Chapter 15 - Passion and pain

Emma. 4

She quickly closed the door behind her, snapping the deadbolt closed as quickly as humanly possible. The metallic click of the lock sliding into place echoed in the cramped hallway, but it did little to quell the rising tide of panic within her. That man—he had followed her; that was the only explanation. He had trailed her, maintaining an unnerving distance, sticking to the opposite side of the road until only a block before home.

Her thoughts raced back to the moment she first noticed that he was there, the nagging intuition that had morphed into a heart-pounding sense of dread. She remembered how her palms began to sweat, how her breath had quickened, and how each footstep seemed to echo resoundingly inside her own head; she had broken into a run, her feet pounding against the pavement, driven by pure instinct. Apparently, the man hadn't wanted the extra exercise, or maybe he was trying not to draw undue attention to himself since he had chosen not to chase her.

Now, in the relative safety of her apartment, her mind was racing, the adrenaline from her flight still coursing through her veins, she was panting hard, and her mind was racing. Two different men, both on the same day. It was more than a coincidence; it had to be. They had to be working together, which meant both of them knew where she lived, given that this morning's stalker had been waiting for her outside her apartment block.

Her mind whirled with questions. Why? Why would they be interested in her? She was nobody, just a random girl in a moderate city. Her life was a series of routines: working at the local clinic and hanging out with her best friend and roommate, Jess, who happened to be a sex worker. She wasn't some high-flying career woman; her family was neither wealthy nor influential; there was nothing extraordinary about her existence, nothing that should have drawn the gaze of menacing strangers, and yet two of them were following her.

Emma paced the room, the familiar surroundings offering little comfort. Her thoughts flitted from one possibility to another, the scenarios growing increasingly paranoid and fantastical. Was this about Jess? Had her friend perhaps unknowingly entangled herself—or both of them—in something far darker than either could comprehend?

She glanced out the window, her eyes scanning the street below for any sign of her pursuer. Every shadow seemed longer, every anonymous stranger more dangerous. She backed away from the pane of glass, her heart pounding in her chest as if the walls themselves could shield her from the malevolent gaze of her stalkers or her own bubbling fear.

Emma's mind restlessly examined the morning's events, the unsettling feeling of being watched as she had left her apartment, and the sinister silhouette that had mirrored her movements from a distance. The day's routine had allowed her to forget the nerves of her trek to work, but those fears had not only been refreshed but ramped up immeasurably by the same thing happening again this evening. The random, ordinary routine of her life had been shattered by the intrusion of something she couldn't comprehend in any way that didn't mean 'danger.'

Compelled by an almost frantic urgency, she moved to the small kitchen, fumbling through drawers until she found a sleek, matte-black pocketknife, a birthday gift from Jess, "just in case." The weight of it in her hand was both reassuring and terrifying—a reminder of the reality she now faced. Or at least she thought she faced.

Emma's grip tightened around the hilt of the knife, her knuckles turning white. She had to do more than lock the door; she had to be prepared for whatever came next. Drawing a deep breath, she steeled herself, calling upon every ounce of her courage. She might have been just a random girl in a moderate city, but she wasn't helpless, god dammit. She had to believe that.

Her resolve hardened as she mentally mapped out her next steps. First, she would call Jess—her best friend needed to know what was happening. Then, she would reach out to the authorities, providing every detail she could recall about the day's harrowing events. Whatever these men wanted, they would soon realize they had picked the wrong woman to terrorize. Emma was determined not to become a victim, no matter the fear that clung to her like a second skin.

She took another look out of the apartment window, carefully scouring the darkening street outside for any sign of anyone - not just the two men - who looked like they were watching her apartment.

Nothing.

She wasn't losing her damned mind, she was sure of at least that much.

Emma, still palming the pocketknife, moved into the living room, dialing up Jess's frequency. It only took a few minutes for her friend to answer. "Hey babe," the girl answered cheerfully. She was flushed, and although the screen didn't show it - her image stopping just below the shoulder line - she was clearly topless. "What's up?"

"Where are you?" Emma was in no mood for pleasantries.

"I'm at home. What's wrong?"

"Home? You're in the apartment?"

"Yeah, I'm in my room."

"Oh, thank god, I'm in the living room; I need to talk to you. Are you alone?"

Jess glanced off to the side for a moment, "No, sorry. Do you need me to be?"

"I think... yeah, I think I do. It's important."

"Okay, babe. I will be out in a few minutes."

With something of a reassuring smile, Jess closed the channel. Emma, feeling slightly better that she wasn't in the apartment on her own, although still not entirely sure if she wasn't losing her marbles, went back to the window.

About ten minutes later, she heard the sound of her roommate letting her client out of the apartment. She heard the moment when Jess turned the handle, only for the door to be caught by the deadbolt; a few seconds of confused pause before the sound of the deadbolt being undone echoed from the hallway, and the man was let out. "You'll get a freebie next time, darling," she heard Jess purr, followed by an affirmative grunt and the sound of a quick, perfunctory kiss. The main entrance to the apartment was directly opposite the door that led from the living room into the hallway, but Emma's attention was fixed out the window at the streets below. She breathed a deep sigh of relief when she heard the deadbolt being re-engaged after the door closed behind the customer.

A few moments later, a flustered Jess rushed into the room. "Babe, what's wrong? What's happened?" She took one look at Emma, rushed across the space between them, and wrapped her arms around Emma. "You look like you've seen a ghost!"

Emma, through shaking, trembling breaths, retold the story of her day.

She had never seen Jess looking genuinely worried before. It wasn't an expression Emma was fond of. It just looked... wrong on her. Jess, with her effortless charm and infectious energy, was the life of the party, the paragon of confidence and self-assuredness. She knew what she wanted, and as soon as she worked out how to get it, she went for it with almost reckless abandon. Seeing her best friend's look of worry, her eyes darting nervously to the windows and then to the deadbolted door, did nothing to reassure Emma that everything was okay. In fact, it magnified her own anxieties tenfold.

Emma had expected Jess to laugh off her concerns, to make a joke, to tell her to lighten up. She anticipated the casual dismissal, the playful suggestion that maybe this was all just a misunderstanding, that perhaps the men weren't following her but just staring at her ass as they went about their totally innocent day. But the sight of Jess's uncharacteristic apprehension spoke volumes. If Jess was rattled, then the situation was serious—a reality Emma found deeply unsettling.

Jess was much more worldly than Emma. She had seen her fair share of hardships, she had been through rough times in her life, and her work meant that she rubbed shoulders with some pretty unsavory people. Emma, on the other hand, was the very definition of sheltered. But that meant that if Jess thought that this was something to be worried about, then it was something to worry about.

"Jess, are you alright?" Emma's voice was tinged with a mix of concern and desperation. She needed her friend's usual bravado to cut through the thick fog of her fear, and so far, that hadn't happened.

Jess glanced at Emma, her expression strained but attempting a brave front. "Yeah, I'm fine," she said, though her voice lacked its usual conviction. "It's just... weird. Two guys, both on the same day? That's not a coincidence."

Emma nodded, swallowing hard. "That's what I thought too. I mean, maybe if it had been just one man, I could chalk it up to bad luck or overthinking. But two? That feels... different."

The room seemed to shrink as the weight of their shared unease pressed in around them. Jess stood up, crossing her arms over her chest. She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself, reclaiming some semblance of her usual surefootedness. "Alright, here's what we're going to do," she said, her voice gaining strength. "First, we make sure this place is secure. Check all the locks, the windows, everything."

Emma watched Jess with a mixture of relief and admiration. Even in the face of fear, Jess's mind was working, formulating a plan and taking action. "What about the police?" Emma suggested, though she felt a twinge of doubt. This was the sort of thing that the wavy majority of people-the police included- would brush off as a bout of unhealthy paranoia and female hysteria; it didn't help that two young women were more likely to be dismissed than taken seriously on the best of days. Emma didn't have one shred of evidence to back up her claims, and even if she did, what could the police do now that her stalkers were nowhere to be seen?

"We'll call them," Jess agreed. "That's number two—but you need to remember everything: times, descriptions, behavior. If they show up again, we'll be able to show a pattern and maybe get someone to... I don't know... whatever it is that police do for these things. In the meantime, we stay careful and don't leave each other's sides."

"But... your work, my work..."

"My work can still happen here. The next few guys are regulars, and I can tell them to call me from downstairs when they get here. No more strangers or new clients until this is over." She nodded firmly.

"What about the clinic?"

"Can you call in sick?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Well, if you can't, I'm coming with you. We are in this together."

There was something calming and reassuring in the newfound determination in Jess's voice; Emma began to feel a flicker of hope. They were not powerless. Together, they could confront this shadowy threat, armed with vigilance and solidarity. She rose from her chair, joining Jess in their preparations.

The duo moved through the apartment, securing windows, double-checking locks, and discussing strategies. Emma found herself drawing strength from Jess's resolve; each task they completed seemed to bolster that little flicker inside her that promised everything would be alright.

Outside, the city continued its inexorable march of life, unaware of the silent battle being waged within the small apartment. Yet within its walls, two friends stood united, their bond a shield against the unknown danger lurking beyond their home. Emma knew that the locks on the door wouldn't hold out against anything more than a fairly hard kick, but there was still something reassuring about locking them again, like an extra layer of protection, even if it was only in her mind. The same went for the windows. Emma liked the light; she loved the daytime, especially at this time of year; drawing the curtains felt like she was shutting herself off from life itself. But in this case, they were blocking prying eyes. Again, there were sensors available in any electronic store that could see through the curtains like they weren't even there, but to her mind, they helped, so she closed them tight.

Then they called the police.

The two of them sat side by side on the sofa in the middle of the living area, their eyes fixed on the screen as they waited to be put through to a detective. The minutes stretched into what felt like an eternity, thick with the tension of their shared anxiety. Finally, the call connected, and they found themselves looking at a crew-cut man with a spattering of five o'clock shadow on his face.

"Good evening, my name is Officer Marlon," the detective introduced himself, his tone professional but not unfriendly. He glanced down to take notes, ready to document their concerns. "What seems to be the problem?"

Emma took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the moment settle over her. Her heart pounded in her chest, but to her surprise, a clarity of purpose took hold. As she began to speak, she found that every detail she needed was right at the forefront of her mind. She recounted the events of the day with a precision that startled even her, every piece of information emerging just when it was needed. It was like every detail of every memory was being handed to her by a brain that seemed to understand that forgetting things now could be very bad for it. She spoke for what felt like hours, even if it was probably only a few minutes.

"There were two men," she carried on explaining as the officer kept taking notes, her voice steady. "Both on the same day. The first one was outside my apartment this morning, just standing there, watching. I thought maybe I was imagining things, but there was something about him that felt... off. He was tall, bald, had a beard; he looked... strong like he was a soldier. He looked like he was waiting for something—or someone, then he started following me."

Officer Marlon's fingers moved swiftly across his terminal as she continued, detailing the unnerving feeling that had plagued her since that morning. She described the second man, the one who had followed her on her way home from work, sticking to the opposite side of the street until she broke into a run. "He didn't chase me. He just stopped and watched as I ran."

As Emma spoke, Jess sat beside her, nodding in silent support, her hand resting reassuringly on Emma's knee. The presence of her best friend lent her strength, solidifying the sense of calm and control that had surprisingly taken hold.

"He knows where I live," Emma continued, her voice unwavering. "Both of them do. I don't know if they're working together or what they want, but it doesn't feel like a coincidence."

Officer Marlon looked up from his notes, his expression one of focused attention. "You mentioned they were watching you? Did they make any attempts to approach or communicate with you?"

"No," Emma replied, shaking her head slightly. "They just... watched. It was like they were waiting, but I don't know what for."

The officer frowned, the furrow in his brow deepening. "And this has happened before? Or is this the first time?"

"It's the first time," Emma confirmed. "But it's been enough to make me feel very unsafe in my own home or at work. My roommate and I have double-checked all the locks, but I don't know how much safer that makes me feel."

"Where is work?"

"It's the community medical center on 8th Street."

Officer Marlon nodded, making more notes.

Jess interjected, her voice brimming with concern. "We don't want to take any chances. We need to know what we can do to protect Emma and figure out who these men are and why they're targeting her."

Officer Marlon gave another slow nod, his fingers tapping thoughtfully against the surface of his desk. "Alright. Normally, my answer to that would be that we don't know if she is being targeted, but I have to admit, her account of things certainly does support that theory. So here's what we'll do. I'll have officers patrol your neighborhood more frequently for the time being and keep a squad car posted outside your apartment and your place of employment when you are there. I also recommend you keep a log of every unusual activity or person you see. The more information we gather, the better we can assist you."

Emma felt a small measure of relief at the detective's practical response, though the anxiety was far from gone. "Thank you, Officer Marlon. We appreciate that."

"I'll also put you in touch with a victim support advocate," the officer continued. "They can offer additional resources and strategies for maintaining your safety and peace of mind."

Emma nodded, the detective's words providing a glimmer of reassurance. "Thank you," they both said in unison.

"If you see either of these men again, or if you feel like anyone else is following you, I need you to contact me on our emergency frequency. My concern is that this is a gang associated with one of the Syndicates. Kidnapping is a rarity in the core worlds, but it isn't unheard of, and I would rather not take any chances."

"Kidnapping?" Emma blinked. "Why would anyone want to kidnap me? I'm nobody."

"You assume they know that. It could be a simple case of mistaken identity and these people think you are someone else. Perhaps today was all it took for them to realize that, and they will leave you alone. But I would rather not take any risks until we know for sure."

"I... I agree." Emma swallowed hard and nodded. Not after her; that was something she could get behind as a reason not to freak the fuck out. They both thanked Officer Marlon again, and with nothing more to say, the officer said his goodbyes and closed the channel. As the call ended, she turned to Jess, her heart still heavy but buoyed by the knowledge that they weren't facing this threat alone. They had taken the first step, and with the support of law enforcement, they could begin to unravel the mystery of these men and reclaim their sense of safety.

"Well, that was easy," Emma said with a sigh, turning to look at her friend.

But Jess's face was a mask of confusion or maybe nervousness. "Yeah, it was, wasn't it? He didn't push back at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Babe, I'm a hooker..."

"Sex worker."

"I'm a hooker," Jess smiled halfheartedly. "I get weird men following me all the time. Whenever I have tried to report it, I have always had to fight their urge to brush me off. There's always a question about how sure I am or if I could be imagining things, or maybe I gave the wrong guy the wrong signals. He took that very seriously, considering what I've dealt with in the past."

Emma frowned. "What are you thinking?"

"I don't know, it's probably nothing, just... I don't know... I've got a feeling."

Two "I don't know"s in one sentence. Something was worrying her.

"Would you mind if we stayed in tonight?" Emma asked, trying to think of anything that would get that terrifying look from Jess's face. "Drink some wine, watch shitty tv, maybe order in?"

Jess blinked, turned to her, and smiled. "Yeah, that sounds good. I have my last guy in about an hour. I'll finish him quick, and then we can have a girl's night."

