them.

The contrast was bewildering. Intoxicating.

Removed from the moment itself, she could reflect on it from the safety of the now. Relive it in any way she wanted. This was her tiny sliver of freedom, and not a soul would know. She could fantasize about the sentinel. She would fantasize about the sentinel.

Gray undid the rest of the buttons and kicked off her pants, they needed some repair anyways. Then feeling strangely electrified, she slipped her fingers under the hem of her underwear and brushed along her straining bud. Only now did she realize that she was soaking wet.

Take that, Wesson.

* * *

She sat and pulled a long beige thread through one pant leg, pulling a hole shut as the sky above slowly turned to pinks and purples. Long shadows crept across the valley, a few easy kliks away from Fox, and for a long while Gray was almost at ease. The floorboards of her blind radiated warmth even as the sun began to disappear behind the rolling valley wall, its top hairy with scrub taller than a human.

A few crickets picked up their song, and off in the distance Gray spotted a doe and her adolescent faun picking their way through the brush. For a few minutes she watched them, their heads dipping down every few seconds then snapping back up, enormous ears swiveling.

Most other corpsmen hated the color brown—they hated it like they hated the dust and the heat, and her toon was was the butt of most jokes for its color. But the desert had taught Gray that brown could be elegant, even beautiful. As she considered the deer, common but rarely noticed, considered their strong, lean, silent bodies moving through the landscape, there seemed to be no more regal a color on earth than the heathery brown of their fur.

Suddenly, the deer stood at attention, ears pointing to the corpsman’s 3 o’clock. Gray had heard nothing, but flattened herself and trained her ears too. Soon, a single rock tumbled down the hillside nearby and the deer disappeared up the canyon with a decisive rustle of underbrush.

It was probably an animal, but Gray grabbed her gun anyways, foregoing the pair of binos. Blood began beat in her ears. She was hoping that it was something innocuous. A hare, maybe. Or a bird. Hell, she’d even take a cougar over the other available options.

She laid on her belly for a few long minutes, listening with every nerve ending in her body. A moment later and there was another sound: the faint scrape of a twig against something—fabric—again at her 3. Steadying her breath, Gray decided to cup her mouth to throw one of the standard bird calls, but there was no reply. This was not a corpsman.

Judging by the faintness of the sound, Gray assumed human. A lost wastelander maybe, or a brig looking to relieve a lone “corpy” of their gear. It happened, and with surprising regularity. Sentries would be sent out, and their body found later near their post, stripped naked and half-eaten by coyotes. Just as she was going through the rough calculations of her chances given the weapons the attacker was likely to have, another clue appeared in the form of a scent.

Not pheromone, but tobacco smoke.

So, a cocky fucker, then. But the sound of boots in the dirt below the blind drained her of color in an instant.

The only way he’d creep that close was if he knew she was there, and knew she was alone. A dozen scenarios roared through her mind, most of them ending badly. But some of them didn’t. The thick, breathless pause had her preparing for confrontation. Where was he standing? How many seconds did she have? Could she land a successful first shot before this attacker filled the floorboards full of holes?

“I know you’re up there,” said the familiar voice.

It was… him.

His voice was raw granite. Rough and stony, like the arroyos and dusty canyons he stalked in service to the Anakim. In her mind she saw his blue eyes again looking back at her over the long barrel of his rifle, and she let out her captive breath. It was loud enough for him to hear.

Gray stood up on shaky feet and neared the edge of the platform where she could climb down the knotted rope. She didn’t dare look at him until her bare feet met solid ground, after which she raised her eyes, heart pounding. She waited for the pheromone to creep into her nostrils and begin clawing at the back of her mind, but it never did. Maybe she wasn’t close enough?

Her gaze paused at his belly – she was at eye-level with the frayed webbing of his belt – and let that sink in for a moment before following the rest of him upward to his face. His helmet was off, and his kicker lazily hung from a broad shoulder. If it was ever his intention to kill her, then it definitely wasn’t now.

“How did you to come here?” she said quietly, trying to hide the distant unease in her voice. Gray didn’t want to creep any closer to him for a number of reasons.

“Doesn’t take me long to figure out what goes on in my territory,” he said quietly, cooly.

He was so matter–of–fact, and that sent a little shiver down her spine. What else did he know? How long had he been watching her? She took an unconscious step back, fingering the rope as though that were somehow an exit route. He frowned and took a long drag of the tiny cigarette between his fingers. Quarter of an inch disappeared in a bright red cherry before her eyes. Gray realized that it was one of those human-sized sticks that she’d seen him smoking earlier, and she could tell by the tightness of the roll that there was no way he could have done it himself—not with fingers that size.

“You think I’m here to kill you.”

She swallowed, and her rosy thoughts from earlier couldn’t have seemed further away. He was here now, in the flesh. Something she had never expected.

“This is a war. Why would I think otherwise?”

The idea seemed funny to him, and he snorted. “I dunno, you tell me.”

All was still as they stared each other down for a long while, reading body language, doing math, gauging motives. It was so quiet that Gray almost started when he let his boomer drop to the dirt, then the cigarette, before slowly taking a knee. Gray held onto the rope, fearing that she would lose her balance.

