SPELVES (Space Elves)

In the year 1,990,000 of the rule of the Elven Central Committee, dozens of crack special operators have been sent to prison by the courts for crimes they did, in all fairness, commit.

These women are promptly transferred to a maximum security stockade in deep space by Navy Commander F. Fenquen of the Convict Special Assault Team programme.

Today, to reduce their sentences, they survive as elite soldiers and their Warden’s personal entertainment. If the government has a problem; if no one else can help; and if the right palms are greased; maybe you can hire…

The G-Team.

+++

“Up and at ‘em, Golf.”

A camera feed of an elf with short, red hair popped up on top of the news feed Team G were watching on their wall-mounted screen. Who the hell knew why Fenquen thought they weren’t up already. It was eight and breakfast had already been served, eaten and taken away by the crew of autonomous drones that ran the prison day-to-day.

Well, Araro knew. Cairan and Brymys followed shortly after when a camera mishap exposed the warden’s leaf-patterned pyjamas.

Either this was a new drone test or they were actually going out and stretching their legs.

“Yeah?” Araro asked the obvious after a long moment.

“Priority one, in from Cencom. Suit up your girls, Petty Officer.”

“Got it.”

“PO.”

“Uh huh?”

“Appearances, please.”

“Yes, Commander Fenquen. I’ll get right on that.” Araro had never officially outranked her, but they served in the same unit for some time. Under the makeup and prim uniform, the young, redheaded warden had a decade less military experience.

“It’s a start. I’ll see you at the briefing room. Out.” 

The screen turned off, leaving a reflection of the two girls at the table. Cairan, a petite blonde, sat across from Araro. Where was Brymys?

Ah. She sat up from her bed and moaned like the ensuing stretch was the tryouts for a porn tape.

“Do you have to make that sound?” Araro had only known her a few days, but had her figured out. Just a former marine who knew exactly what she liked and wasn’t ashamed to admit it was sex. 

“It was a really good stretch, PO.”

“Sure it was.”

Brymys walked behind her and started massaging her shoulders. She was tall, with a dark complexion and snow-white hair. Very pretty, when she wasn’t smirking and kept her mouth shut. “Maybe I could help you stretch before we go? Loosen up a little?”

“Don’t push it.” Araro slapped a hand away from her loose side-ponytail.

“Maybe we should get going now? I don’t want us to get a late penalty or something.” Cairan was too timid off-mission, but she was right. The gentle push was helped along by the fact that she had terrible luck with the drone system punishing her for no apparent reason.

The door to their locker room slid open with a pneumatic hiss and they filed in. Most of the equipment sans the guns was here. Fenquen had lots of excuses she told command or the secret police about why she was running CSAT, but the real reason was having a testing ground for her pet tech projects.

It was a mixed bag. The black catsuits Team G put on first? Great. They were more bulletproof than some hard armour while they hugged the body and had a pretty good range of motion to boot. They weren’t great for heat, but the modifications each member asked for were put in now. Araro went without sleeves, Brymys had a zipper down the front that exposed some chest, and Cairan cut down the legs into spats. 

The carrying harness was interesting if nothing else. Straps crisscrossed their upper and lower bodies, holding up a computer on the back of their belts and a power cell perched between their shoulderblades to run all the fancy onboard tech they used. On top of that, it could be used as a rappelling harness and embedded electromagnets meant that any pouch could be attached to any strap you cared for.

Besides a sleeker, fancier set of tactical display goggles than the rest of the military had, that was where the opinions of the Warden and her prisoners started diverging. Sure, she said the collars and bracelets she made them wear at all times had lots of helpful and interesting features, but Araro knew this was just her personal fetish.

Once they were dressed, the real stars of the show filed in. Autonomous drones. These ones were the type that were annoying to deal with, too. Araro suspected there weren’t many living guards aside from Fenquen, so these things ran on a pretty iffy set of programming.

“Present prisoner,” the three hovering menaces chirped in unison.

 Doing this just right was the trick. They projected a little box onto the ground you were supposed to step into, with your legs spread just so, or they would give you a penalty point.

Araro’s bot flashed a green light, then connected a cable between her ankles that would prevent her from running. Almost like a standard pair of transport cuffs, though the fact that every part of their suits had a place to attach restraints didn’t go unnoticed. 