********

Tony 2

Holy fucking shit, he could have kissed her. She was old enough to be his mother, frumpy, disheveled, and had only a passing relationship with personal hygiene. Yet none of that mattered at that moment; the sight of his relief stepping onto the bridge a full fifteen minutes early was enough to have him feeling almost euphoric.

He was utterly exhausted, having been on shift for twenty out of the last twenty-four hours. Fatigue seeped into every fiber of his being, a tangible weight that made even the simplest movements feel like monumental tasks. His eyelids felt like they were attached to the deck plates, heavy and stubbornly unwilling to stay open. His muscles ached from hours of maintaining the same position, every slight shift in posture sending waves of discomfort through his body. He felt as if he were tethered to his station by invisible chains, each one tightening with every passing second.

More than that, if he didn't take a piss soon, he was pretty sure his bladder was going to explode! Not figuratively, either. It would burst like an overinflated balloon and make a mess over his console... which he would then have to clean up.

When his relief walked in, all those discomforts momentarily vanished. She might not have looked like a savior in the traditional sense, but to him, she was nothing short of a miracle. Knowing that his ordeal was almost over, he felt a rush of gratitude and, frankly, a level of adoration that he would never admit to anyone else.

"You're early," he managed to croak around his dry throat, his voice barely audible over the bridge's low hum and the myriad of beeping instruments.

"Figured I'd save your ass today," she replied with a wry smile, oblivious to the depth of his gratitude. "I heard you'd been on for a while."

The intense wave of relief broke over him, almost overwhelming in its immediacy. He could already feel his mood lifting, the crushing weight of responsibility and exhaustion beginning to ease off his shoulders. As he stood up, every muscle protested, a cacophony of aches and stiffness that made him wince. But it didn't matter now; he was finally free.

"Thanks. You have no idea," he muttered, giving her a tight smile as he lumbered to the side of the console and let her sit down. "I owe you one." He couldn't remember her name; he was useless with names at the best of times, but in his mentally fogged condition, he barely recognized her face; names were simply beyond him.

She smiled and nodded, taking his recently vacated seat, and glanced up at him. "Anything happening?"

He gave her a look. One that said, "Absolutely fuck all is happening, and you know it,"

She giggled again and turned toward the console, logging herself in for the start of her shift. "Well then, Lieutenant Commander, you are relieved."

"Thank you, Lieutenant; I hope it's a quiet one for you." With a slight nod, he turned on his heels and headed for the door, stopping to give the ship's first officer, Commander Carlton, a salute. The stiff, by-the-book, formal-looking man glanced up from his holopad and nodded to him.

"As you were, Tony," the man said with a friendly smile. Get some sleep; you look like you're about to drop. Good work today." Tony liked the XO. He was a good officer, approachable, and friendly, but more importantly, the guy was actually competent, which was more than could be said for a huge number of the other officers Tony had served under over the course of his career.

"Thank you, Sir, Goodnight." He may have received, and possibly even given, a few waves of farewell to the other members of the bridge crew, but he was honestly too tired to think about it. With his responsibilities completed, his mind had already started to shut down.

Nothing had happened for the entirety of the last twenty-four hours. There had been a flurry of meetings between the senior bridge staff not long after he had reported for duty, and the helm had been given the order to change course not long after that. The new course was taking them fairly close to his homeworld of Orpheus, which was pretty cool, but otherwise, nothing worth even a single iota of attention had taken place. Not even a sensor glitch or comms echo to fix. How he had managed to stay awake was something he had to put down to divine intervention.

His first stop was the bathroom, one of the crew ones in the corridor outside the bridge. Despite the pain in his legs and back, it felt like walking on clouds. Each step reminded him that he was no longer shackled to his console, and the mere thought made him almost giddy. Or maybe he was just numb and sleep-deprived. Who knew? He made it just in time, and the sheer weight of relief was practically a religious experience. He couldn't talk with any authority on the subject, but he was pretty sure that records were broken with that leak, and he was even more certain that the moans of relief falling from his lips sounded almost sexual.

A few minutes later, three decks lower and a quarter of a cruiser further along from the bathroom, he stumbled into his quarters, the journey feeling like an epic quest to his exhausted body. The corridors blurred around him as he navigated the familiar path, his legs moving on autopilot while his mind was already halfway to sleep.

Finally reaching the sanctuary of his quarters, he fumbled with the door panel, his fingers heavy and clumsy from fatigue. The door slid open with a whisper, revealing a spartan but comforting room that looked like paradise at that moment. He barely registered the familiar surroundings—the small, functional desk cluttered with datapads, the standard-issue wardrobe, the soft hum of the air recycler. His bed, neatly made but with corners begging to be peeled back, stood invitingly against the far wall.

He kicked off his shoes with a lackadaisical effort, sending them tumbling across the floor, and didn't bother with any other form of undressing. Face-planting onto the bed, he felt the blessed relief of the mattress conforming to his body. The crisp, cool sheets felt like the softest of silks against his skin, and the pillow cradled his head like a long-lost friend.

Sleep claimed him within moments, a swift and merciful embrace that pulled him under like a riptide. His breathing slowed, deepened, and the weight of his eyelids finally surrendered to the darkness. His entire body, taut with exhaustion, relaxed into the mattress, limbs splayed in a way that would have been laughably uncomfortable if he had been even slightly awake.

The buzz of the ship's systems, the vibrations from the engines, the distant sounds of activity—all these were nothing more than a faint lullaby, soothing him further into the depths of rest. Time seemed to fold in on itself, the minutes seemingly stretching and blending into hours as his body went about the essential business of recovery. His mind emptied of worries and thoughts, the chaotic, mind-numbing whirl of the day fading into nothingness.

He stayed that way for forty whole minutes before the chime of his door echoed through the room.

He ignored it. If it were important, he would have been raised on the ship's internal com system.

The door chimed again.

He ignored it again, groaning loudly and wrapping his pillow around his head to drown out the intrusion.

The door chimed again.

"Oh, for fuck sake! If something isn't on fire, or someone isn't dead, I'm gonna be fucking furious!" he muttered to his empty room as he dragged himself out of bed and across his quarters towards his door, jammed his thumb into the panel, and waited for the door to slide open.

It was Cheryl, and she didn't look happy. The "What?!?" that was on the tip of his tongue froze at the sight of her.

"I..." she was looking at the floor between them, probably avoiding the angry, exhausted glare he was doubtless giving her. "I'm sorry. I didn't know where else to go." her voice broke a little.

He squinted at her, his vision sluggish and blurred as his tired mind struggled to process the scene before him. There was something vaguely urgent about her demeanor, something about the way her eyes glistened and her breath caught in her chest. It was clear she was upset, but his brain, still dulled from exhaustion, struggled to piece it together. He had probably been at least this confused at some point in the past, but he couldn't for the life of him think of when. He sighed heavily.

Without saying anything, he stepped aside, allowing her to enter. She walked past him, her breath quivering slightly with emotion. As she stepped into the room, she hesitated, glancing around in a way that spoke volumes. The room was shrouded in darkness save for the faint glow of instrument panels and the muted hum of the ship's life support systems.

The scene before her spoke of his exhaustion: his shoes discarded in the middle of the floor, his crumpled duty uniform still clinging to his frame, his bloodshot eyes carrying heavy-duty baggage beneath them. His whole body slouched with a weariness that ran bone-deep.

"Oh shit, your shift," she gasped, her voice tinged with sudden realization and guilt. "I'm so sorry. I'll... I'll come back later."

She made a motion to leave, but he gently grabbed her arm, his grip firm but not unkind. Despite his own fatigue, the sight of her distress spurred an automatic flicker of alertness within him.

"No," he managed to say, his voice gravelly from tiredness. "You're here now. What's wrong?"

She hesitated, her eyes searching his face for any sign that he was up for this. The stark contrast between their states—her emotional turmoil and his physical exhaustion—created a palpable tension in the small room.

"Are you sure?" she asked, her voice wavering. "You look like you're about to collapse."

"I probably am," he admitted with a faint smile, trying to lighten the mood. "And I'm going to need enormous amounts of coffee injected straight into my eyeballs for this, but if something's bothering you, it can't wait. Come on, sit down."

He gestured to the only chair in the room, an uncomfortable-looking metal seat by the small desk, but she shook her head. Instead, she lowered herself to the edge of his bed, clasping her hands tightly in her lap. He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms to keep himself steady, every muscle in his body protesting the lack of rest.

She took a deep breath, the kind that seemed to encompass her entire being, and began to talk. "He's been cheating on me," she said, making a face that suggested the words themselves held a bitter taste.

"Who?" he asked, his mind still trying to keep up before remembering that she was married and there was only one person she could be talking about. "Oh. Um... I'm sorry to hear that. But..." His eye twitched; his brain, even in his exhausted state, was telling him to nip that sentence in the bud, that reminding her that they had been fucking for months now was a bad idea and the fact that she had come to him wasn't exactly the height of fidelity on her part either. It was a look she spotted immediately.

"No, I don't mean like this," she waved a hand between the two of them. "We, my husband and I have... had... an agreement for when either of us is on a long deployment, like a hall pass for the duration, I mean. He has been having a full-blown affair for at least the past two years, whether I have been home or not."

"Oh... shit." Not the most articulate of responses, he knew, but what else could he say?" Wake the fuck up, Tex! "Um... how do you know?"

Her eyes flicked up at him, the pain momentarily replaced by a burning, loathing anger. "Because he's been seeing my sister. She just told me."

"Oh wow... Fuck, I don't even know what to say to that."

The anger seemed to vanish as quickly as it had appeared, replaced by the sort of pain Tony had absolutely zero experience with. "She was gloating," Cheryl croaked again, "she was actually trying to rub it in my face. She told me how they were in love, how they were going to be together, how my stuff was already packed and in storage, how he wanted a real woman who could give him the kids I never could, how I was old and dried up, how..." Her words stopped suddenly as Tony snorted out a laugh.

She looked up at him in pure indignation and no small amount of hurt..

"Real woman?" his lips were moving before his mind had a chance to stop them. "You're more of a woman than anyone I've ever met! He's a fucking idiot, and she just sounds like she's jealous! I'd sell my left nut to be married to someone like you! If either of them can't see what they're throwing away, then it sounds like they're perfect for each other and deserve the misery that's coming!"

Yeah, he didn't know where that came from either.

"I..." she frowned after they stared at each other for a while. "I wasn't expecting that."

"Me neither. Sorry, sleep-deprived, I didn't mean to..."

"Can I stay with you tonight?"

Tony's mind took a few minutes to catch up to the tangent the conversation had suddenly taken. "I... feel I need to repeat the 'sleep-deprived' part. I'm not sure I can manage anything else right now."

"No, not for sex," she smiled timidly, "I just... I don't want to be alone, and you are..." she paused, rethinking whatever words she left unsaid. "Can I sleep here with you tonight?"

"Sure," he smiled, his body starting to relax again as his eyes wandered back to a bed that seemed to be calling out to him. "Let me just get undressed."

"Let me help," she said, jumping to her feet and crossing the distance between them in only a few steps. Her hands came up and rested on his chest for a moment; then, she started to work the buttons of his shirt loose. He didn't move; he just let her unbutton him as he looked at her.

She didn't look very shrew-like anymore. Her eyes, once appearing too close together and unnaturally far from her hairline, now radiated emotion - twin emerald pools that seemed to sparkle in the low light. He had never really noticed their brilliant green shade before. Her lips, though still divorced from her delicate chin, appeared fuller and brighter than ever - a vibrant pink against the alabaster canvas of her skin. Though not smiling at the moment, they were parted slightly, suggesting an intense focus solely upon him. It was...nice. A feeling he hadn't experienced before. Perhaps it was the exhaustion or the weight of the emotional moment, but he couldn't perceive a single flaw in her features that had previously turned him off. She looked...beautiful.

The emerald depths of her eyes drew him in, their vibrant hue reminding him of lush forests bathed in dappled sunlight. Her lips, full and inviting, seemed to beckon him closer with their subtle parting. The smooth, flawless expanse of her pale skin called out to be caressed by his calloused fingers. In that moment, she was breathtaking - a vision of loveliness that stirred unfamiliar yearnings within him.

The more he looked at her, the more he wondered if the lack of sleep had anything to do with the new light in which he was seeing her... he seriously doubted it. It just felt like this was the first time he had ever properly... looked at her.

He drank in the delicate curves of her face, no longer seeing the peculiarities that had once repelled him. Now, her unique beauty sang to him in harmonies he had been deaf to before. Each "flaw" was a note in a sublime melody, weaving together into an aria of perfection. He was utterly enraptured, his entire world narrowing to this singular, radiant creature before him.

His hand reached up and stroked the backs of his knuckles across her cheek. "I'm sorry," he whispered as her eyes rose from his chest to meet his gaze. "I'm sorry you are hurting."

Her eyes seemed to sparkle even brighter for a moment before she smiled softly. "I guess... I guess I'm not married anymore," she said slowly, her voice quivering tremulously, "So... I can kiss you... if you wa..."

He kissed her.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers before she could even finish the sentence. It was soft and tender, and it lacked any sort of heat or passion or other sensation that he usually attributed to their previous time together. But it was real. The kiss lasted for only a few seconds, just enough for their lips to part and their tongues to touch tentatively, before she sighed into his mouth and melted against him, breaking the kiss and resting her head on his chest before, after a few more moments, she carried on undressing him. "I like kissing you," she whispered. "I wish I'd done it sooner... and I want to do it again."

He didn't answer. He didn't know what to say, and his thoroughly confused mind wasn't giving him anything to work with; he just nodded and stroked his fingers through her hair as he held her close to him. Finally, his shirt fell loose and dropped off his shoulders as she planted a single kiss onto his now bare chest before she looked up at him. She felt small and vulnerable in his arms. She was much shorter than him; that was something else he hadn't noticed before.

The button on his pants fell loose, and she helped them and his boxers down his legs, leaving him completely naked. "C'mon," she smiled as she peeled her own top off, freeing her large, glorious chest. "Let's get you to bed before you pass out. I want to sleep naked with you if that's okay?"

"Sounds good to me," he nodded as she started leading him toward the bed, pulling the sheets back and letting him lay down before she climbed in next to him, pulled the sheets back over then, and curled herself in next to him. He didn't know which part sounded good to him, and he was grateful she didn't ask. Sleeping naked with Cheryl had suddenly become the highest of his life's ambitions. But the bed, with its promise of sleep, would have been almost as tempting without her in it.

A warm, satisfied exhale wafted against his skin, and he felt her body relax further into his embrace. Her fingers were gentle but intent as they danced through the coarse thicket crowning his chest, each touch bringing with it a calming, rhythmic familiarity that tethered him to the present. In response, his own hand glided with care over the cascading waves of her dark hair, flowing through his fingers like the smoothest satin kissed by night.

