[[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.]]
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.