Brymys survived the process unscathed, but out of the corner of her eye, unlucky Cairan’s flashed yellow.

“Resistance detected.”

The secret here was to shut the hell up and not move after that. There were all sorts of uncomfortable positions and accessories in each drone’s repertoire. Cairan held her breath and managed to avoid being gagged, but her arms were locked behind her back and an extending bar spread her legs just further than was comfortable.

Definitely for the sake of prisoner security and not to add to Fenquen’s candid camera collection.

The other two had cables attached to their bracelets to make them function like handcuffs, then a lead connected their collars together.

“Prisoner transport commencing.”

The door to the team’s cell closed behind them, then they were pulled through the opposite side and into the hall. It was slow going, with Cairan in front. With her ankles being bound as they were, her only option was to waddle forward. 

At least the robot could tell she was doing her best and didn’t drag her faster than she could go. If only that much thought went into whatever algorithm decided what constituted resistance.

Wherever the CSAT facility was, it was a compact place. Low ceilings, with the wide hall studded on either side with secure doors. There weren’t any prisoner facilities outside their (admittedly large and comfortable) cells. 

There were definitely plenty of those, if each door that looked like theirs led to one. This team being ‘G’ in the naming scheme implied another six for A-F, but when Fenquen and Araro worked for the (now defunct) NSAT-Q, it was just a random letter picked to make two infantry companies’ worth of operators seem like an entire expeditionary force. 

…That might have been why it seemed like they had an infinite budget, now that Araro thought about it.

They were dragged by their collective leash into the one traditionally nice room in the whole prison. Leaf-green carpet, wood veneer halfway up the wall, comfortable rattan chairs and a glass table with one of those holographic doohickeys in the middle. 

And, of course, their beloved Warden on the other side. There had to be some robot Fenquen designed to put her makeup on, straighten her hair and iron out her uniform. She was too fast and too parade-perfect for anything else.

“Good morning, ladies. Have a seat.”

There wouldn’t be any saluting with bound hands or even coming to attention when Cairan couldn’t get her heels together. Just little sacrifices a warden had to make if she wanted a good show.

And she got one, if the smirk was anything to go by. The drone led them to the chairs, ordering ‘turn’ and ‘sit’ once it was satisfied its prisoners were in the right spots. With the press of a button from Fenquen, the chair restraints turned on.

How it was intended to work was that the magnets embedded in the arms and legs of each chair would catch the wrist- and ankle-cuffs of whoever sat down, locking her legs open and arms off to one side. A reasonably comfortable position, which Araro and Brymys quickly found themselves in. 

Cairan, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. The bar between her legs clanged against the steel struts of the chair and the cuffs around her wrists—locked together behind her—were yanked toward the nearest arm of the chair. That left her twisted off to one side, leaning over with her butt barely on the seat.

“Ma-ugh-Ma’am?” She grunted.

“Hmm? Oh! Uh…” Fenquen looked around at the console in front of her and tapped the button on the side of her data monocle a few times. “I… hm. Can you hold on for a few minutes? The right settings for this haven’t been configured.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Araro could see that Cairan was just playing tough, shifting her hips and looking for a position where she wouldn’t be straining her muscles for the whole briefing. There was time enough to call out this stupidity. “Can’t you just turn off her chair? I don’t think she’s going to be running or posing much threat like that.”

“Uh.” The Warden covered her red-painted lips and suddenly found a very interesting corner of the ceiling.

“What?” 

“I can’t turn off the chairs individually.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t think I’d need to. I’ll add the feature when I get a chance.”

“Fine.” Sorry, Cairan. 

“So,” Fenquen clapped her hands to dispel any further questions about her competence. “How much do you know about pop stars?”

“Hate ‘em.” Araro said. No reason to play the guess-what-I’m-thinking-about game with her.

“Aw, come on PO,” Brymys shot. “Some of them are pretty cute.”

“I grew up in an asteroid belt where the station administrator played it over the intercom every second of every day. If I hear anyone singing some sappy dogshit about the grass by their house or rocking anyone’s body, I’m strangling them.”