"Thank you," she breathed softly, so faintly the words might have been carried away on her breath had he not been so attuned to her presence.

"Anytime," he whispered back, his voice a low rumble, as instinctual and soothing as the steady drum of a serene heartbeat. "I like you being here."             

"Jenn is going to love you," she murmured, a hint of excitement lacing her otherwise tranquil tone.

"Who?" The name hung unfamiliar at the moment, a distant detail his weary brain struggled to place.

"My friend. Her name is Jenn." Her words were laced with an innocence, a casualness that felt starkly out of place in their current moment.

A wisp of recollection attempted to claw its way to the surface of his fatigued mind, but it was like grasping at smoke. Then, suddenly, it popped back into his head. Cheryl had wanted to introduce him to someone else. It had been an idea he was, unsurprisingly, deeply in favor of. Holy shit, he really must be exhausted for that to have slipped his mind. Yet, as the fog of tiredness yielded to a dawning awareness, a fresh concern began to cast a long shadow over his previously unclouded thoughts.

Could involving Cheryl's friend Jenn, however enticing the proposition might have seemed before, inadvertently cause Cheryl pain? The possibility that his actions—intended or otherwise—might inflict more pain on her tugged at his conscience with an unexpected gravity. He frowned at the thought. Obviously, the excitement of a novel experience, his first threesome, had its appeal-what sane man would say no? - but the potential cost, even the smallest risk of damaging his burgeoning connection with Cheryl was suddenly a risk he hesitated to entertain. The realization was surprising yet urgent: the very idea of hurting her, of causing her one iota of pain, was, he now realized, the very last thing he wanted. He blinked at the darkness; she wasn't just someone to get himself off with anymore, she wasn't a fuck buddy, she wasn't a cheap thrill; they had suddenly and unexpectedly become something a lot more; he had become her protector, her confidant, her unintended haven. And there wasn't much he wouldn't do to not fuck that up.

"We'll talk about it in the morning." He kissed the top of her head. She nodded softly and he felt her breath starting to even out. He closed his eyes and let sleep reclaim him.

He'd fallen asleep with plenty of women before tonight, but this was the first time it had happened without the carnal pleasure that had always preceded it.

He found, as his consciousness drifted away, that he really liked it.

********

Stevo. 26

Stevo sighed a little and rubbed his nose with the top edge of his index finger; his nose had been itching a little since the download of his combat experience for use in the clone army. Not because of anything to do with the download itself, obviously; it was just a side effect of the operation. Having information jammed into your brain by one of those data chips was a jarring experience, but it was relatively quick and almost painless. Having information taken out of you, however, was basically a form of pretty serious surgery, and anesthetic, even the hangover from it, made his nose itch.

It was really fucking annoying.

On top of that. It was early In the morning again, and Stevo still fucking hated mornings

The sigh, on the other hand, was for very different reasons altogether.

He was looking at a three-dimensional map of the beach battlefield... again. Reliving the battle over and over was doing nothing for his burgeoning PTSD, but that felt like a problem he would have to deal with later. At the moment, he had a job to do.

"Allow me to explain," General Crow said from the other side of the room. Stevo looked up at him, casting a quick glance over the four people on the opposite side of the holographic map table before looking at his superior. Sylvia was off somewhere else doing... something logistical; Valdek and Michaels were in the room, too, but both seemed happy to just watch.. "The battle on the beach was a victory for us only because the Imperium gave us the intelligence needed to shut down the Marine landing force and target them with artillery. What I would like to do, if possible, is wargame out what would have happened if we never had that information. I want to see how our forces could have done against the Marines if we stood against them toe to toe."

Stevo clenched his jaw a little. It was quick, but it was there. The smirk on Michael's face said that he had the same thought as Stevo had. The answer was obvious, but he didn't want to say it. He turned his eyes to the people in front of him again and arched an eyebrow. Three men and a woman. None of them looked thrilled to be here.

"These people," Crow went on, noticing Stevo's look, "are considered the best tactical minds in our ground forces command structure. They will be jointly controlling the rebel forces, and you will be controlling the Marines."

Ah, intelligence officers. Members of the head shed. This was getting better by the minute.

But... An opponent. That was something Stevo could get behind. Almost two weeks on the Hyperion was starting to make him a little stir-crazy. "How do I control them?" Stevo asked, his eyes falling back down to the map.

"A plug will be put into your skull implant," Crow explained. "This will interface you directly to your forces. It is meant to simulate communications. Your thinking something is the equivalent of an order being given or a squad using their own initiative. It's essentially a holo game that you control with thought rather than with key commands."

"Understood, Sir," Stevo nodded. It wasn't entirely a lie. He at least thought he understood... think something, and the Marines in the wargame would carry them out. He hadn't played a holo game in about twenty-five years, but It seemed simple enough. Captain Taylor watched as a technician pulled a data jack from below the closest edge of the table and, after a little fiddling around, pushed the interface into Stevo's skull-mounted data port.

He felt absolutely nothing.

"Ok, just to test the connection," Crow said after receiving a nod from the silent technician, "Try making your forces do something."

Stevo arched an eyebrow but looked down at the map anyway. His eyes were immediately drawn to the extreme left flank, where his own squad had been during the actual battle. He took a deep breath and sent a mental command to his digital self. His holographic alter ego looked up to face him, saluted, turned to the four head-shed officers, curled his fingers in a "come get me" gesture, and then sat down, apparently completely undisturbed by the holographic battle that was about to take place. Crow chuckled but nodded.

"Okay, your forces have all been preprogrammed to have the same enhancements as the 381st but also the same limitations. You can't make them fly, for example, and they won't have limitless amounts of ammo. We've made it as realistic as possible."

"And the rebel forces, sir?"

"Pretty much exactly the same, although these will be controlled by our intelligence officers here, rather than just blank clones, so not quite the same level of accuracy. But to offset this, their reaction times have been reduced. Any commands they give will have a delay of five seconds before they are implemented."

Stevo considered this for a moment, then nodded. Five seconds may not have seemed like a long time to the casual listener, but in battle, that was a damned eternity and probably more of a disadvantage to the four officers than having mindless drones running around the beach like headless, heavily armed chickens.

"Captain, I know what you are thinking," Crow smiled. "We know it's a foregone conclusion; we know we wouldn't have stood a chance against the Marines. We just want to know how big the gap between our forces is. Could we, for example, have held the line long enough to get the civilians and vital equipment evacuated?"

No. No, you couldn't.

"Would the result of the battle have been any different if you were fighting against our regular, non-cloned infantry forces?"

Also no.

"And how would the battle have been different if the marines were fighting against our Stevo-enhanced clones, equipped with all the newly designed equipment we are currently putting into production and with you in command."

Ohhh, okay... now THAT is a good question.

Stevo flashed a glance over to Colonel Michaels. The old man was grinning wickedly. It would seem he was as excited about the last part as Stevo was. Getting to play with new toys was always fun, but getting to shoot them was even better.

"This is also a chance for you to show us how you would have conducted the Marine attack had you been in charge. We all know that the location of the landing zone was designed to put you at a massive disadvantage, so the Marine leadership..." he glanced over to Michaels with a little cringe, "... the high command was hardly giving it their all. I want to see what you can do."

A challenge. No wonder Crow was in charge around here. He really knew what buttons to press to get the most out of his men.

Stevo nodded and looked up, once again, to the faces of his four opponents. He had to admit, they looked tired. Not in a sleep-deprived sort of way, but in that marrow-deep fatigue that happens when you burn both ends of the candle for too long without a break. Maybe 'haggard' was a better way of describing it. But whatever, Stevo would take any advantage he could get. Moreover, four officers meant four sets of orders. The old mantra of "too many cooks in the kitchen" was a very apt one when it came to military command, with one set of orders often overlapping, overruling, or flat-out contradicting another set.That was why you always had only one person at the very top of the ladder. Orders were passed down the chain from its height, and the chain of command only existed to make sure those orders got to where they needed to go. Officers on the ground weren't supposed to make command decisions, they were only permitted to interpret the best way to carry out the ones they were given. Anything else, and the entire force would fall into disarray.

Stevo would have to be sure to look out for any sign of discord between his opponents and then, of course, take immediate and merciless advantage of them. It was funny to think that that knowledge, that training to ruthlessly take advantage of an enemy's weaknesses, was something that had been trained into him through long lessons and infinitely more prolonged bouts of actual combat. Each lesson cemented the theory, and each victory reinforced its importance and effectiveness. He had never really given much consideration to why or how he thought the way he did, least of all about fighting; if anything, had he been asked about it only a few weeks ago, he would have said that all of it was instinct, and as much about blind luck than good judgment. Now, of course, he knew that was wrong, and somewhere in the badlands of the rebel-held spiral arm, tens... no, hundreds of thousands of clones were being upgraded with that and every other lesson Stevo had ever learned.

Jesus, now that he really thought about it, he could almost feel sorry for a foe foolish enough to attack them.

He was getting distracted. The itching nose and his sense of weariness from the surgery only a few days earlier were weaknesses that he refused to show to his opponent, even if this was a training exercise and they were on the same team. He had been set an objective, and he had every intention of carrying it out; if that meant embarrassing a few head-shedders, so be it.

Stevo rolled his neck and took a deep breath. Crow looked over to the four intelligence officers and nodded, then turned back to Stevo. "Okay, the simulation will begin at the point the first wave hits the beach. You may begin."

Okay, a victory was a victory. A rout was something else entirely, but the humiliation Stevo laid out onto his holographic enemy seemed to everyone else in the room like he was doing it to make an example of them. His left flank, spearheaded by his former platoon, smashed through their lines in a matter of minutes, long before the reinforcing second wave arrived. Scrambling to fortify their crumbling position, his four opponents shifted reserves from the center. To keep the middle of the beach fortified, they had to pull reinforcements from the right flank.

As soon as they did, Stevo pushed forward against the right. Orbital bombardments were called in with an almost demonic intensity, and by the time the tanks arrived with the third and fourth waves, only forty minutes after the onset of battle, the writing was already on the wall.

With the left and right flanks faltering, the rebel officers did the only thing they could and ordered a general retreat, pulling everything back to the bottleneck created by the cliffs at the top of the beach. Their artillery, although as devastating as it had been during the real battle, was nowhere near as accurate and, therefore, nowhere near as effective without the Imperium intelligence that let them pinpoint the marines' positions. They were firing blind, and despite scoring a few lucky hits, the overwhelming majority of their shots simply blew holes in the sand. By the time the Marine center - with armor, air, and orbital bombardment in support - started their push forward, Stevo was operating on less than 2% casualties to the rebels' 76%.

The ridgeline, complete with almost every single surviving rebel soldier, hunkered down and ready for a defiant last stand - despite the cataclysmic losses they had suffered so far - erupted in a hail of plasma ordinance and Mac round detonations only a few moments before the tanks, with full Marine support, smashed into them.

It was a slaughter.

The five-second handicap was crippling enough for most of the fight, but in close quarters, where the tide of battle could turn in a fraction of that time, it was paralyzing. To Stevo though, the untrained clones would have lasted even less time. Despite being hampered by the time delay, individual rebel defenders were as capable of fighting hand-to-hand as any other soldier; the clones would have been worse than useless in the same position. They could barely hold a rifle, let alone something as intricate and intimate as a combat knife. Hand-to-hand combat was like a dance and although anyone could step onto a dancefloor and move around a bit, that hardly made them a dancer. The same logic went for the rebels; simply having the means to counter the Marines' closer-quarters prowess didn't mean they were able to use them. The Marines wouldn't have even broken a stride carving through them.

The holographic Marine forces entered the base just fifty-eight minutes after the first wave landed, and the rebel leadership, Crow included, were executed just seven minutes later. Close-quarters fighting on the fractured, pot-marked ridgeline was one thing; trying to defend the cramped confines of the base corridors was tantamount to suicide. No quarter was given, no mercy was shown, and by the time every single rebel soldier had been wiped out, only one hundred and seventy-one Marines had fallen... with only twenty-six of those as confirmed KIAs.

Sucking in a deep breath, Stevo rolled his shoulders and looked up, first at his opponents and then at General Crow. There was no missing the paleness of their faces; the woman in the group of four officers looked like she was trembling, and Crow visibly gulped as he stared at the smoldering hole in his holographic avatar's head. Stevo didn't say anything; he just arched an eyebrow at them and waited for someone to speak.

"Jesus," one of the men finally said after clearing his throat. "That was... that was fucking savage!"

"You cut through us like you weren't even there." One of the other men said.

"Did you have to execute me?" Crow asked, but a slight tug of his lips gave away the fact that he was grateful the lesson had been appropriately demonstrated. Stevo didn't think anybody had any illusions about how that battle was going to turn out. Still, even he had to admit it had been more of annihilation than just a straightforward victory.

"Well, I didn't have to," Stevo smirked back with a teasing shrug.

"Hmmm," he chuckled back before turning to the four shell-shocked-looking officers. "Anything to add?"

"I think we can skip the second demonstration," the first officer said after they all shared a brief look. "I don't think removing the five-second delay would make a blind bit of difference. We may take a few more of them with us, but not enough to affect the outcome of the battle."

"I agree," the woman spoke for the first time. "I thought... I thought that if we had a chance, knew what was coming we could... I don't know... not win, but we could have at least made it hard for them. We never stood a chance."

"Actually," Stevo spoke up, "I went easy on you."

"What?" the woman blinked.

"If I was in charge of planning that assault, top to bottom, there is no way in hell I would have landed on that beach. I would have dropped the entire division in smaller units all over the Island and picked you off piecemeal. If you had rallied around the base, I would have hit it from the other side where it is much less defensible. But, for the sake of argument, let's say I was forced to assault the beach; the first thing I would have done is equipped the marines with a means of scaling the cliffs and flanking you. I also would have brought in crawlers."

"Crawlers?" The woman blinked.

"Mobile shield generators that slowly move with infantry formations," Michaels filled in the blanks. "They look like big metal spiders, only about knee high, but basically, they create movable cover and block artillery and heavy laser fire with a shield bubble. If we'd had those deployed, I doubt your casualy score would have hit double figures."

"Suffice it to say that I could have made life a lot more difficult for you," Stevo shrugged again. If it was true, it wasn't idle boasting.

A chill seemed to run through the room as the rebels' eyes all fell back to the holographic map.

"But..." the woman looked horrified.

"Listen," Stevo interrupted her. He had no idea what rank she held; with her being pressed in so close to the other three officers, he couldn't see her rank insignia, nor had anyone introduced them, so he was clueless when it came to knowing if he was speaking out of turn. "I need you to think about something. What would you have done if it was a Khuvakian army who landed on the beach?"

"Khuvakians??" The woman gawked up at him for a second and then back down at the table. "I mean, we were never briefed for..." The look on Stevo's face must have been enough for her to at least try to answer the question properly. "I don't know. The Khuvakians are... terrifying. I've seen some of the reports from the war. I don't think there is anything we could have done against them. So, I think I would have recommended a full-scale retreat."