“Why are you here?” she whispered, suddenly feeling uncomfortable that he emitted no pheromone. It was almost… wrong.

He chuckled and looked away, and she saw now that there were some strands of silver in his dark hair, catching the early evening light.

“Testing my mettle, I guess. Wanted to see how close to you I could get.” His eyes flicked back to her. “Made it pretty far, you have to admit.”

The giant waited like that for a few more seconds. Either the sentinel was confident that she wasn’t a risk to him, or he was very, very stupid. If this was a common ‘Nak soldier, Gray would have assumed the latter. But this wasn’t a common ‘Nak soldier.

“Will it make you feel better if I answered your question?”

“I don’t remember asking you a question.”

“No, but I can tell you want to. And the answer is yes, I’m suppressing.”

Gray frowned. “Suppressing what? What are you talking about?”

The massive man removed his glove and tossed it to her. Startled, she caught it out of instinct and when she realized what he was trying to do, she held it, eyes hard as she waited for the squeeze.

“Go on, it won’t do anything.”

Trepidly, she did. But all she could smell was the scent of leather, dirt, and… him.

Gray was confounded. “It’s not affecting me.”

He cocked a brow at her. “You want it to?”

Those words sent an intense fluttering through her belly. The little corpsman swallowed and tossed the glove back to him.

“Suppression, huh?”

“I can choose to make you scared,” was his only explanation. “If it suits my needs. And to tell you the truth, corpsman, I have other plans.”

Plans like what? The corpsman swallowed.What was unfolding between them now, in this valley, was not something she could have ever even dreamed up. In fact, she still wasn’t sure if it was really happening. Such encounters never happened. Ever. Or if they did, no one lived to talk about them.

“Why’d you kiss me?”

Her question seemed to catch him off-guard. Not too much, though. He was probably genetically designed to conceal his emotions.

“Never know when you’re going to catch lead,” he said flatly.

Evidently, that’s all Gray needed to hear.

Because frankly, that would have been her answer too. So just for now, until the very first wisp of danger, she decided she would trust him. When she let go of the rope and stepped closer, his hands went to her back to bring her in the rest of the way. It was slower this time, but there was still that spark of need that drove him to kiss her without hesitation.

Even his mouth was big, she dimly noted. Her bare skin grazed the rough fabric of his pants and her fingers instinctively went to his immense shoulders for purchase. His mouth parted to reveal teeth that nipped at her lip and a tongue that wanted in. When she opened for him, he rumbled faintly, exploring wantonly and crushing her to him as though he was starved for contact. Maybe he was.

Eventually Gray broke away to catch her breath. She was panting, and the flutter in her belly had grown into a burning ember.

“What the hell are we doing?” she whispered, sobering up.

He ran his fingers through the rough chop of her chin–length hair and he studied her mouth. His eyes were dark, and it wasn’t because of the creeping dusk.

“To be honest, I have no fucking idea.”

Gray realized that this was the most refreshing thing she’d heard anyone say in a long time. Everyone else she knew seemed to be constantly laboring under the pretense of purpose, of some grand vision for either themselves or the Corps. Everyone knew what they were doing, no one was lost. No one was trying to figure things out.

He seemed to sense her defenses melting away, and so the massive soldier pressed his mouth to hers again. The kiss grew sloppier. His hand moved steadily down to her ass, and he gripped both cheeks with those five big fingers. There were more fingers in her hair, raking her scalp, and for a moment they were all hot breath and flushed skin. When the giant pressed her hips into his, though, she felt something through the fabric—something large and firm, straining against the confines of his pant leg. Gray’s eyes shot open as shegasped into his mouth. The Anak broke and pulled away.

“Fuck,” she hissed, eyes wide as she met his wanton gaze. “You’re… that’s…“

He gave her a little smirk and Gray found herself being guided onto her back in the dirt beside his gun. Gray let him, for some reason—this seemed like the natural progression, and the animal impiety of it electrified her. She listened to the deep, heavy breaths that rushed out of his nostrils. His teeth found the nape of her neck a moment later, and she shivered as the rough gusset at his knee brushed against her calf.

She arched into him, even though he still wore so much. What would Wesson say? The human soldier came back to herself one last time, remembering where and what she was – what he was.

Wesson wouldn’t say anything, and you know it. He’d put you up against a wall and blow your fucking brains out.

Panting, Gray put a hand to the Anak’s chest to stop him.

“I-I don’t think this is a good time,” she said quietly, and was distantly amazed when he didn’t ignore her, even with his need as clear as day. The giant fell back onto his heels.

He nodded with disappointment. “Sorry, I get it. You have your obligations.”

“It’s not that,” she blurted. But she had to pause and search for an answer that didn’t involve Wesson. “I just don’t like doing this in the open. Not with… you know.”

“You realize I’m the scariest thing in these hills, right?”

Gray chuckled weakly. “I meant privacy.”

"You want me to find you later?”

She swallowed hard and wracked her addled brain for a safe answer. Was there a safe answer? “We… have storage further up the canyon, closer to the wellhead.”