“I mean, sure the music sucks, but if you just imagine some half-dressed twink singing it to you and giving you the eyes, it’s not so bad.”

“Brymys, if you get off on boys telling you they’ll be loyal to you like they’re loyal to the party, that’s on you. They’re going to be fucking at least three people behind your back, by the way.”

“Yeah, whatever. Turnabout would be fair play. Cairan, back me up here.”

Fenquen cleared her throat. “Later, ladies. You’re going on a rescue mission to pick one up and I don’t want him touched in anger or—LR Brymys—anything else.”

“This is an uncharacteristic, inaccurate and cruel assessment of my personality, Warden.”

“Is it now?” Fenquen put her elbow on the table and rested her head on her fist.

“I have never had sex with someone under my ward.”

She spared a glance toward Cairan and Araro, then snorted. “Since nobody here believes that, I won’t bother getting out the list. I do want to warn you that you’ll be playing with fire if you so much as look at them the wrong way.”

“What, is he gonna call Elven Resources on me?”

Fenquen tapped the data monocle over her left eye a few times and a holographic screen raised out of the table and displayed the image of four male elves. “The Pure Hearts band has gone missing on Fraxinus V during a sector tour. Ring any bells?”

“Fuuuck. Them?”

“Them.”

“Sorry, uh… who is that?” Cairan asked.

“They’re a party-pop group that’s very important to the Central Committee. They’re quite popular, so it would be a government nightmare if something were to happen to them.” Fenquen laid her white-gloved hands on the table.

“Yeah, yeah, propaganda, whatever.” Brymys leaned over as much as she could with her wrists stuck to the arms of her chair. “Listen, Cairan, you ever heard of a unicorn?”

“Like a horse?”

“Like a- No, not like a horse. I’m saying the secret police won’t do anything but scoop our charred remains into a bucket if we get a little rapey, since the fans are gonna kill us waaaay before the all-seeing eye can even find us.”

“Oh.”

“Your main VIP is going to be the lead singer, Penlod Pureheart.” The Warden hit a button and one of the faces grew in size. “He’s the face of the group in the public eye. The rest of the band are replaceable and at least one of them is a secret police plant. They wouldn’t tell me which, though.”

“I hope they weren’t stupid enough to break the news.” Araro had worked hostage crises with the media around before and hoped to never repeat the experience.

“Fortunately. They’ve currently got lookalikes lip-synching to a recording on their next stopover, but that won’t trick anyone for long.”

“How about the situation on the ground?”

“Rebels. They’re being led by their former governor, Chairwoman Langstrom, late of Central’s borderworld development committee.”

“How many are we talking?”

“Fifty thousand or so.”

“Combatants?”

“Let’s say… yes.”

“Central’s glassing the planet afterwards, aren’t they?”

“I’m just going to say ‘classified technology’ and call it there.”

“So no wetwork on this Langstrom, then.”

“Team Bravo is going in as soon as you extract. I think she pissed someone off and was supposed to never be a problem again after the demotion to governor of nothing.”

“Armaments?”

“Nothing to worry about there,” Fenquen scoffed. “Second-line equipment at best. There’s a planetary defence force, but you’ll be dropped off outside the main complex and should be able to slip past unnoticed. Other than the industrial hub, it’s just a few scattered outposts in the forest.”

“This… maybe this is stupid,” Cairan said. “But is he going to be a pain to transport?”

Brymys laughed. “Why? You wanna shove him in a box?”

“That’s-!” She blushed and looked away. “Can you stop bringing that up? Is he going to be easy to work with, I mean.”

“Oh, he’s a sweetie. Tons of fan meetups, autographs, you name it. I did a handshake event with him once at my old base and bought him a drink. He might even put o-”

“Brymys.” Araro spat. “What was all that fire-and-brimstone talk for if you’re still going to make a pass at him anyway?”

“I’m just saying if he agrees to a little smooch for his knights in shining armour, nobody has to know. I fully respect his consent.”

“Fenq-” She stopped herself, faced their Warden, then started again. “Ma’am. How far out are we?”

“The shuttle’s ready when you are.”

+++

“Warning. Crew is advised to brace for landing. Five. Four-” The synthesised voice of the drone piloting the shuttle was barely audible over the thunder of airburst shells exploding around them. One anti-grav repulsor had already been hit and the vehicle was spiralling.