Stevo nodded. "Good. Then you're not an idiot. There is nothing noble about dying for your country. If it's got to happen, then it had better be damned worth it, and that usually means holding the line while your team, or the civilians behind them, get out of harm's way. You're right. There is nothing you could have done against Khuvakians; they would have slaughtered you like it was sport. But here is the thing you need to think about..."

Stevo gave a glance to every person in the room. Only valdek and Michaels had an idea about what was coming next.

"The 381st was designed, trained, and equipped to take on the Khuvakians and beat them. As terrifying as they are to you, we are worse. As strong as they are, we are stronger. We are better equipped, we are better trained, we are better led. The Khuvakians rely on brute force to win a battle, and against us, they wouldn't stand a chance. You should never have fought that battle. You were always going to lose. Yes, I understand that you had the Imperium intelligence to help you, but even then, the mission was planned by our high command to fail. I bet, even with that advantage, I could still beat you."

The woman blinked.

"I think the captain here," Crow added. "is trying to say that you need to know your enemy before you can defeat him. And we didn't." He turned to Stevo. "Do you think, as a matter of demonstration, that you could lead the defense for the Second demonstration? I know a fight between regular soldiers and you, with you controlling the attacking team, would be another waste of time, but perhaps you would like to show us what you could have done with our defense if you had time to prepare properly."

Stevo looked back down at the map, pursed his lips for a moment as he thought about it, and then simply nodded. "Of course, sir."

Crow nodded, Reaching over to a control panel.on his side of the map table and typed in some commands. Stevo gasped as a wealth of topographical, geological, and meteorological information flooded his brain. He suddenly knew everything there was to know about that beach and the island it sat in. Every trench, every bunker, every rock, ridge, tree, blade of grass and molehill. Every inch and angle of elevation, every human-sized depression in the land. He could see the firing cones of the artillery, the entire list of available weapons and munitions in the rebel arsenal, and a list of 200,000 rebel soldiers - all fully armed, armored, and trained - ready to be deployed.

Everything.

All of it even closer than at his fingertips.

He rolled his shoulders, gave out a quick few commands to set up defensive preparations, and then nodded to the general to let the exercise commence.

The Marines hit the beach like a tsunami, the four intelligence officers apparently deciding to merge the first and second waves into a blunt force instrument. They didn't get very far before they started falling. Stevo had moved all the heavy laser emplacements to the very top of the beach and onto the ridgeline, all of them camouflaged into the landscape with such skill that the air support was finding it almost impossible to spot them. But he hadn't stopped there. The two cliffs flanking either side of the beach had been filled with men and more heavy weapon bunkers, and all of these positions rained fire and holy hell into holographic marines charging across the sand.

The first few trench lines were gone. In the real battle, Stevo and his squad had used these to advance up the beach relatively safe from the heavier weapons and the majority of small arms fire. The Marines in this wargame were being given no such reprieve. For a solid quarter of a mile, they were hounded.

Then, the artillery landed.

One thing Stevo had realized during his turn on the attacking side of this demonstration was that the clones, as they had been in the actual beach battle, were woefully incapable of any sort of two-way communication. The artillerymen firing those massive verdant green plasma bombs had needed the exact location of the imperium troops to be accurate. They could land a round onto a spot with a margin of error of only a foot or two, but without The Imperium's intelligence and access to the sensor pings, they had nothing to work with.

Stevos's troops were better. He had positioned spotters on the hills, cliffs, and ridgeline, and each of them relayed the positions of the enemy forces with brutal efficiency. They didn't need to be 100% accurate; near misses were still enough to disrupt the advance, slow it down, collapse its cohesion, and rack up the casualty lists. But when the tanks landed with the now-second wave, the real savagery began.

Ordered to focus all artillery fire on the armor as soon as it landed, and with skilled spotters filtering targeting coordinates back to the gunners, the tanks were obliterated before they could move more than a few dozen feet. Shards of holographic metal were thrown into the air, and thick black smoke rose from the fictitious, tangled hulks of the armored brigade. More importantly, the landing zone for the final wave was no longer clear, meaning the dropships had to fly into range of the bunkers - with their heavy AA lasers - to deposit their payloads onto the beach. Very few of them survived long enough to manage this task, and the spiraling wrecks of falling air units crashed into the stalled remainder of the invasion force.

Finally seeing the brutality of the defense and doubtlessly taking a page out of Stevo's manual, the four officers broke their assault apart. One section started to rope up the left flank's cliff, another scrambled up the right, and the remainder pressed forward to cover inside the relative safety of the top two trench lines... the only two trench lines.

Of course, by then, they were empty. That should have been a bit of a red flag, but his opponents had missed it.

With the tanks and huge swathes of marine infantry destroyed and dropships falling out of the sky, the officers completely missed the fact that the guns on the cliffs had fallen silent.

Among the chaotic inventory of the rebel arsenal, nothing had perplexed him more than the third item from the bottom—landmines. A metric fuck ton of landmines, to be precise. Stevo had no idea whatsoever why the rebels hadn't deployed these during the real battle, they obviously had the time, but it wasn't a mistake he was going to repeat.

He deployed them all.

They were a hidden threat, lying in wait, and as soon as the Marine forces finally scaled the heights of the cliffs and began their advance toward the ridgeline, the ground erupted beneath them.

In a horrifying symphony of destruction, thousands of landmines detonated simultaneously. The air was filled with a deafening roar as the earth trembled violently under the sheer force of the explosions. Massive chunks of the shattered landscape were launched high into the sky, twirling in a chaotic dance of debris, while grim remnants of Marine body parts rained down, a gruesome testament to the brutality of war.

Panic struck the now-stunned officers, observing the chaos unfold. If they had been questioning why the trenches were eerily empty, the answer became chillingly clear an instant later.

The entire top section of the beach was obliterated in a catastrophic explosion, enveloped in a vortex of fire and sundered sand that tore apart everything in its vicinity. The rest of the rebels' mines announced their hiding places just as the officers struggled to fathom the utter destruction of their units on the cliffs. The sound of the blast echoed like a death knell, and a huge number of the unfortunate Marines who had somehow managed to survive until this point were buried alive under the wreckage or simply reduced to body parts and smears of blood on the sand.

Marine armor was good, and their shields were even better, but nothing could have saved them from the destructive force that had been waiting for them.

Under the astonished, stunned gaze of their leaders, and as the debris from the carnage rained down on the survivors, the ridgeline finally opened up on them. A blizzard of heavy laser bolts, just like the one that had killed Big G, streaked across the narrow gap separating the two forces and smashed into the Marine lines. Marines scrambled for cover, throwing themselves into the smoking holes created by the mines and the scant few intact sections of the trench, then heroically started to return fire. Few a few minutes, the no-mans-land between the two lines was the most dangerous place in the universe for any living creature to be... or it would have been if it were real.

But still, the officers didn't see it.

Throwing caution to the wind, and with less than 20% of their invasion force still combat effective, they charged the ridgeline. The paltry forces defending it didn't stand a chance, and - just as Stevo's marauding marines had done when he had been attacking - the invasion force rolled straight over them, butchering every one of their tormentors.

Then they poured into the base.

Only to find it completely deserted.

"But.. what happened?" One of the Men asked, his face scrunched up in confusion.

"You lost," Stevo shrugged. "And you destroyed your army in the process."

"Bullshit!" The second man spat. "We took the base!"

"But the base wasn't the objective. The rebels Army and their leadership were," Stevo shrugged. "And they pulled back for a guerilla campaign before your first wave finished offloading. Now, they are free to retake the base from the indefensible side against a force only a fifth of its original size. You carried the field, congratulations, but you still lost." He glanced down at the casualty figures, displayed callously on a little readout on the edge of the map table. "Marine forces landed with fifteen thousand men; you have about four thousand remaining. Two hundred thousand rebels defended the beach. And I lost less than 5% of them."

"You sacrificed the defenders," the woman gasped, staring at the mounds of dead rebel bodies on top of the ridgeline, men and women who would have been her comrades had this exercise been played out for real. "You left them there to die."

"To save the army. They held the line to keep the enemy at bay, that kept open the window for the rest of the army to withdraw." Stevo snapped back. "And that was all that mattered. You were trying to beat me when you played defense; that was never possible. I was just trying not to lose, and if you can't understand the difference, you are never going to beat me, let alone the Imperium."

The last part of that last sentence seemed to knock all of the moral outrage out of the woman. Stevo couldn't tell if the lesson had been learned, but the message had certainly been delivered. There was a ruthlessness needed in combat, an understanding that losses are inevitable and anyone involved in it had to take that risk. The only variable was the manner in which someone's life was given. If they were given well, if their most noble of sacrifices was not without meaning or benefit, then that was a good death, an honorable one, and one that he was perfectly willing to give himself. The highest of all crimes, on the other hand, was - to his mind - to throw away lives needlessly.

That was where the lions share of the sense of betrayal by the Imperium had come from. Marines, his former brother and sisters, were laying dead, just to pander to the Emperors ego, and that simply wasn't a good enough reason. You could win the greatest of victories, but still be labelled a butcher for the lives you needless threw away in the process - and perhaps this was the lesson finally learned by his father's generation at Signus IV. But at the same time, you could suffer the most catastrophic and comprehensive of losses, but for the most noble reasosn and be remembered as a hero.

The key was to remember that the men and women under your command were exactly that: people. And no order should ever be given to them that you wouldn't carry out yourself. In this case, the intelligence officers had thrown their forces at the enemy with no thought of the men, holographic as they may have been, without any care at all for them. He supposed that was not as heartless as it seemed. This was a wargame, and those holographic men weren't real people. Stevo had understood the real purpose of the objective, though. Taking the base was meaningless, that was just worthless real estate. The real goal had been to destroy the rebels' ability to fight, so that is exactly what Stevo had defended. If some men needed to die in orer for that to happen, then that was an unfortunate order her didn't hesitate to give.

Now his opponents were facing the feeling of shame and loss that came with the realization that their staggering losses had been for exactly zero tactical or strategic benefit. They had won the battle, a tactical victory, but in doing so, they had sacrificed almost their entire army while the rebels had survived to fight another day. An enormous strategic loss by any measure. Sure, they occupied the base, the real estate, the high ground, but had lost the means to hold it, let alone defend it. In a real battle, a swift counter attack would finish off the Marines with almost no risk, then the rebels would have still have an army, and still hold the base at the end of it. There was no conceivable way the Marines, or, in this case, the intelligence officers could claim to have won any sort of victory.

Crow, ever watchful on his side of the table, gave a short nod and cleared his throat. The eyes of all five participants - Stevo, and the four officers - quickly rose to him. "Are there any positives from our officer's performance that we can take away from this?"

"Oh yes, sir, absolutely," Stevo nodded emphatically. "At the beginning of the battle," he said, turning back to the humbled strategists, "I saw that there were four of you. There should only ever be one person at the head of any chain of command. I was expecting there to be some sort of discord, or even just confusion in your orders. But there wasn't any. Your orders and your actions were given and carried out seamlessly. I still have no idea who was responsible for which order, or which area of responsibility was handled by which person. It was more than a little impressive. That level of teamwork is a very rare thing to find. If that is the sort of conduct we can expect from our ground forces going forward, the Imperium is in for a hell of a war."

The four officers smiled. It wasn't a weak, halfhearted smile either, they could really feel the sincerity in Stevo's observation.

"Anything else?"

"Her," Stevo nodded to the woman.

"Me?" the woman frowned in surprise.

"Yes, you. You didn't seem to give a shit that I had won, or that you had lost. The only thing you cared about was the men who had been killed. We need that sort of consideration for our soldiers in our command structure. Don't ever lose that."

The woman blushed, smiled a little wider, and nodded. "Thank you... Sir." She murmured.

"Don't call me sir, I work for a living," Stevo smiled back.

"Actually," Crow said, "You're an officer now. She has to call you Sir.'"

"Oh," Stevo frowned. "Well, shit!"

Crow chuckled. "Okay, lets see how our shiny new troops do against the dastardly Marines, shall we?" He grinned and rubbed his hands together. "Okay, who wants to defend?"

*******

Tony. 3

The night ended in the same way it always did for Tex: far too soon, and with a lingering feeling that mornings fucking sucked in every way imaginable. Morning people confused him, and anyone who could be alert, let alone chipper, before the clock hit double figures was clearly not human and should, therefore, be treated like a spy... with a distinct lack of trust and possibly a firing squad.

He was groggy; the morning haze still clouded his vision, and rubbing at them just seemed to make things worse. Yet, strangely, he could instinctively tell that there was something different about this morning. There was no disorientation, there was no gradual return to consciousness, that sort of thing didn't really happen to him... well, they did, but it usually involved Caledonian Tequila. He remembered everything from the night before: Cheryl's arrival on his doorstep, her tale of pain and betrayal - real betrayal, real pain - and then, most surprisingly of all, their shared moment. Not the sleep part, that had been nice, that had been intimate, and it had been the last thing he expected, but he had fallen asleep with Cheryl before-albeit after sex-and already knew she was a cuddler. What had surprised him was the connection that seemed to snap into place immediately before that. It was like that one moment had completely redefined not only how he thought about Cheryl but every memory of her as well. He could clearly recall looking at her and inwardly shuddering. But it was like looking back at a memory of when he was drunk. He could remember doing it, but it didn't make even the slightest amount of sense to him now. Now, when he pictured her face, the same thought as last night kept coming back to him.

Wow... like, seriously... fucking wow!

He groaned, stretched, and - after a particularly vigorous rub of them - managed to get his eyes to work properly and glanced around the room. Mornings on starships - imperium ones, at least - were fucking weird. Evenings were as well. Some dick, probably wearing a labcoat, had decided a long time ago that the human psyche needed some form of morning and evening to allow it to function properly. The military, for all their faults, were known for expecting their recruits to at least be functional, if not competent-so the lighting at certain times of the "day" was altered to simulate evenings and, in this case, mornings. Gradually, over the course of about an hour, being raised from dark enough to sleep in, to the full illumination of the working "day." The evening's dusk was slightly different; a crew member could voluntarily opt to keep their lights on full while they were awake and then just turn them off for bed... You know, the sort of things normal people did, things normal people were perfectly capable of doing in the mornings. But Labcoat dick had also realized that most people were asleep before mornings happened, so they weren't awake enough to control the lights, so the ship should do it for them. It may lay ins really hard to come by.

God, he missed lay-ins.

He had no idea if all this dicking around with lighting worked, although, to be fair, he had hated it when his mom had woken him in the mornings by simply switching his bedroom light on when he was younger, so maybe there was some merit in the idea, but he had to admit that it made waking up on a starship a pretty odd experience.

The room was bathed in shadow, the light set at something designed to approximate the early hours of dawn and somehow managing to miss that mark completely. Details were blurred; the lines, corners, and edges of the room were barely distinguishable from the objects they were wrapped around, and the glow coming from the instrument panels still managed to maintain its oppressively bright quality. The air seemed still, and yet he could just about feel the slight breeze coming from the air recycling systems built into the walls; he could hear the soft hum of the ship's machinery, and he could feel the gentle vibrations of the engines running through everything and anything even vaguely attached to the floor.