The Anak gave a smug look. “Two corpsmen patrol that route, and it takes 30 minutes to complete the circuit. But most of them take their time, sometimes dragging it out to an hour.”

The implication was obvious, and Gray was a little less sure of herself. He knew a lot about Fox already, and they had been here for less than a month.

The human considered the Anak for a long moment, trying to get a bead on him.

Quietly, she said: “You could kill a lot of people if you wanted to.”

“I could.”

But you won’t?

She licked her dry lips. “I’ll have the time after I get back. Saturday night.”

“It’ll be easier after dark,” he said, and a little shiver passed through her at the sheer audacity of his confidence. If other ‘Naks were this sure they could slip behind Corps lines and infiltrate a camp without being seen, then…?

“I’ll be there at 2200.”

He reached out to palm the back of her neck. “2200,” he murmured.

Gray closed the meager distance between them, feeling alive. Her naked leg faintly brushed against the spot on his thigh where she’d felt him before, and was greeted by its shape again, slowly softening. Gray licked her lips when she thought about what it might look like. What it might feel like.

“Why the hell do I trust you,” she said into one of his dirty shoulder straps, her voice its own kind of husky.

“Be careful,” he replied, not giving her what she was looking for. “Trust’ll get a human hurt around here.”

“Is that a warning or a threat?”

“Both.”

With that he stood up again, boomer in hand, and looked down at her. Fuck, he was big. Gray tried to avoid letting her eyes fall on the bulge in his pants, practically right in front of her face, but he saw her steal a glance and chuckled.

Then he put himself back together: helmet on his head, cloth around his neck loosened up to let some of the cool evening air in, rifle slung up on his shoulder, and soon another human-rolled cigarette was in his mouth and he was striking at a lighter from behind a cupped hand. He gave her a three–fingered salute, the one they used in the Corps, and disappeared into the brush as expertly as he came. Gray was left reeling, but at least she finally had another partial answer to the question of how he moved so quietly: he aimed his footfalls for rock instead of gravel, padding like a stalking predator. But that was a small distraction from the enormity of what just transpired. When he was gone, she let out a few deep breaths.

“Holy shit,” Gray whispered to herself, repeating it several times as she stared at the ground where he’d stood. Out of the corner of her eye she spied the half-smoked cigarette that he’d dropped earlier, and pocketed it without thinking.

@nephilim Thank you so much! This is high praise

I’m really glad it’s coming together, it was a calico-quilt mess for a long time. Committing it to internet paper has helped me solidify a lot of ideas, and I was worried that it would still suffer from its hodge-podginess… but my worries are evidently unfounded!

Balancing the worldbuilding and “newspeak” of it all has been a real challenge, as I’ve gone off the deep end of that sort of thing for other projects before and its easy to lose sight of the story. I realized that this needs to be “just enough” - just different enough, just futuristic enough, just awful enough to carry the reader over into this feasible-if-you-squint version of our own timeline.

And I’m excited you discovered my weak spot for desert plant life!

@Nyx Thank you SO MUCH Nyx. I was told by someone else on another platform that the way I write is still very “purple”, and I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that… I guess I like to take a scalpel to my characters’ inner lives and that’s considered egregiously descriptive in the normal lit world. Oh well, I’m lucky that kink readers like that sort of thing! (I’ve started calling it “stylistic overwhelm”.) And hope you enjoy more weirdness coming from characters on both sides of the war here soon.

@Olo You keep calling stuff JUST before it happens LOL. Next chapter she’ll get a minute to herself…

And yeah, Gray’s turning out to be little jumpy. She doesn’t want anything to be about her. She’ll be uncomfortable being the protagonist of her own story for a little while longer.

@sumguy13 It’s a slippery slope for sure, but I think we should definitely separate “character intent” from “author intent” from “actual-person-behind-pseudonym intent”. Sometimes it can be difficult to do.

The GTS community definitely still has a lot of baggage to unpack wrt their internalized misandry, though.

CHAPTER 5

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.”

Aborigen is one talented mofo.

@olo OHHK I see what you mean. I must’ve been looking at a different draft that had something like that in there.

And note to self, major oopsie: tenth-years shouldn’t really exist, they will have graduated from enlisted-dom by the “end” of the ninth year, barring unfortunate scheduling. Change all to ninth-years.

@olo Ofuk, good catches. I really wanted to make a spider joke somewhere, but I think I’ll have to move it to another scene. And as for the other one, hm, you’re right. I have her more in the “grudging respect” headspace, so you’re right, “hate” is too strong a word to use here.

Bless you Olo, and I’ll get started on that drawing soon for your troubles!

@olo Ngl, I would totally buy a big sheet of decals that say this and just… put them everywhere. The car. The bathroom. The stairs to my apartment…

CHAPTER 4

[ No Manual excerpt this time, I’m still humming and hawwing over what it’s going to be about. ]

–

It was a week later when a group of six or seven civvies on horseback were received by the camp.