He could still smell Cheryl on the sheets as if she were still right beside him. But therein also lay the problem.

She wasn't.

Propping himself up, he peered through the dim glow of lights. Her clothes lay scattered on the floor, marking the path the evening had taken. For a brief moment, he felt a strange pang of worry that she had slipped out before he woke, embarrassed or ashamed, choosing to leave and take that moment of connection with her rather than see him in the morning. But the clothes said otherwise. As thoroughly exhausted as he had been when she arrived, he was certain she hadn't brought any bags with her, so she didn't have a change of clothes. Meaning she would have to have left his quarters naked. As much as that would have been funny with anyone else, a new subject of shipwide gossip for a few weeks, he suddenly found the idea of people seeing his woman naked to be less than appealing.

His woman? Was she his woman? That was a jarring thought. Less than twelve hours ago, he would have categorically denied a desire to have any woman as anything more serious than a fuck friend; he would have laughed himself hoarse at the idea of it being Cheryl. Now, it wasn't that he wasn't so sure anymore; it was more like he already knew the answer to that question and deeply felt that pit of longing in his stomach for her already. Tex was no expert in love, but he was no fool either. He had never felt anything like this before, and he was man enough to stand and face it head-on. He glanced back down at her clothes.

Okay, so she was still in his apartment, but where?

He was just about to tentatively call out her name when she suddenly reappeared, silhouetted against the light from the opening bathroom door before his eyes adjusted to it. She was wearing one of his looser, more casual T-shirts, and, seeing that he was awake, she chewed on her lip nervously. "Oh, hey, you're awake," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

The T-shirt was pretty big on him, designed with function given precedent over fashion. On her, however, it was enormous, ridiculously comically so. Yet there was something so endearing about the sight of her that it caught the snort of laughter in his throat before it erupted from his lips. She looked... well, he actually didn't really know how to finish that sentence. There was a simplicity to it, domesticity and vulnerability; in a single glance and in a single moment, he was suddenly able to envision a lifetime of seeing her wearing one of his shirts, curled up against him, and watching the holo feed together after a long shift. Coming back to their quarters, not his, theirs, to find her hopping around barefoot to some tune playing through the audio system. Eating together, chatting, just... being. As much as he loved bending her over and fucking the ever-loving shit out of her, that was, amazingly, the last thing on his mind-another first for him. He didn't want to drive into her just to watch her face as he made her feel it... well, he did, but that wasn't at the forefront of his mind. In that moment, he just wanted her to climb back into bed and retake her place curled up next to him.

Where he suddenly felt like she belonged.

"Morning," he smiled back, realizing that he hadn't actually answered her yet and was in serious danger of starting to look creepy with his staring. The corner of her lips pulled upward, matching his tentative smile.

For fuck sake, why did she have to look even more beautiful when she smiled?

He was done for.

He pulled himself up onto his elbows, letting the standard-issue bedding slide down to his waist as he tilted his head at her. He watched her eyes slide over his torso before they lifted back to his. Tony was in good shape, more so than most men in the Navy. This wasn't the Marines, and the physical conditioning and grueling training needed to be a ground infantryman was nowhere near as vigorous for the rest of the fleet personnel. Tony just liked working out, and his body showed it. "How're you feeling?" He asked. Not knowing what else to say to break the tension. It was a simple enough question, but even he understood that it was asking for a far-from-simple answer.

Her response was hesitant, the opening and closing of her lips revealing the inner war between her emotions and her ability to articulate them. She took a few cautious steps forward, carefully crossing the room as if it were a minefield before perching at the foot of the bed. She took a deep breath and wrapped her arms around herself, shielding herself from the weight of the question. There was a tangible distance between them-him shifting backward to rest against the headboard and her side facing him from the bottom of the bed-a physical barrier, if only of space, that she didn't seem quite willing to cross yet.

"Listen, before I answer that, can I ask you something first?"

"Sure." He could see her nerves, so tried to sound as reassuring as possible

"Are... are we okay?"

The straightforwardness of his demeanor didn't waver. "Why wouldn't we be okay?"

Her laughter was brittle, a crystalline sound on the verge of shattering. "I dunno," she confessed, the humor fleeting and tinged with trepidation. "Your fuck buddy rocking up at your door after your brutally long shift, crying about the husband she was planning on returning to after this deployment, then spending the night with you? It's hardly what you signed up for, and I know I would be feeling a certain way about it if our roles were reversed."

Those weird fucking lights chose that moment to increase their illumination by a few degrees, giving off the effect of shadows literally dancing across her face, playing hide and seek with the vulnerability that were etched in her features. Yet he remained silent, wanting to give a thoughtful answer and not something that could come across as flippant or non-committal. Tony worked in comms, for fuck sake. Talking to people should be easy. But it wasn't. Talking to women was never easy. Talking to an upset one was a hellscape that had claimed better men than him for the entirety of human history.

But, she was right; he hadn't signed up for this; it had been the last thing he had expected when he dropped into bed after that torturous shift, but if there was one thought that this morning had been in no short supply of, it was that he was more than okay with how the rest of the night had gone.

"Okay, when you put it like that," he spoke teasingly, allowing a disarmingly warm smile to stretch across his face. "Are you okay with last night?"

"Yeah," Cheryl responded, her nod not just a motion but a declaration, her eyes locking onto his with surprising clarity. "More than okay, a lot more okay than I thought I would be. I don't know why, but when I got off the call from my sister, I just... came here; I don't even know why. It must've been like autopilot or something. I just knew you would... I don't know..." She trailed off, her expression as confused as his must have been the night before. "I didn't want sex or anything; I just... I can't even explain it. I needed someone, and the first person that came to mind was you. That surprised me."

"Me too, I guess." The words stumbled out. That was a compliment, right? At least it sounded like she meant it as one. Fuck, he had no idea what he was doing. He knew what he wanted, and he was still more than a little surprised by that fact alone. But they seemed to have navigated themselves to something of an emotional crossroads, and he was pretty damned bewildered about how they got there.

His eyes held hers, waiting for her to go on. His gaze pierced through her statement with an earnestness that bordered on concern, prompting a release of tension in her entire body—a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of everything that she was feeling.

"If you want to know the truth, things haven't been great with my husband for a long time," she finally breathed out; it was like the words had a weight to them, and something was giving way inside her as she let them out.

"Yeah, you've never really..." He hesitated, searching for the least abrasive way to continue, "...you've never spoken well about him during... You know."

A small, sardonic chuckle escaped her, a sad recognition of the unvarnished reality of her situation. "Okay, things have been utterly fucking dire for a long time." A nod of admission accompanied the smiling, self-effacing acknowledgment. "I realized last night, when I was with you, that him having an affair wasn't what was bothering me; let's face it, you and I weren't exactly casual. I've only been with you for this entire deployment."

God fucking dammit... a small smile pulled at his lips. A silent confession that not only was he in the same position, having not been with anyone else since they left port, but that her only being with him meant more to him than it probably should have.

She continued, the torrent of confessions now flowing through the broken dam of her marriage. "It was the way my sister treated me, but I will deal with her another time. The fact that I left my quarters in a haze and ended up here, being held by you all night and being able to actually sleep... I wasn't expecting that. Then waking up this morning and not wanting to leave..."

Cheryl turned to him. The tension in the air, or at least in his chest, was palpable, but there was a resolve in her look, the way her eyes met his like she was steeling herself for that make-or-break moment. "I'm just gonna be straight up here. I like you. In the beginning, I thought you were cute and discreet, and that was good enough for a fling, now though... I think I would be lying to myself if I said I hadn't developed... some feels for you. If that isn't what you want, that's totally fine," the words sprinted out, rapid and breathless, as if she were disarming a bomb with her confession.

"But, I've been looking forward to our time together more than calls with him for weeks now; they're like our little date nights or something, and maybe I was just wanting... more... or something. Not a rebound, but, like, building on what we have over time, and wondering if maybe if you wanted... fuck... I don't know; I think I need to stop talking." Panting breathlessly after her bout of verbal diarrhea, she buried her face into her hands and groaned loudly to herself.

Tony, though far from an expert when it came to women, read her remaining in place as a gesture of hopeful expectation. Perhaps this was a good sign. She had chosen to stay just out of arm's reach, but she hadn't bolted for the door either—maybe that was a good thing, perhaps, just perhaps, there was something worth staying for.

He kept his eyes on hers. Not so much because he didn't want her reading anything into his breaking eye contact, but more because her face was displaying so many emotions that he was afraid he'd miss something important if he even blinked. He shifted himself to sit a little taller against the headboard. "I mean, you only found out yesterday that your marriage was over," Tony said slowly and carefully. He didn't want to insult her resolve, but it was a fair question. "How... confident... I don't know if that is the right word... Are you in your feelings?"

The groan that escaped her was muffled by her hands. "Depends on how honest you want me to be?"

"Extremely."

She drew a heavy breath and let her guard fall, her hands dropping to reveal a face etched with nervous lines. "Okay, fine," Cheryl exhaled, turning to face him fully as if aligning herself with the truth she was about to divulge. "I've been feeling this way for a while, and the only thing stopping me from asking you out properly was the fact that I was still married, and I had no idea if you would even want something like that with someone like me."

Tony could practically see the stream of words that wanted to spill over—each one poised on the brink of her lips like a diver yearning for the plunge. And plunge she did, words tumbling out in a fervent rush. "I wasn't entirely honest with you before. I haven't had a 'buddy' like you on every deployment, only on the two before this, and they always made me feel cheap and dirty. I never actually enjoyed my time with them; it was just getting off, and I never actively looked forward to seeing them... I do with you."

Each word hit him like it held an actual, physical force. It had only been a few minutes since he had been contemplating these same feelings in himself, not about past lovers but certainly about the desire to have something more with Cheryl. He could see, in real-time, their relationship changing. No longer a casual fling, but something else, something more, something real. As real as the metal bulkheads valiantly holding back the vacuum of space outside his quarters.

Suddenly, something clicked into place, a new significance given to the face that she had come to him at her moment of need. When the pain and the betrayal had been too much, she had come to him. More than that, the revelation bore a weight, too, and it was one that he found himself unexpectedly willing to shoulder. She was asking something of him, something she had no idea if he was willing or even able to give, and yet she was asking anyway. But it was something that he had already asked himself, and every word falling out of those lips was just solidifying the answer he had already come up with. "That's why I wanted to introduce you to Jenn." She finished with a huff

Well, that last part snapped him back to reality.

Tony had forgotten about her again, but that feeling of not wanting to hurt Cheryl came rising back to the surface. "Yeah, I'm going to need a little more clarity on that, but it can wait until after this," he said, then let her continue.

"No," Cheryl shook her head. "It's part of this."

"It is?" He blinked, thoroughly confused about how that could be the case. "I'm sorry, I'm not following."

Cheryl sighed again. "I've always known I liked women too, but bringing someone else into my relationship with my husband never sat right with me. I didn't trust him with it. I suppose now I know why. Over the past few months, I have been feeling more and more like it's something I could share with you and trust you with. It's, like, one of my longest-held fantasies, to be involved with a guy and a girl at the same time, and everyone shares each other... like a throuple. Not as just a fuck thing, but as something... I don't know... intimate, trusting... real. God, I sound so fucking stupid."

"You're serious about this," he said, sitting himself up properly now.

She nodded. "I've been going through the motions with my hus... my ex, for... Fuck.. years. Trying to play the perfect wife, trying to live up to the vows I took even though I knew, deep down, that he wasn't doing the same. My parents loved him, my sister obviously liked him too, and I felt that by seeing my marriage for what it really was, I would be a failure. Then I met you..." Her eyes rose to meet his after staring at her wringing hands. "...yes it was casual, yes it was just about the sex, but I trusted you. I knew that details about our... 'dates' would never see the light of day, that you would never be the sort of asshole my husband was. And then last night, when I came here, after you agreed to let me stay... the way you looked at me. Nobody has ever looked at me like that. And as soon as I saw it, it was all I could see."

Tony nodded, listening. "I don't understand how this explains Jenn."

"It's all part of the same issue. My marriage was a sham, and it's taken getting close to you for me to be able to see it properly. So I wanted to add other parts of my fantasy life to this thing we had, knowing I could trust you, and enjoy it for as long as this thing between us lasted. Last night with my sister, as shit as it was, was the wake-up call I needed; it was just confirmation of what I have already known, deep down, for ages. It was just the final nail in a coffin that's been built over a really long time. And now, after spending the night with you, I can honestly say that I want to start over... with someone I can trust, and start the whole thing as I mean to go on, sharing everything... including that fantasy."

Tony took a deep breath and let it out slowly. This was a lot to take in. "Cher, I need you to be clear with me here, and I'm sorry if this puts you on the spot a bit, but I need you to tell me what you want, and I really don't mean to sound like a dick, I promise, but I need you to be really specific. I'm not great at reading between the lines."

"I want you," she breathed again before the verbal diarrhea started all over. "I want you, and I want Jenn, and I want you both to hit it off, and I want you to fall for each other like I have fallen for you..." Tony blinked at that but didn't say a word. "... I want us to be real, not just a fling, but something more than that. I don't want to have stupid little agreements if we ever get posted to different ships, I want to be a good woman to a good man. I want to start my life over with someone I trust and love and want more than anything or anyone. It doesn't even feel like I am starting over with you, that's the strangest part. It feels like everything that has happened between us before last night has been building up to this. I want to forget about that lying piece of shit loser I was married to, I want to forget about my utter cunt of a sister, and I want to stop living a lie. I want to start living my truth... with you. I want you to love me. I want you."

She stared at him, her chest rising and falling... Dammit, Tony, stop watching her tits, focus! Her gaze was vast and silent, yet filled with an emotional weight that Tony could scarcely comprehend. They were imploring, seeking, almost begging him to understand the true breadth of what she had just said... and to give it back to her in equal measure. Tony's mind was spinning like an old car tire trying to find traction on a sheet of ice.

This was life-changing stuff—the sort of changes that could potentially alter their entire lives, for as long as they happened to live them. But it was more than just what she was saying; it was the raw, naked reality that she had the sheer backbone to voice it at all. She knew how exposed and vulnerable this confession would make her—wide open for rejection, disappointment, and humiliation—and yet she was saying them anyway. All he could do was marvel at her, half tempted to ask for medical advice on how one deals with the Tinnitus left by the clanging of her solid brass balls. It was a reverberation he felt in his very core.

Loyalty and bravery—those were qualities Anthony Texas respected above all others, and had built his life around admiring. It was one of the reasons he had chosen to join the military. Though no stranger to guts and grit himself, he couldn't help but feel dwarfed by the magnitude of her actions. Layering bare her emotions, confronting the raw edges of her new reality, she was standing before him a paragon of vulnerability and courageousness. It was more than he could comprehend. He could hurt her, right in that moment, and she knew it, but she was bearing her throat to him, showing him an open, jagged wound that he could apply soothing balm to or, conversely, a bath of pure acid. This was new territory, a nerve-racking precipice that he had never witnessed in someone, let alone dealt with himself.

He was trained to deal with conflict, he was trained to make and receive life or death decisions, and he was willing, if needed, to lead other people to their deaths -although he really hoped it would never come to that. But this was different. As corny as it sounded, even to him, this was a battlefield of the heart, where perhaps the stakes were higher and the wounds, should they come, infinitely deeper. This was a display of bravery in its purest form, and a part of him knew that even if he mustered every ounce of his own courage, it would probably still pale in comparison to her act of raw openness. He respected Cherly before that moment, no after what other things he used to think about her; he had always respected her as an officer, as a woman, and as a person. But this was something else entirely. This left him in awe. She had issued a challenge to the very fabric of who they were to each other, and now it was his turn to pick up the gauntlet.

"You're not saying anything," she muttered, her face starting to crack under the strain. "I shouldn't have said anything. I... I should go."

"No," he said firmly.

"No?" she froze, "No, what? No, I shouldn't go, or no, you don't want..."

"I've fallen for you too, but you are too far away for me to kiss you," he blurted out before the inspiration she had given him vanished from his chest. "And I'm shit with words."

"Really?" her eyes widened, shock, hope, fear, and anticipation flashing across her face in an instant.

He just nodded, no longer trusting himself to speak.

A squeal of inarticulable joy burst from her lips, and she threw herself across the bed between them and wrapped herself around him, sealing her lips to his in a kiss more pure and timeless than anything he could have imagined possible. "I'm yours," she murmured between kisses peppered onto his lips. "All of me, and I know Jenn is going to feel the same way."

"No more talk of Jenn," he said, holding her eyes. She made to speak, a frown crossing her face for a moment before he silenced her. "I want to meet her, and I want everything you want, but right now, I just want this to be about us. You're all mine, and I'm yours."

She nodded, beaming brightly at him, then sealed her lips back to his as she climbed on top of him, sliding his shirt off her body as he pulled the sheets over them and rolled himself on top of her. "Make yours, Tex, baby," she whispered up at him. "Make me yours forever."

********

Emma. 5

It was a thud.

Just a thud.

Thuds shouldnt be the sound that heralded the end of the world. But that is the only way she could describe it, and her world was rapidly falling apart around her. But as much as she wanted to scream, to run, to hide, to fight with her last dying breath, she couldn't. Her body was frozen to the spot. The sheer terror running through her veins felt like liquid nitrogen, solidifying her muscles and completely refusing to move despite her mind's desperate pleas.

An hour earlier, Jess's last client of the day had arrived—a simple, shy-looking man, yet undeniably attractive in his own right. His unassuming demeanor and habitually downcast eyes showed his lack of confidence that seemed so out of place given his good looks. He had smiled at Emma, it had been fleeting and shy, but it was there. Emma had offered a faint, troubled one back, but she doubted the man even noticed, his mind was, no doubt on other things.

Jess had once confided in Emma that this man, with his chiseled features and earnest gaze, could walk into any bar in the city and pick up almost any single girl he wanted, if only he could only work up the nerve to actually approach one. She didn't know his name. Jess may have told her what is was, once or twice, but Jess's clients were not the sort of people that were in Emma's world, and it had gone in one ear and straight out of the other. This guy seemed nice, but because he was so painfully shy, she had no idea if that first impression of him was accurate or not. He certainly wasn't one of the brash or sleezy types that usually came here.

Jess had made it her personal mission to help him break free from his shell. She saw potential where the man saw limitation. It was more than just a job for her; it was a challenge, like a project. And Jess, with her innate sense of compassion wrapped in a cloak of playful seduction, knew exactly how to draw him out. Her method was simple, albeit unconventional—fucking his brains out, loudly and regularly, and getting paid for it in the process, until he didn't need her anymore.

The ritual had become familiar to Emma over the time she had been living with Jess, it was only slightly varied from the displays she gave to her other customers. She would hear the man's hesitant knock, followed by the door creaking open and Jess's warm, inviting greeting. He would step inside, awkward yet hopeful, like a moth drawn to the flame. Jess's voice, always a mixture of sultry tease and genuine warmth, would follow, encapsulating him in a world where his insecurities melted away.

As the door to Jess's room clicked shut, the dynamics of the apartment had always shifted. Emma could normally predict the sequence that would unfold next: the low murmur of conversation, gradually giving way to the rhythmic sounds of their encounters. The headboard would thump against the wall, a symphony of passion filling the air, interspersed with Jess's vocal encouragements—loud, unapologetic, and fervently exuberant.

It wasn't just about the act itself; it was about the transformation that Jess sought to create. She was like a sculptor, chipping away at the marble of his self-doubt, revealing the confident individual hidden beneath. And Emma couldn't help but admire her friend's unique approach to making a difference, even if it meant leaning into her profession with a bit more gusto than most.

Tonight, however, the usual exuberant soundtrack of their interaction had been replaced by something markedly subdued. The soft, quiet moans and the gentle creaking of bedsprings provided a stark contrast to the vibrant cacophony Emma had grown used to. It was as if the weight of the day, with its lurking shadows and pervasive unease, had seeped into Jess's room, muting the energy that usually buoyed their sessions.

Emma had sensed a shift in the atmosphere the moment the client arrived. There was a heaviness in the air, an undercurrent of tension that both women had tried to ignore but couldn't fully shake off. Jess's smile was still there, but it was tinged with a hint of caution, an awareness that something was amiss. On one hand, she was going through the motions, she was trying to act the part that she had always played, but at the same time, there was no hiding the echoes of the day in her face or in her mannerisms. Emma had no idea if the man picked up on it or not, but she certainly did.

As she sat alone in the living room, Emma found herself processing these unspoken cues. This was wrong, so very, very wrong. What she would have given to hear Jess screaming out for this guy to "Fuck me like the dirty little fuck toy I am for you!" or "Shove that big fucking dick up my ass, go on, I can take it!" or any other one of the obscenely fake words of passion that usually came echoing through the wall. What she got instead was something very different. Soft, quiet moans, hushed whispers, the gentle creaking of mattress springs. It felt wrong. The situation being bad enough to put an expression of fear onto Jess's face was bad enough, but for it to be so bad that it completely changed the way she carried out her work? That was terrifying!

Jess had always been a performer, the consummate professional of her craft. Her sessions were marked by exuberant verbal encouragements, a stream of instructive commands, and, regardless of their authenticity, loud and convincing screams of pleasure that filled the air. Emma had spent countless nights within the apartment's dim confines, Unwittingly eavesdropping on the parade of sounds that spilled from Jess's room. The rhythmic thumping of the headboard against the hollow wall often accompanied the guttural grunts of men who had perhaps overestimated their own prowess.

Emma had grown so familiar with Jess's routine that she could silently word along with the dialogue, as it was an old song whose lyrics had long ago implanted themselves into her mind, knowing the script almost as well as its star performer. Jess's performances had a predictable cadence, a mixture of practiced enthusiasm and strategic noise-making designed to enrapture and satiate each client. Emma often found herself chuckling inwardly, mouthing the familiar phrases as if she were part of an unseen audience.

But tonight, the atmosphere was different. Emma wasn't in the mood to smile along with Jess's performance, and it seemed that Jess wasn't in the mood to give one. Perhaps for the first time since she had known her, it sounded like Jess was actually just having sex.

The softer noises seemed to make the air feel thicker, like the humidity that comes before the first storm cloud ever arrives. Emma found herself just sitting on the sofa, her back to the wall, a silent effort to make sure that nothing could sneak up behind her, and she waited. Waited for Jess to finish, waited for the man - as handsome and shy as he was - to leave, waited to have her friend back so she could use her simple presence as a life raft in the storm that was raging through her mind. Waited to see if the danger she could so clearly feel would finally come to get her. Her hands tightened around the handle of her little pocket knife. She knew it was ridiculous to think that something so small could have any bearing on her ability to protect herself, but it still somehow helped. She was armed, and just that knowledge gave her something to cling to.

And then there was the thud.

It was sudden and horrifyingly muted. It was a subtle, innocuous noise, like a piece of luggage being dropped in the hallway outside or someone stumbling a shoulder into the door; it was enough to warrant a curious glance, but nothing more than that.

Except, it wasn't luggage being dropped, and the source of the sound was anything but innocuous.

Her apartment door had exploded inward.

That was the thud.

The only thing Emma's shocked and panicked mind could grasp, however, was how eerily quiet it had been. It was as though the violent sound of the door being blown in had been ripped from the very fabric of reality, smothered to death by the hand of some unknown and unknowable force. She had never really given much thought to what she would be able to hear at the moment of her death; who has? But even if she had, she would never have imagined for a moment that it would have come with a sound so horrifyingly muted.

It was a silence that felt almost malevolent, as if a pawl of deafness had descended upon reality, banishing any sound that dared to threaten its reign. The expected cacophony of wood splintering and hinges screeching had been replaced with a single, subdued thud—so utterly wrong, so out of place in the context of such brutal reality.

Emma's mind raced, caught between the immediate terror of the situation and the surreal horror of the silence that had frozen her in place. Her eyes had flinched away from the noise, as quiet as it had been, but other than that and the death grip she was maintaining on her pathetic little pocket knife, she couldn't bring a single one of her muscles to respond to the simplest of commands. On the one hand, her world had just been blown apart with the front door; the splinters of wood and the motes of dust were still flying through the air as if time itself was slowing down, just to make sure Emma was paying attention to what was happening. And, as if done just to highlight the incomprehensible silence of the moment, Jess chose that instant to let out a long, deep, sultry moan of pleasure. Someone had blown open the front door, and Jess hadn't even heard it. The thing that confused Emma the most, though - almost as much as where the sound had gone - was the fact that among everything that was happening, Emma found part of herself considering if that one moan may have actually been a genuine one.

She wanted to scream, to alert her friend and her guest what was happening, to lunge forward to their defense against whatever or whoever had instigated this attack, but to highlight her deer-in-headlights condition—a peculiar saying, really, considering deer had been extinct for centuries, and headlights went out of fashion with the invention of sensor suites—Emma sat paralyzed, her body betraying her with an immobilizing blend of shock and terror. She sat rooted to the spot, her mind screaming for action while her limbs remained relentlessly frozen.

Her body may have been frozen, her hearing may or may not have been compromised, but her eyesight was working perfectly.

Her wide, unblinking eyes took in every horrifying detail as five men, all clad in dark clothes that seemed to absorb the scant light, began pouring through the gaping breach. They moved with the fluid, predatory grace of individuals well-versed in the art of inflicting harm, their synchronized steps a silent testament to their lethal intent. Each step they took seemed choreographed, almost as if they were part of an unsettling dance directed by the same malevolent force that was orchestrating the ominous silence. The leader, staying by the apartment door - the only route of escape - sent out a series of commands to his followers with a set of brusque, efficient hand gestures. Two of the five men started down the corridor toward Jess's room, the other two moving into the living room.

They spotted her immediately.

Emma's breath hitched in her throat; her pulse exploded into a frantic drumbeat against her chest. Her sense of vulnerability swelled as she cataloged the weapons each man bore—gleaming blades, blackened firearms, long barreled rifles, and other instruments of violence that glinted menacingly under the dim light. The sight of their armed presence sent waves of raw fear coursing through her veins, magnifying the surreal horror of the situation and causing her muscles to double down on their abject refusal to obey her.

Each man's face was a mask of cold detachment, their eyes scanning the room with methodical precision. They appeared more like shadows than flesh and blood, their very presence warping the atmosphere of the apartment. The sense of violation was overwhelming; Emma and Jess had spent an hour practically barricading themselves into the apartment, every conceivable security measure had been taken, and yet, these men had blown through them in less than a heartbeat, and more than that, they had done it silently.

It was Jess's scream that yanked her body into action, a primal sound that sliced through the oppressive silence and struck Emma like a lightning bolt. The sound of Jess's bedroom door being kicked in had wrenched a shriek of surprise, quickly followed by a scream of sheer terror from her friend's lips. The echoes of Jess's fear reverberated through the apartment, resonating with a raw intensity that pierced Emma's paralysis.

Suddenly, her body decided that it was able to move.

Emma may have been paralyzed by fear for her own life, her body rigid and uncooperative with even the smallest command to move in case it put her in further danger. But the thought of Jess being hurt, of those men laying a hand on her friend, was enough to ignite a furnace of determination within her. The fear that had anchored her in place evaporated, replaced by an urgent need to protect the person who meant the most to her.

She launched herself forward, her arm pulling back to drive that tiny, almost inconsequential blade into whatever part of the closes man she could reach. She didn't care if it hurt him, she didn't care if it killed him, she didn't care if it only served to piss him off, the only thing that mattered was Jess. All she needed was an opening; she could escape. These men wanted Emma, and that meant that if she caused enough of a distraction, maybe they would forget about Jess for long enough for her to get out. The blade in her hand was more than a weapon now; it was an extension of her will; it was a tangible weight that she would use to...

The butt of a rifle, wielded with brutal force, smashed into her forehead, obliterating any fleeting notions of control she might have harbored. The impact was devastating, enough to likely fracture her skull. Stars exploded in her vision as she was sent sprawling to the floor, the world tilting violently around her.

Pain radiated from the point of impact, a white-hot agony that throbbed with every beat of her heart. She could feel the wet warmth of blood immediately beginning to trickle down the side of her face, a stark testament to the violence inflicted upon her. The metallic tang of it filled her mouth and nose, and she felt her stomach try to climb into her throat and deposit her last meal onto the floor.

As she lay there, disoriented and gasping for breath, her mind struggled to process the sudden, jarring shift from defiant protector to helpless victim. The room around her seemed to blur and spin, edges smeared by pain and shock. Emma's fingers instinctively brushed against the wound, coming away sticky with her own blood.

The blade wasn't in her hand anymore.

Her vision dimmed momentarily, the walls around her wavering as if she were underwater. The searing pain was almost too much to bear, but in the depths of her disoriented mind, a flicker of resolve remained. She fought to stay conscious, to keep the shadows from closing in entirely, but she could feel her mind losing the battle against the oncoming darkness.

The sounds of the intruders' movements—heavy boots on the floor, muffled voices filled with dark intent—cut through the haze of her pain, anchoring her to the agonizing moment. She knew she had to move, to fight, but her body felt leaden, her limbs unresponsive to the commands of a mind still driven by a desperate need to protect Jess. But this wasn't the same refusal to move as before; something was broken, she was hurt, and her body was simply reacting to the sort of injury that her mind was all too aware of.

Drawing a ragged breath, Emma tried to push herself up, her muscles trembling with the effort. The world spun again, but she forced herself to focus, to concentrate on the task at hand. She couldn't afford to succumb to the darkness—Jess needed her, and that knowledge alone was enough to fan the flickering flame of her resolve.