Gray was on weapons maintenance near the commander’s tent—a coveted job done in the shade of a tarp—when she saw the wastelanders being ushered inside. Except for the occasional band of merchants or trappers bringing in healthy bondsmen for selling, she hadn’t set eyes on an outsider in almost four months, and it was a bit jarring to see folks dressed in something other than threadbare fatigues. From their clothes, she could tell they were from one of the wandering clans, maybe a minor merchant family. Their loose, flowing dress was in deep reds trimmed with yellows and blues and beiges. The shade of red, though, was on the orange side – dyed from the plentiful eucalypts rather than the much–coveted cochineal. Definitely a minor family.

“Wonder what they’re here for?” wondered one of her duty partners, Cox, shielding his eyes. They had all paused to watch. “I don’t see any bondsmen.”

Azimi glanced at their horses and the man tending them. “No pack mule neither,” she noted. “I don’t think they’re here to trade.”

Gray shrugged. “They’re probably trying to get away from some brigs.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they’re the new neighbors looking to hammer out a protection contract. They look important enough. See those saddles?” The color of their clothes was one thing, but the tack had copper hardware. “And the closest civtown is only a couple hours’ ride away. I’ll bet they’re loaded.”

“Too bad we can’t ask them ourselves,” Cox muttered, getting back to work. Corps Protocol for interacting with wastelanders was strict. Enlisted corpsmen were not permitted to engage them in any way unless an officer was present, and were not, even then, allowed to speak unless spoken to first.

After a good half-hour, the group in their gaudy red was escorted to a lavish guest tent a few doors down.

“My friday’s on protection contract,” Cox said.

Azimi grinned, unable to resist a bet. “Mine’s on trade deal.”

“Brigs,” muttered Gray.

Commander Hitch stepped out of the tent, and the maintenance group fell silent, returning to their duties. Out of the corner of her eye, Gray saw him say a few words to a clerk, who nodded and took off at a brisk pace. By instinct her gaze fell on the tall flagpole beside the commander’s tent, which was already being fitted with a series of brightly-colored signal flags: a small blue one with a white square in the center went first and was followed by a red and yellow pennant.

“It’s a round-up,” Azimi said quietly. She was referring to the captains.

Gray didn’t have a good feeling about this, as there were few reasons to convene Fox’s fourteen captains all at once and most of them involved fighting.

“Better grab your boots,” Gray said, minding the lingering pain in her side. “I think we all just lost our bet.”

* * *

The commander met with the captains for almost two hours, after which the captains relayed the news to each of their toons. There’d been some kind of large ‘Nak mobilization: four–hundred of them, by the outsiders’ estimate, and at least six truckloads of equipment, heading south–west and massacring or menacing every human camp unfortunate enough to get in their way. Civvies rarely had the resources to fight ‘Naks without help from the Corps.

Alpine, which they’d cabled asking for advice on tactics given the size of the mobilization, took less than 8 hours to give their reply in that familiar clipped style afforded by telegraph bandwidth:

ALPINE 47G9D BLUE OFFICE TO FOX MSG FOLLOWS

FLANK AND AMBUSH FROM HIGH GROUND STOP

SAPPER ORDNANCE FROM UNDER OR BEHIND STOP

NALEZING STOP

This telegram was posted on the board outside every captain’s office. The colonels and generals at Base Camp Alpine, with their tactical bird’s-eye view afforded by the constant wires, were ordering a guerrilla attack. For some reason, the word “nalezing” was shorthand for “do no more than absolutely necessary”, and, according to Harper, was sent at the end of most wires from Alpine.

The in-person briefing with captain Burke of Brown Fox toon, those assigned to ‘barracks’ #11-12, took all of an hour, during which more intelligence brought by the wastelanders was revealed. Afterwards, there was little time to do anything but gather up gear and hit the sack unless you wanted to be marching on 5 hours’ sleep.

At 0430 hours the next morning, Gray and five–hundred others woke up to the sound of a horn, grabbed their loadouts, and began the ten–mile march that would put them on track to intercept the force of Anakim. Gray’s side still felt awful under load, so she dug out her last little broken piece of cody and slipped it between her lips for the trek.

Everyone was too preoccupied with focusing on the fight ahead of them, their footing below them, and their pack load on top of them. It was three miles in when the sun rose over the mountains, all pinks and silver–blues of the morning sky. Already it was hot, and Gray had to cover her neck and face with a kerchief. Others were beginning to do the same.

In her head, she took inventory of her equipment, making sure she hadn’t missed anything, not that she could turn back now: kicker, sider, tac knife, six spare mags for each gun, a trio of emergency grenades, cordage, mutli–tool, binos, more goddamn hardtack, and a gallon of water. There was no telling how long they’d be out here, but she hoped, for the sake of her busted ribs, that it wouldn’t be longer than one night.

They arrived at their destination under the unrelenting afternoon sun, where everyone was told to take a breather and get something to eat while the captains talked. Their location was an old floodplain next to a river that hadn’t seen water in decades. A collapsed bridge a mile away, covered in fading graffiti, completed the picture as did the other scattered remains of pre-Disruption life. There was a two–lane road on the high side of the riverbed, up on a low bank, and it was understood that the Anakim would probably be taking this road to their likely rendezvous point: a compound of theirs known to exist some sixty miles further.