The floor felt cold and unforgiving beneath her, the rough texture biting into her skin as she struggled to find her bearings. Blood dripped steadily from the gash on her forehead, each drop a painful reminder of her predicament. But she refused to give up. With a guttural determination she hadn't known she possessed, Emma began to drag herself across the floor, inch by painful inch.

Her vision cleared momentarily, enough for her to catch sight of Jess being dragged naked into the room by her hair; the desperation in her friend's eyes ignited a renewed burst of strength within Emma. But the fear in them as their eyes met, Jess seeing her friend bleeding and barely conscious, sent a chill down Emma's spine.

Jess's client, the quiet man, equally naked, had been pulled in behind her, and both of them had been dumped onto their knees beside Emma. For reasons she couldn't quite explain, her eyes dropped to between the man's legs. It was still glistening with wetness from its time inside Jess. It was impressive, but she quickly shook the thought clear; she gritted her teeth against the pain and continued to crawl, her thoughts singularly focused on reaching the knife a few feet in front of her, on protecting Jess, on doing whatever it took to save her friend and fend off their attackers.

But the men had other ideas. A firm, merciless hand gripped her hair, yanking her upwards and onto her knees. The room spun around her, or maybe it was her head that was spinning; it was hard to stay awake with the pain that radiated through her skull, let alone try to work out if it was the room or her vision that was refusing to stay still. She turned and looked at Jess as she was put onto her knees beside her; Jess looked back at her, the fear and panic in her eyes exploding as she looked at the mess that was spread over Emma's face. She said something. Emma saw her lips move; she heard the muffled sound of her voice, but it was like being underwater; it was just an incoherent noise to her. Her ears had started to ring, too.

Emma looked down; there was blood on her floor. It took her a few moments to realize that it was dripping from her face. Her shirt was ruined too, that annoyed her, she liked that shirt, it was one of her favorites. It hugged her frame in a way that was flattering and sexy without being revealing or slutty. Jess liked it, but Jess preferred much more seductive choices. Jess didn't wear white very often; her colors were brighter, more flamboyant, and designed to draw attention to herself. Emma didn't want to draw attention to herself, and, to be fair, her shirt wasn't white anymore; it was stained with crimson that, for some reason, was dripping off her nose. Was she bleeding?

This... This was an odd time to be thinking about clothes.

She wondered if maybe she had a concussion.

No, if she had a concussion, she would be sprawled out on the floor, barely able to stay upright, even on her knees. And no sooner had she thought that, she realized she wasn't. She was face down on the floor again, groaning quietly, willing the world to stop spinning around her. She rolled onto her side, looking at Jess's terrified face first, then up at the man standing over her, then at a different man approaching her own prone position on the floor. His lips were moving too, but her head was, apparently, still underwater, and all she heard was a garbled, droning, muffled noise that, for some reason, reminded her of a hovercar engine.

Suddenly, as if taken by a resolve far greater and far more urgent than anything Emma had been able to summon up herself - at least before Jess's scream - the quiet, good-looking man, the one who had, until extremely recently, been inside Jess, shot to his feet and made a burst for the door.

Emma watched him, perplexed. Where was he going? Didn't he realize he was naked? He would get into quite a lot of trouble running around the streets with no clothes on. But at the same time, there was a nagging, gnawing urge at the back of her mind telling her that she should do the same. No, wait, she shouldn't do the same; Jess should do the same... But Jess was naked, too. Was she naked? No, that's right, she was wearing something that used to be white, but she was bleeding... why was she bleeding?

One of the men, the invader closest to her, spun around, lifted his weapon, and fired. A red dash shot across the room in almost slow motion, hitting the naked man in the back, right between his shoulder blades. He stopped running, looking down at the dinner-plate-sized hole now in his chest. Jess screamed, sobbing loudly; Emma heard that, but she had her head tilted to the side, wondering why she could see the splintered remains of the apartment door and the man standing in front of it through the hole where the client's spine, ribs, heart, and lungs used to be.

The shy man took another stumbling step forward before he crumpled to the floor.

Why was there no blood coming from the hole? There was blood coming out of her head, and the gash causing that had to be smaller than the one in the man's chest, so why was she bleeding all over her favorite shirt and her favorite floor, and he wasn't? It was very considerate of him, in all fairness. The blood around her knees - as a mysterious hand pulled her back upright - would take fucking ages to clean up.

And then the window exploded behind her, both she and Jess instinctively flinching away from the sound and the shower of shattered glass. A man dressed in the same sort of black as the first lot of intruders crashed to his feet next to her, seemingly having come through the window. But whereas their heads weren't covered, this new man had a mask on. It looked like it was made of matte black plastic or some sort of composite armor, but the eyes were glowing red.

Composite... Comp-o-sit... compo-zit. That was a funny word.

Those strange red eyes seemed to be... well, they weren't eyes; they were like lights where the eyes were supposed to be. Maybe he could tell her if she was bleeding.

He had something in his hand, something long, metal, and really sharp looking. He swung it outward in a long arc, and the grip on her hair went loose. There was a noise; it sounded like two screams at once, one coming from Jess - who suddenly threw herself at Emma, knocking her to the side and covering her body with her own - and one coming from behind her. Emma wasn't really paying attention to the screams, though; she was lying in something wet, and she was pretty sure a splinter of glass was working its way into her arm. A hand thudded onto the floor in front of her face - she was starting to dislike thuds - a good portion of an arm still attached to it. It was bleeding, too. Perhaps it had been the one that had been holding to her hair just now; she imagined it had recently been attached to a person as well, but now it was making a mess on her floor.

Blood, splinters of broken door, and shards of shattered glass.

She was going to be cleaning this mess up for hours.

Maybe it would be better just to sleep.

********

The Hunter. 2

His target was injured. That was unacceptable.

Her five assailants weren't going to live long enough to regret doing that.

Time worked differently for him; it always had. It was an unexpected, but not unwelcome, effect of his DNA. His body, close to the point of conception, had been infused with the ancient genes of a spectacularly talented and extraordinarily lethal warrior, and he had spent a lifetime relearning those long-lost skills, honing them and perfecting them. Several lifetimes, if he were to be accurate. The seconds flowed slower for him, or perhaps he simply processed them faster—he neither knew nor cared to understand the intricacies. All that mattered was its usefulness. The men in the room were already dead. They just didn't know it yet.

The first assailant had forgotten all about the rifle hanging from its sling around his neck. He was too consumed by the searing pain radiating from the stump where his arm had once been. His eyes were wide with shock as he clutched at the severed limb, blood gushing in rhythmic spurts. It had taken only a single, precise swing of The Hunter's elongated, custom Danja—his weapon of choice, a blade known only to those who had truly mastered the ancient and deadly art of Uhmwaan.

The Hunter moved with a fluidity and speed that defied human comprehension. To the outside observers— like his target, lying prone on the ground, and the naked woman desperately shielding her—he seemed to exist in a state of perpetual motion, a blur of lethal intent and inhuman agility. His movements, though the same simple series of gestures and motions as any other form of movement, were performed too swiftly for the human eye to see, each one, however, was perfectly calculated and executed with deadly efficiency.

In the fleeting moments it took the first assailant to register the horrifying reality of his missing arm, let out a blood-curdling scream, and glance upward at where the strike had come from, the Hunter was already on to his next move. He pivoted smoothly, slipping behind the floundering man with a predatory grace. A glint of metal caught the dim light as The Hunter drew a smaller, standard Danja from its sheath on his belt. Without a moment's hesitation, he drove the blade between the assailant's fourth and fifth ribs, the steel sinking deep into flesh and evicerating the heart with cruel, clinical precision.

A strangled gasp escaped the man's lips, his body convulsing briefly before the spark of life blinked out of his eyes. He started to topple forward, but The Hunter wasn't finished with him just yet. With ruthless efficiency, he grasped the man's collar, the rough fabric bunching up in his iron grip. Then, planting a foot against the small of the dead man's back, he shoved him forward with a brutal force that sent the lifeless body tumbling away, crashing savagely into one of the other armed men and knocking him hard into the wall.

For The Hunter, this sequence of violence was more than a display of skill—it was an art form, honed over centuries and perfected through countless engagements. Every movement, every strike, was executed with a purpose that went beyond mere survival; it was a testament to his unparalleled mastery of his craft. It was his legacy as an ancient warrior, woven into the very fabric of his being, it was what he had been born to do. As the first assailant's body crumpled to the ground, his comrades could only watch in horror, their fates already sealed by the predatory force who now turned his unyielding gaze upon them.

The next man, now the closest to The Hunter, was starting to recover from the shock. His eyes, wide with fear, began to narrow with determination as he leveled the muzzle of his rifle, the practiced motion of a seasoned combatant. But The Hunter was already moving, anticipating the threat long before the first shot could leave the barrel.

Across the room, the other two men—the one guarding the main door and the one standing near the kitchen—were also beginning to react. Their rifles roared to life, sending a blizzard of fiery bolts into the already chaotic scene. The room was filled with the deafening chorus of gunfire, flashes of light illuminating the walls in a staccato rhythm of destruction, although to his accelerated senses, they sounded more like the steady drum beat to which these men would march to death's door. Despite their training, none of them had ever encountered anything that moved at the preternatural speed The Hunter possessed. Their frantic, almost panicked efforts were hopelessly inadequate.

With a fluid pirouette, The Hunter manoeuvred around the nearest attacker, seamlessly transforming his dance into a deadly advantage. He shoved the man into the path of the oncoming hail of fire, using his momentum to shield himself behind the flailing soldier. The assailant's unarmored body was pummeled by a dozen laser bolts fired on full automatic, each one tearing through flesh and bone with merciless ease. Body armor was scant protection against that sort of firepower at the best of times, but without any at all, the man's body was obliterated. The impact of the bolts was horrifying; each hit blowing a hole the size of a small melon through him. In mere seconds, he didn't simply die—his body just disintegrated, falling to pieces as those large holes quickly connected to each other in a grotesque display of devastation.

But The Hunter hadn't even broken his stride. The precision and fluidity of his movements were almost otherworldly, a dance of death that left no room for error or reprieve. As the dismembered remains of the second attacker crumpled to the floor, The Hunter was already advancing, his eyes locked onto the three remaining threats.

One struggling to pull himself off the floor, dazed and pinned under the body of the first attacker.

One by the kitchen, too far away to be of any threat.

One by the front door. He dies last.

The assessments were made in a fraction of a heartbeat. Quick, ruthless, and efficient, just like his fighting style.

The speed at which The Hunter moved meant that even fundamental forces like gravity had only a marginal hold on his actions. As he surged forward, his feet left the floor, carried by the sheer force of his own momentum. He launched himself up and against the wall, running along it with an effortless grace that defied physics for less than a few real-time seconds. Behind him, laser bolts crashed into the plasterwork in a furious barrage, but not one of them came close to hitting their mark.

With a powerful push, The Hunter sprang off the wall, spinning through the air like a corkscrew. To the men in the room, he was a phantom, moving far too fast for them to track properly. In the air, he twisted his body with impeccable control, his senses honed to an uncanny sharpness.

His long Danja left his hand and was launched with brutal lethality through a single flick of his wrist as his body spun. The blade scythed through the air, a lethal projectile aimed with unerring precision, honed through literal centuries of grueling training. It buried itself almost to the hilt into the opposite wall. The fact that the skull of the third man—the one who had been knocked down by the first—was in its path didn't even slow it down. The blade pierced through bone, brain, and drywall with horrifying ease, and the pommel flapped back and forth in the air under the sudden stop it had just experienced.

Target three''s body slumped lifelessly toward the floor, but most of its weight was grotesquely held up by the blade and pommel protruding from his face. His leg twitched, the final spasm of a life extinguished by The Hunter's savage, albeit inevitable intrusion into their mission. The Hunter landed lightly, already shifting his focus to the next target.

This is what he lived for. He didn't enjoy killing, nor did he take pleasure in taking a life; it was simply his purpose. And without a purpose, a man was nothing. The assailants he faced were trained—that much was clear from the first moment he spotted them on the street—but they were soldiers, not killers. There was a difference. Soldiers fought as part of a unit, following orders and relying on teamwork. They worked in packs and depended on distance and overwhelming firepower, pure aggression designed to push an often inferior opponent off balance, then kill from range. They were warriors, probably very good ones.

He, on the other hand, was a loner, an apex predator. This is what he was built for. Every muscle fiber, every instinct, every reflex had been honed with a single purpose in mind: to kill. He hunted his prey meticulously. He stalked them, watched their movements, and waited for the perfect moment to strike. When he did, it was a lethal, devastating combination of violence, ruthlessness, and unparalleled skill.

He was a master at using an enemy's tactics against them. Soldiers liked to keep their distance in a fight, exchanging fire until one side could flank or overwhelm the other. So he got in close, denying them the luxury of space and time. He didn't give them a chance to organize. By the time the leader—the man by the apartment door—had composed himself enough to start barking out orders, sixty percent of his force was already dead.

His attacks were not just physical but psychological. Each strike was designed to sow confusion and terror, breaking the enemy's will to fight. There was no mercy, no hesitation in his actions. And he made sure that each of his victims witnessed the deaths of the ones that came before them. That panic made them careless, it made them rush. A rushing adversary was less careful, less precise, less disciplined, at exactly the moment they needed to be those things the most.

But their killer moved with the intent and the aggression of tiger in the hunt, nothing else mattered but the kill. Every movement was calculated to ensure maximum efficiency. In the chaos of battle, he was almost a ghost, appearing and disappearing with lethal precision.

This wasn't a fight, this was sport.

As the leader finally managed to get a few words out, trying to rally his remaining men, it was already too late. The Hunter landed from his quick jaunt through the air, rolled, and slashed out with his shorter Danja. It wasn't a long blade, but it had been honed and sharpened to the point that the cutting edge was barely more than a few atoms thick, and it was certainly long enough to cut into the fourth man's throat, slicing in deep enough to knick the inside edge of the spine. With the tendons cut and the momentum of the force applied, the man's head tilted backward, the back of his skull hitting his shoulder blades, two arcs of blood spurting high enough to hit the ceiling, and he toppled to the side.

He didn't dwell on the morality of his actions. The world he lived in was one of absolutes, of life and death, predator and prey. In his mind, he was simply fulfilling his purpose. And in the end, that's all that was the only concern that mattered after his mission.

The room suddenly grew eerily silent, punctuated only by the desperate clicks of the leader's fingers relentlessly pulling the trigger of his now-depleted rifle and the heavy, whimpered breaths of the women on the floor behind him. The frantic sound echoed in the oppressive quiet, a futile testament to the man's desperation. Firing on full auto had afforded him mere seconds of operation before the power pack was drained, and, in his panic, this man had squandered every single one of them. The emptiness of his weapon mirrored the hopelessness of his situation—a final, hollow gesture in the face of impending doom.