The bulk of the enlisted boots were instructed to divide up into groups of six, each headed by at least one tenth-year, to stake out points in the rocks away from the road where they might stand a chance of landing shots. Meanwhile, the sappers and grenadiers would situate themselves closer, armed with a small arsenal of explosives that would be detonated as the ‘Naks stood directly over them. With that strategy in mind, the sappers, Wesson among them, got to work.

About an hour before sundown, Gray and a few others from Brown Fox were ordered to scout the area and see if there wasn’t any sign of the approaching unit. Gray headed due west, over a small ridge and into the dusty landscape below, kicker at the ready. She’d been sent on a lot of reconnaissance assignments over the years, being part of the scouting division; her good eyes and ears, and silent maneuvering made her an ideal specialist. As did her lackluster proficiency with Morse code.

Gray trekked along for a good mile, climbing rocks, descending embankments, weaving her way through the sagebrush and cactus trees, and kept an ear out for the snakesthat liked to come out at sunset. Eventually she found a good vantage point, a small hill, to stop and take a look around. Obscured by tall brush, Gray shimmied up a boulder and lay on her good side while she brought out herbinos to scan the horizon.

Far off in the distance to the north she could see the tall buildings of an old city, and at around her 10 o’clock was the faint silhouette of a large island not far off the distant coast. But so far, there didn’t seem to be a trace of the giants or anyone else. She glanced at her watch, and saw that she had some time to kill. With nothing else to do but wait, she got as comfortable as she could manage, and –

Ch–chak.

The sound of a round entering the chamber of a gun was almost as familiar to her as the beat of her own heart. Sometimes it was comforting. Sometimes it wasn’t.

Gray whipped around, sider in hand. There, she was met with the sight of an Anak and his long, rugged rifle pointed squarely at her. He was about thirty yards away, and her heart nearly stopped when she realized her odds of landing a fatal hit from this distance were next to nothing.

“Fuck,” she whispered, suddenly resigned to the arrival of death at any moment.

The two stared at each other for the longest few seconds of her life. Shoot him! she screamed in her head. Shoot the motherfucker!

But her trigger finger seemed frozen in place, just like the rest of her. Part of it was instinctual: if she fired and missed, she was guaranteedto be killed. If she didn’t, she still had her slim, slim chance. But part of it was something else entirely.

His face was obscured by his own kerchief, wrapped similarly around his head. He wore a plated vest, with straps and pouches making him seem even broader. There was a knife fixed to the webbing near his shoulder, what looked to be a mouthpiece for a bladder of water near it, and… a short, stout antenna sticking out of the top of the pack on his back. Gray’s eyes widened when she realized what she was looking at.

He was a sentinel.

With a scowl, Gray slowly raised her hands, letting the sider fall slack around her trigger finger. This was the smartest thing to do.

But he didn’t move. This was getting ridiculous.

“Fucking capture me or shoot me,” she shouted, trying to steady the wobble in her voice. “What the hell are you waiting for!”

She was expecting it in retaliation for opening her mouth; that bang, that white–hot flash. It didn’t come.

In the silence of the desert, Gray heard him growl. He lowered his gun like it took all his strength to do so, and he loosened the cloth, turning to slip silently back into the deep shadows of the land like she wasn’t worth his lead.

“Hey!”

Gray had no idea why she called after him. She had no idea why she jumped up, ready to hit the sand and get closer.

But she heard a whistle, one of the sentry’s calls. The both of them froze. They whistled again, but she didn’t respond. She was supposed to respond. Gray glanced at the Anak, who was coiled and ready to take off. He gave her a dangerous look.

Some seconds later a sentry from Brown Fox crested the hill. It didn’t take him long to see the both of them at the bottom.

“Holy shit!”

“Kessler, it’s not—!”

Panicked, he reached for his grenade anyway. Gray was surprised at how fast he managed to tear out the pin and hurl it at the ‘Nak, and just as surprised to find that, as her eyes followed the little ball of iron as it arced through the air, that his pitch was coming up short, and that it would land closer to her than its target. Gray dumbly stumbled back and away from the thing, moving in slow motion.

But the Anak didn’t. He moved decisively and she found herself suddenly inches away from that massive body as the flashbang exploded, sending dirt and bits of metal flying in all directions. The giant caging her against the ground hissed through clenched teeth.

They stared at each other for hardly a second, then he got his bearings and disappeared into the settling night with a sloppy trail of bullets on his heels. She’d never seen 500 pounds move so fast.

Gray was left sprawled in the dirt as it occurred to her that she’d felt no squeeze.

No pheromone.

No chemical musk to warp her mind into responding to him like a desert hare responds to a hungry coyote. It took her a moment to get up.

“Fuck! You alright?” Kessler asked as he slid down the embankment and helped her to her feet. “Did he do anything to you?”

Gray just stared off in the direction that the sentinel had gone, still a bit dazed. But things came back to her soon enough and she rose.

“You idiot!” she hissed, shouldering him away. “That little stunt could be heard for miles!”

Kessler’s face went white. “But he was right there! You’d have done the same thing!”

Gray was angry at the interruption and confused at why she was angry at the interruption. Either way, the youngyear had fucked up and bad.

“You need to use your goddamn head, Kessler, or you’re going to get people killed! You won’t make it to your fourth year keeping this up.” She turned to retrieve her binos from the rock and catch her breath.

“And I had the situation under control,” she continued. “He had his back to me.”

Then Gray started back up with Kessler scrambling to keep pace. “Why the hell was his back to you? Did he think you were unarmed?”

The more her hands shook and the redder her face, the deeper she scowled. “I don’t know why,” Gray muttered. “Now shut up until we get back. If you really did give us all away, I’d at least like to try putting up a fight.”

* * *

“The hell was that!” Burke demanded as soon as she caught sight of the approaching pair.

“Kessler here got spooked and threw a grenade, sir.”

She could see, even in the awkward illumination of a small flashlight, the cordage in Captain Burke’s neck tighten.

“Sir, it–it was a ‘Nak! He was right there, right next to Gray! I–I didn’t know what he was doing, if he was going to jump her or what!”

The words that came out of Gray’s mouth just then surprised her, and it felt as though she were suddenly watching herself and unable to do anything about it.

“I didn’t say it was a… ‘Nak, sir.”

Kessler all but froze, excepting for his mouth, which fell open.

“But you said… his back was…”

“You threw your flashbang at a dog.”

Burke took this opportunity to give him a good reaming. “You mean to tell me that you wasted a perfectly good ambush and a perfectly good grenade on an* animal**?*” barked the captain, stepping closer to obliterate his personal space with trained precision. “My god, corpsman, if it wasn’t against policy I’d have you shot.”

Kessler stammered, feeling a different kind of squeeze.

While enlisted soldiers were technically all of the same rank, corpsmen with more years of service were generally afforded greater respect. But Gray felt uneasy and had to look away. Burke excused her, and Kessler never spoke to the seventh-year again.

“You alright?” Finch asked Gray as she sat down on the hard ground without a word.

“Yeah.” A strained pause. “No sleeping tonight, thanks to Kessler.”

“Is that what that was?”

Gray nodded.

She tried telling herself that this was exactly what he deserved, but that was bullshit and she knew it. A sentinel snooping around should have scared the piss out of her, and not from the pheromone. That antenna? It was a direct line to The Algo. He didn’t need to kill her, all he had to do was report what he’d seen and sit back to watch the bloodbath.

Though there was something odd about him—no, she could no longer be sure about any of them—this second-guessing was already spinning out of control.

The Enemy was not to be humanized. Or everything would start making a little less sense than it did before.

But her thoughts kept circling back to the Anak. Who was he ? The way he looked up at the sky when he thought he was alone was eerily similar to the way he looked at her through the sightlines of his boomer. She remembered his eyes: blue, and hemmed with worry lines, laugh lines, maybe both. Or maybe just from squinting in the bright desert sun.

“Gray,” Finch said.

She started, and the younger corpsman looked at her as though she’d been trying to get her attention for a while now.

“What?”

Finch was holding out her worn deck of cards. “Draw to see who gets first watch.”

Gray ran fingers through her hair and took the first card. The four others did the same, and they turned them over together. Finch’s five and Saiyeh’s two committed them to the first one–hour shift, the pair of nines would go after, and then the face cards would finish up.

“Ass,” Finch grumbled at her luck, collecting the cards again and tucking the deck carefully away in a chest pocket. Gray didn’t give a damn about the watch sequence either way. Two hours of sleep on hard dirt was still two hours of sleep on hard dirt. And that was besides the ugly feeling that she’d secretly doomed them all to a grizzly, painful death. A cool sweat beaded along her neck.

As she settled down for sleep, arms folded tightly and chin tucked into the webbing across her chest, a word for what she’d done popped into her head, taken from Annex II of the Manual, and it sent a chill down her spine:

Treason.

* * *

She got a lot less sleep than she’d hoped for. And when she did, she dreamt of an Anak counter–attack: thousands of hulking, brown-banded shadows, lead bouncing off their armor as they ripped corpsmen from their foxholes. Gray woke with a start when a ‘Nak bullet caved in her skull.

“Nightmare?” asked Munez, their designated tenth-year who bunked on the other end of the Brown’s toon tent.

The moon had set at some point, and all she could see of him was the small orange speck of light at the end of his smokestick. Finch and Saiyeh were still hunkered down for a few hours’ sleep alongside Carey and a fourth-year whose name was escaping her. Munez’s cherry brightened as he took a drag.

“Not looking forward to this ambush.”

He chuckled faintly. “Who is.”

“What’s your style?” she asked.

Gray enjoyed working alone, but right now the eerie hush was getting to her. The Corps had a combat style it taught in training, but everyone had their own preferential spin. It would be useful to know how her fireteam was going to move.

“Keep mobile, aim low, don’t waste ammo.”

Gray nodded, peering out through the darkness. “Not sure how mobility is going to help us in this one,” she thought aloud. “Wouldn’t it be better to stay put? Hidden?”