Standing tall, moving slowly enough to ensure the leader of this little expedition could see him properly, the Hunter stalked toward him. The man dropped his rifle, reaching for his sidearm, but he was too late. The hunter caught his wrist as he tried to lift it, then drove his Danja into the flesh under his chin; a glint of metal flashed between his parted lips as the blade bridged the gap between his jaws and then plunged through the soft tissue at the roof of his mouth and into his brain.

The Hunter stood still, holding the man's eyes as the last vestiges of life drained from them.

Finally, he let the man fall, keeping his hand on this weapon and letting it slide free of its victim. The Hunter stood amidst the carnage, his expression unchanged, his purpose fulfilled. There was no satisfaction, no pride—only the knowledge that he had done what he had been born to do. With a final, assessing glance at the fallen, he turned his attention to the primary target, the one individual whose file had brought him to this place.

Her eyes were rolling, but even from where he stood, he could see the subtle yet ethereal glowing blue of them. The other girl, the roommate, was still covering her, but her eyes - normal and human - were darting in fear around the room, first to each of the now dead attackers, then to the dead civilian on the ground between them, and then finally to him.

He growled at her.

Reaching into a small pack on the back of his belt, he fished out a small medical pack with practiced ease and tossed it across the room to her. "Tend to her, more will be coming, and I need to deal with them."

"Who... who are you?" she asked with a trembling breath.

He just looked at her. "Once she is healed, prepare yourselves to leave... and get dressed."

"But... What about the police, they're on their way."

He walked over to the last man, the leader, the one who had, until quite recently, had his head impaled onto the business end of his blade, he reached down and gripped the man's hair, yanking it up to show the macabre expression to the horrified Jess. "Does he look familiar?" Jess frowned at the face, the suddenness and brusquness of the question taking her by surprise and forcing her to do as she was told. It was hard to tell with all the blood, but now that he mentioned it, there was something familiar about him...

It took a few seconds for her to see it, and the gasp that left her lips echoed loudly around the room. "Detective Marlon? They are police?"

"No, Mercs. They intercepted your call, you never spoke to the police. Help isn't coming. It's just me, and more of them are coming up the stairs. So get ready to leave, Now!"

The girl seemed to snap out of whatever mindset she had been in, darting a glance at the corpse again, then down at her friend, only then seeming to remember what the man in their midst had said about getting dressed, that she was was naked and her bare chest was still casually displayed to the room before snapping one of her hands up to cover herself. He rolled his eyes, not that she could see them behind his mask, turned without another word, and headed out the door. The five dead men were part of a larger team, the rest of its members were close by, and they would need to be dealt with.

His target would come to no more harm this night, or any other while under his charge.

********

Histories and Lore

Of all the things that would become important in a space-faring society, language was simultaneously at the top and at the bottom of a list of things earlier humans would have considered.

Some questions are obvious. How does one establish communication with an alien race with a completely foreign form of dialogue? How does one interpret gestures and body language in a species with a totally different physiology than humans? What does the changing of skin color mean, or the release of certain biochemical enzymes? How does one learn to talk to a species that doesn't have a mouth, or a tongue, or vocal cords? Early twentieth-century popular media came up with some interesting, albeit wildly unrealistic, solutions to this problem. But the main two could essentially boiled down to these: the development of a piece of technology that miraculously managed to translate an alien dialect into a language a human could understand - because, of course, all aliens can talk. Or, even more novelly, all of them just happened to speak perfect English and everyone could understand each other perfectly.

In a massive break with tradition, Hollywood wasn't a million miles out with one of them.

The technology part, at least.

Obviously.

To be fair to those ancient TV execs, the overwhelming majority of species on Earth communicate through some form of audible communication of varying complexity. Dogs bark, horses ney, hippos do that rumbling thing in their throats, even ants have tiny vocal profiles, and - if you don't count the ridiculous series of indeciphable grunts coming out of the mouths of teenagers - humans talk. You get the idea. So to imagine an entire planet where that wasn't the case - like the curiosity of the planet Lux, where entire ecosystems are built around communicating through a completely silent, yet still beautiful form of bioluminescent light shows - was probably expecting a little much from people who thought "little green men" encompassed everything there was to know about alien physiology.

For the most part, this little piece of technology - which, typically for human language, is known by at least a dozen different names, but for the sake of clarity, we will call the universal translater - works in a very simple way that goes something like this:

Humans meet aliens. Humans and aliens, either in person or on a ship, stare at each other for a while until both parties understand that neither side is going to shooting... okay, sometimes there is shooting, but that's rare. At some point, a means of communication is opened up, at which time a number of methods become available. If the alien species used vocal communication, the UT is sent over as a gift. Eventually - and this period has been known to take as little as an hour, but also as long as twenty-seven years - the alien species realizes that the device is programmed to have their entire dictionary of words - from spelling to pronunciation - downloaded into it. Some very clever computer programming is able to decipher the grammar and syntax and is then able to translate very basic forms of speech between the two parties. As time goes on, with trade and diplomatic relations being established, the two species start to interact with each other more and more, and, after some time, xenolinguists get involved.

How these people manage to take the very basic translations from the UT and evolve them into an actually teachable language is a mystery known only to them, but somehow, they manage it. In another nod to those ancient TV writers, it turns out that human languages—specifically English, Chinese, and oddly, French—are pretty simple and, therefore, fairly easy for alien species to learn. Nobody was happier about this than the French.

Of course, there are other alternatives to this scenario. Humans meet aliens, shots may or may not be exchanged, and eventually, it is discovered that the alien species doesn't use any form of vocal communication. The universal translator isn't entirely useless in these circumstances either; provided the aliens have some form of written language, the same process can still apply, and communication between intergalactic species essentially boils down to an email chain.

But then things can get more complicated. Take the Khuvakians, for example. They have both vocal and written forms of communication, except neither one of them can be used to establish a dialogue with humans. Their written language is rudimentary at best, and their vocal communication is a series of clicks and growls with a comparative complexity to dogs. Primarily, they communicate through pheromones, body language, and an inherited, genetically transferred understanding of their role in society and how to do it. Biologists have been trying to sink their teeth into that particular mystery for centuries and have gotten exactly nowhere.

Yet the Khuvakians were, until quite recently, significantly more technologically advanced than humanity, having developed FTL travel when Leonardo DaVinci was alive and well and plasma weaponry around the same time the Chinese were building a certain wall. They have a comprehensive, almost instinctual understanding of maths to such a high complexity that their average child would be able to understand equations that a human university professor would struggle with. The linguists, not being able to either excrete pheromones or grow the scales necessary for displays of body language, were woefully unprepared to develop any means of communication between them and the encroaching human empire.

It was actually the Khuvakians who worked out how to speak English long before the linguists got close to deciphering their language, and they surprised everyone when they first revealed that they could, in fact, speak... albeit in something that—thanks to the way their nasal cavities worked to make the relevant sounds—sounded oddly like a high-society English accent.

But, of course, other species couldn't always understand what humans were trying to communicate, nor could humans figure out a way to communicate with them. A small aquatic race called the Neovites, for example, - a demunitve, octopus-like aquatic race occupying a single planet on the extreme edge of Imperium space, close to the Melanite border - communicate through passing psychically loaded chemicals to each other via physical touch. Unsurprisingly, as of yet, there have been no formal channels of dialogue between their planet and the Human empire that surrounds it.

Although, this is not for a lack of trying.

Despite the main political efforts and the majority of the public imagination, which have been focused on the larger galactic civilizations bordering the imperium, there are countless other, smaller species out in the vast reaches of the cosmos, and each of them has provided its own unique puzzle to solve when it comes to establishing a line of communication.

Of course, there is also the issue of language within the boundaries of the Imperium. Humanity didn't envision this when looking toward the stars.

Around the time the new human order was established as an Empire, it was decided that a bastardization of English and Chinese—the most spoken languages on Earth to that point—would become the backbone of modern society. As with all things, time had other ideas.

Language is a living entity, constantly evolving in ways that often go unnoticed by the average person. Take a moment to consider the slang terms that are in heavy use today—words and phrases that have emerged only within the past year or two. They serve as a clear illustration of how swiftly language can transform. Now, imagine scaling that evolution across centuries, and you begin to grasp the dynamic, ever-changing nature of communication that has marked human existence.

In the two hundred years since the formation of the Imperium, this linguistic evolution accelerated dramatically. A new language emerged, a fascinating hybrid that blended elements from its two predecessor languages with a rich infusion of scientific terminology and contemporary slang. This language reflected not only the practical needs of an expansive and advanced society but also its cultural nuances, shaped by generations of innovation and interaction.

This newly forged language became the dominant mode of communication within the vast reaches of the Imperium, uniting its diverse population under a common tongue. It was aptly named "Earth Standard," a nod to its origins and the foundational role of Earth in the history of humanity. Earth Standard represented not just a means of communication; it symbolized the fusion of old worlds and new ideas, encapsulating the spirit of an Imperium that was constantly pushing the boundaries of knowledge and expansion.

As Earth Standard flourished, it continued to evolve, absorbing influences from the myriad cultures and experiences of its speakers. In bustling cities and remote outposts alike, phrases and idioms flourished, reflecting the diverse tapestry of life within the Imperium. It stood as a testament to humanity's ability to adapt and innovate, ensuring that language remained a vital force in expressing identity, culture, and community across the ages.

Despite humanity's propensity for making things as complicated as possible, Earth Standard was adopted as the official language of the Imperium. However, this did not erase the tapestry of older languages and dialects that continued to thrive among large segments of the population. From French and Spanish to Afrikaans and Swahili and from Japanese to Korean and Thai, a rich variety of linguistic traditions remained vibrant in everyday life. The reality was simple yet intricate: while everyone within the Imperium could communicate in Earth Standard and be understood in any corner of the vast territory, the language spoken in day-to-day interactions was heavily influenced by one's location.

As is often the case with language, the flavor and nuances of speech depended entirely on the region. This linguistic diversity was not merely a relic of the past; it was a testament to the rich cultural identities that persisted, infusing local communities with their unique heritage and shared experiences.

Initially, the Colonial Affairs Bureau attempted to impose a strict policy requiring that new colonies adopt Earth Standard exclusively. They believed this would foster unity and streamline communication across the Imperium. However, the reality of implementing such a mandate soon proved to be a logistical nightmare. Efforts to police and enforce compliance revealed deep-rooted difficulties and a myriad of practical challenges—ranging from cultural loyalty to the difficulties in educating populations suddenly thrust into a monolingual framework.

Recognizing the futility of their endeavors, the Bureau eventually gave up, allowing the diverse array of languages to coexist freely. In doing so, they not only acknowledged the limitations of their authority but also celebrated the rich mosaic of human expression that flourished across the Imperium. It became clear that, like the people themselves, language expressed an ever-evolving story of identity, belonging, and resilience in an age of expansion and discovery. The richness of this linguistic landscape added depth to the cultural fabric of the Imperium, ensuring that each colony retained a piece of its heritage even as it navigated the broader tides of galactic progress.

This, however, opened the door to a rather unexpected phenomenon. As the fabric of society within the Imperium began to shift, populations from Earth started to emigrate in droves to planets where the emphasis placed on language far outweighed the inherent quality of the planets themselves. Colonists found themselves increasingly willing to relocate based on the comfort of speaking the same language as their neighbors, even if it meant settling on a planet that offered significantly fewer resources or less favorable living conditions compared to other options.

Take the planet Xin, for example. It has been colonized almost exclusively by individuals hailing from the region known as China. Within the bustling settlements of Xin, the rich cultural heritage of its inhabitants shapes daily life, infusing the planet with traditions, culinary delights, and social norms that mirror their Earthly roots. By contrast, New Washington—a world where English is the predominant language—boasts its own community characterized by facets of Anglo-American culture, thriving alongside its distinct musical styles and artistic expressions.

Similarly, Cennet has become home to a vibrant community primarily composed of individuals from Turkey and the Near East. The settlers have woven their customs and practices into the very fabric of daily existence, creating a unique fusion of tradition and innovation that further solidifies their bonds. Meanwhile, the planet Veet has attracted a populace that almost exclusively speaks Malayalam, bringing with it a kaleidoscope of art, literature, and culinary practices from the southwestern region of India.

This deliberate emphasis on linguistic commonality has greatly facilitated the acclimatization of populations to their new environments. Establishing communities grounded in shared language has not only enhanced social cohesion and created a strong sense of belonging but has also resulted in tangible benefits such as increased productivity, longer life expectancy, and overall happiness among residents. As people navigate the challenges of establishing lives on these new worlds, familiarity in communication has fostered more effective collaboration and problem-solving, allowing them to adapt and thrive.

Beyond these personal and community benefits, the implications of this phenomenon extend to more profound levels of loyalty and attachment to the Imperium. Research has indicated a notable correlation between the linguistic identity of these populations and their sentiments toward their homeworlds. Residents often express a greater sense of allegiance to the Imperium, feeling a profound connection to Earth or, at least, to specific geographical regions of it. This bond has proved advantageous, as it cultivates a shared commitment to Imperial values and fosters cooperative endeavors that further unify the fabric of the Imperium across its vast and diverse territories. In this way, language has become not only a means of communication but also a vital thread binding together the stories, hopes, and aspirations of humanity as they venture forth into the stars.

This is no more illustrated in the outer ring, where colonists were forced, under pain of prison sentences, to only speak Earth Standard beyond the confines of their own home, and we all know the situation in the spiral arm, don't we?

In the grand tapestry of human experience, language has always played a vital and integral role. However, since the dawn of humanity's ventures into the vastness of the stars, the significance of language has taken on an even greater and more profound meaning.

Language serves as the foundation upon which cultures are built, traditions are preserved, and identities are forged. It is the medium through which we express our deepest emotions, our most complex ideas, and our shared histories. In the context of the Imperium's expansion across the galaxy, language has become an even more crucial element in shaping the human experience.

On one hand, language has become a powerful tool for tying populations to the ancient birthplaces of their forebears. As colonists settle on distant worlds, the ability to maintain linguistic ties to their ancestral homelands fosters a profound sense of connection and belonging. This not only eases the process of adaptation to new environments but also preserves the rich tapestry of cultural diversity that has long defined the human spirit.

On the other hand, the importance of language has taken on a geopolitical dimension as well. The Imperium has learned, through hard-earned lessons, that the precise pronunciation or interpretation of even the simplest of words can have far-reaching consequences. The correct tranlastion for a single word, even one a innocuous as "pencil" has the potential to unleash war on a scale that could lead to tens of millions of deaths.

In this ever-evolving landscape, language remains as vital today as it has always been, arguably even more so. It is the thread that weaves together the diverse stories of humanity, binding us to our past while also shaping the contours of our future. As the Imperium continues to expand its reach across the cosmos, language will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in forging the bonds that unite us, ally us with new neighbors, or send our children off to war, whilst also preserving the rich tapestry of human expression, and ensuring that our shared journey into the stars remains a testament to the power of communication and connection.