“Way I see it,” Munez said, “By the time we need to start shooting, the ‘Naks are going to be on top of us. Gonna get chaotic out there if we’re outnumbered.”

1-to-1, of course, meant outnumbered.

“Point. But we do need to stay hidden as long as–”

She saw the outline of his raised arm and Gray stopped talking, whipping around to follow his gaze.

Off in the distance, to the north where the mission leader was positioned, shone a red light toward the groups of corpsmen hiding in the rocks. It began to flash in a legible sequence.

*Nak in 45, *it said in Morse code.

Gray frowned and glanced nervously at her watch: it was just after 0100 hours. “So much for sleeping.”

Munez took out his flashlight, snapped in a red lens, and responded with two quick bursts followed by a longer flash before putting it away: the letter U, the shortened prosign for “understood”. All around them similar responses lit up in the darkness.

Gray reached for Finch’s knee to give it a gentle shake.

* * *

Thirty minutes before they were due to step into the Corps trap, Gray could hear them. The roar of vehicle engines and the sound of many feet on asphalt gave them away.

Gray’s stomach turned. She just kept thinking about that damn antenna. Her fingers tightened their grip on the kicker in her lap and her heart pounded away painfully in her chest as they drew nearer. A quarter mile away; two–hundred yards away; one–hundred. Could this really be happening? What was the catch? Gray looked behind her, up to the top of the bluff, expecting to see a line of towering shadows sneaking up behind them, but all she saw was stars.

“I can’t believe they’re walking right into it,” she whispered.

Finch clicked off the safety on her gun. “Let’s hope our luck doesn’t run out before the night’s over.”

Munez hushed them, and in the darkness she could make out him counting down with his fingers. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

The sound was immense.

There was a bright flash of light, and the vehicles were suddenly no more: balls of fire billowing smoke littered the sides of the road. The force of the explosion killed many instantly, and threw others to the ground, stunned and injured. Hopefully most of them would stay there. The rest of the Anakim scattered in the tumult, trying to regroup just as the corpsmen flanking them along the ridge opened fire.

It was a lot easier to kill them this way, Gray noted as she squeezed the trigger; they didn’t look quite so real, shadowed against the dancing flames. She took one down, two, four—but regroup they did, and before long they’d reformed into smaller, single-file teams that snaked their way towards the scatterings of muzzle flash among the rocks. The pointmen had begun to pick up pieces of metal to shield themselves with.

“Two-o’clock!” one of them shouted, and one of the behemoths behind him opened fire at a group of corpsmen near where Gray and her team were hidden. A grenade was thrown too late, missing its target. Boom.

“Two o’clock clear!”

Munez stopped firing. “Remember what I said about keeping mobile?” he said over the noise. “We need to move!”

Finch swore as she reloaded her gun, pocketing the empty magazine.

“And we need cover,” Munez shouted as he unclipped a grenade from his belt. “Pull pins on my mark!”

It seemed like a good enough idea at this juncture, and Gray reached for a flashbang.

“Mar—“

As Munez stood to get a clear shot, a bullet caught him in the belly just as the iron left his hands and he was thrown to the ground with a wet sound. Gray winced as ten hard years of service bled out beside her. There was nothing to say, he was already dead. Dusted like so many others.

Their orders were, if things took a turn for the worse, to retreat. Nalezing. And from the way those menacing shadows were moving now, it seemed that a retreat was quickly becoming prudent.

“F-fucking kicker’s jammed again!” Saiyeh cried, frantically trying to engage his rifle’s action.

Gray blinked back moisture and yanked the gun out from under their dead comrade.

“Here! Munez won’t need his anymore!”

She shoved it at Saiyeh, and groped around to retrieve the dead man’s spare ammo with trembling hands. If only there’d been time to grab his smokesticks too. Could have traded them for a cody.

“They’re coming,” said Finch, her face hard in the red light.

“We need to get the hell out of this foxhole!”

Gray saw a small opportunity to make up for her guilt. “I’ll cover us,” she said. “Go!”

The fireteam’s remaining corpsmen leapt to their feet and dashed away like mice.

“There! Your eleven!” came the thunder of an Anak voice.

A line of four of the giants were approaching from behind. Gray was careful to spray their feet during the split-second she had clear sight of them through the bush. Protected only by leather, her shots easily found flesh, and they slowed. She watched with distant satisfaction as two of them hollered in pain and stumbled into the rocks, calling her a few colorful names. Quickly, she turned on her heel and hurried to catch up with the others ahead.

The briefing never mentioned a specific fallback point, because failure had seemed so unlikely. But the ‘Naks, as usual, stymied their best efforts. All it took was a charge or two that failed to detonate, a quick enough response to the first explosions—the devil was in the details, and the Anakim, damn them, never seemed to lose their edge. So the plan now was to simply run: run hard.

The flames from the burning trucks licked the air some thirty feet up, and shone so brightly that the entire floodplain was bathed in red. Gray, Finch, and the others scrambled up the bluff and hoped for the best. The best wasn’t looking so good, though: another six ‘Naks were on their heels.

“Twelve high!” one shouted. She could hear the grin on his face as they closed in. The air was starting to thicken with the *scent. *Gray swallowed and tried to ignore her body’s predictable response to it as she ran for her life.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” she chanted. Bullets found purchase in the sand around her, which at least had the effect of hiding them in a cloud of dust.

They cleared the top, and looking south briefly, she saw movement among the rocks as other corpsmen disappeared into the moonless dark on the leeward side of the hill.

“Don’t you fucking lose ‘em!” one of the ‘Naks shouted. The pheromone in the air made his angry voice sound all the deadlier, like it was right behind her. Gray swallowed, breathing hard, and squeezed a little more speed out of her tired legs.

“Split up!” Gray called to the rest of her unit between labored breaths. Individually, they stood a better chance this way and they all knew it. “We’ll be a bitch to find in the dark!”

“Go, go!”

And like that, the five of them melted into the night.

Gray could hear the crunch of her own feet on the sandy earth now, her gear clunking and moving against itself, her quick gasps for air, even her pounding heart—it all suddenly seemed too loud. But she’d outrun her pursuers, and could hear them turning their fire to other targets and their voices got further away.

“Better not be any spiders in here,” she whispered, thinking on the irony of being killed by a brown recluse in the middle of this.

Gray made sure to listen closely to the battle still going on around her as she made herself as invisible as possible. Minutes passed, and she could tell that the fight was moving away from her.

But over the next short while, she stopped hearing the longer and more frequent bursts of fire she associated with open engagement; the kind you could afford when you had a clear shot at many opponents. What Gray heard now was slower, more measured. Her first instinct was that this was the strategy of predators stalking prey. Gray swallowed hard.

She was startled by an explosion of gunfire and the ear-splitting bang of grenades. The corpsmen were retaliating? A nearby ‘Nak was hit—she could hear his choked swear. Careful footfalls once again turned into a frenzied shuffle of dirt and rubber against a chorus of sharp pops and thundering booms.

There was nothing for it, Gray had to leave her hiding spot. As much as she hated the Corps, she still cared about the men. Gray gripped her kicker, steadied her breathing in spite of the pheromone growing stronger by the minute, and prepared for pain.

Though when she launched herself out of the crevice, she found something altogether different: the face of an Anak soldier. And a familiar one, to boot. It was the sentinel from earlier. Except this time he reeked.

By instinct Gray whipped her 5.56mm kicker towards him, and he did the same; suddenly she was facing the business end of his enormous 50-cal. As if there was a contest between them. She panted and shook.

“You always this ready for death?” he asked. He sounded like the desert.

“Like any good corpsman,” she said, focusing very hard on steadying her voice as the pheromone began to coil in the pit of her stomach. It’s just a chemical, Gray told herself. Keep your fucking head. Her mouth was like the desert now too: dry.

“Why’d you s-save us, sentinel?”

She minded her training: maintain Situational Awareness, focus, breathe, and you stood a decent enough chance. Gray breathed, focused on him. It was very hard to see his face, but she tried like her life depended on it. He had good bone structure, she thought. It was a strange thought. She should not have thought it, especially not now. Not while feeling so much like prey.

Without averting his eyes he lowered his boomer. They were close, Gray realized—very close. Then suddenly, they were closer. She choked down a yelp when she felt his fingers wrap entirely around her bicep.

Then the Anak’s lips were on hers. Gray trembled in his grip, feeling hot breath from his nose, and tongue quickly, urgently, prodding her open. There was a grunt of approval when she did. He tasted like smoke and smelled like dust. Breaking away left her panting, slack-jawed, stunned. The beating in her chest suddenly had an echo in her belly.

“I didn’t save anybody from anything,” he rumbled beside her ear.

Then he pulled back to study her.

“Huh. You don’t mind the stink.”

“Mind” was an understatement. Gray swayed when he pulled away, all but suffocating now. She wouldn’t have been able to describe her expression in that moment, or speak much at all. He didn’t think on it for very long, either way. Without warning, the giant turned and headed off toward what remained of the fight.

“Party’s over!” He shouted between bursts of gunfire, keeping ducked down. “You got what you wanted, 34th, now move out!”

Gray sucked in a breath to help clear her head, and saw two more huge silhouettes approach the sentinel less than 10 yards away. “Hey! What do you mean, move out? Move nothing, we have ‘em cornered!”

“You get your boots out of here, you fuckin’ hear me? Central wants you back in six hours.”

“And Central’s not gonna like us showing up empty-handed!”

“Do I need to repeat myself, brownband?”

“We’re not leaving until we clean up this mess!”

Her jaw fell further open when the sentinel swiftly jabbed the butt of his boomer into the soldier’s belly, sending him to the ground. Even the Corps knew that sentinels were bred to be agents of high rank and that defying their orders was unacceptable.

“Find your C-fuckin’-O and get the hell out of my section.”

The other soldier was not going to repeat his brother’s insubordinate mistake. “What about the cargo, sir?”

“It’s gone, now move!”

The three of them melted into the shadows and Gray was left alone, with her gun and her scattered thoughts. The squeeze had passed, leaving her feeling weak and her hands clammy.

She took a moment to breathe.