Araro jammed her thumb into the push-to-talk button on her earpiece. “Control, what the fuck happened to-!?”

The shuttle impacted the canopy of trees and added an extra axis of rotation to the craft. By the time it stopped, the whole thing was upside-down and backwards.

“…Second-line equipment. Shit.” She hung limply in the seat harness, ponytail touching what had formerly been the roof. The tactical display in her glasses helpfully warned her that everyone on the team’s pulses were abnormally high. Thanks. “Sound off. Any bumped heads?”

“…I just wanna puke.” Brymys unbuckled herself and made not breaking her neck look easy.

“Don’t say… ugh…” Cairan made a valiant attempt to hold it in, but she failed to get out of her seat in time.

“Not hurt though, Cairan?”

A weak thumbs-up complimented the retching like a positive attitude to latrine duty.

“Well, let’s get the hell out of here, then.” Araro dropped out of her seat without much grace, but she didn’t break her head open or land in the puddle of vomit. “Control, do you read?”

The answer was static, mostly. “—nd broke—proceed with missi—’ll work on a fix. How cop—”

“Golf copies. Out.” The other two members of the team were on their feet if not entirely ready. “Looks like we’re on our own. Let’s torch the shuttle and hope they think we died on impact.”

“Got it.” Brymys grabbed their satchel of pyrotechnics and dug out a canister of thermite. “Maybe we should light the woods up, too? Could cover our tracks.”

“Good call. Cairan, grab the survival equipment and I’ll pull overwatch.”

Five minutes didn’t see a response team. Dazed as they were, that was just enough time to burn everything around the crash site and make tracks.

The belt computers on all their equipment were intact, which meant their maps were still accessible. Thank the God-Tree for that. Araro hadn’t needed to read a map more complicated than a building floor plan since basic training. Orienteering in the woods wasn’t exactly within the Navy purview.

There were a couple green cloaks in the survival kit that covered their black catsuits well enough as they began the march to the mission. It was normal enough outerwear that they’d be able to walk into the compound unchallenged, if they were lucky.

Giddy energy surrounded the team when they got to their first target. It was a small power substation up one side of the valley that the complex laid in. They avoided the actual power station, knowing it would be heavily guarded, but the rebels hadn’t bothered to defend this little number at all.

From there, they could see lights aplenty—even a stage set up in what looked like a parking lot. A quick tap of the zoom on their tactical glasses revealed… someone on the stage. It was too fuzzy to tell.

Well, the party would be over soon.

At a wave, Cairan hit the detonator. There was a pop as a small charge damaged a critical component, then a thermite hiss as an access hatch was sealed shut. Nice touch.

The spell was broken by the radio jumping back to life. “Should be… Golf, do you read?”

Araro herself didn’t much feel like talking to the boss, but professional habit kicked in. “I hear you, Control.”

“Good. Did you cut the power?”

“Correct.”

“I might only have a window, then. Beaming you a set of coordinates.”

Ding. A dozen new dots popped up on the map with garbled strings of letters and numbers as labels. “Received.”

“Exfil will be at the point relating to Golf-B. Secondary at the point relating to Golf-C.”

“Copy. Anything else?”

“Minimise comms usage. It’s unclear whether they could be intercepted.”

“Wilco.”

“Good luck. Control out.”

For fuck’s sake. This wouldn’t be half as annoying if Fenquen had just admitted she was sending them onto a heavily armed rebel planet that could shoot down stealth shuttles, with no effective comms and only pistols. (But the SMGs were definitely on the way soon!)

Araro turned to her team. “Brymys? Where are we going after this?”

She held a hand over her glasses to get better contrast on her tactical display. “I think… Yeah. 23m4r2sod1u5/5z.”

“More than sixty klicks out.”

“Can’t handle a nice walk in the woods, PO?”

“Mine’s…” Cairan huffed. “Oh, you get Marine Special Operations Division 1 in yours. I’m just the one that says ‘quartermaster box’ with the date I was convicted.”

There it was. Point 1/4m4s73r88bo&x. Little harsh, Fenquen. Sort of funny, but harsh.

+++

The compound was in a panic by the time they arrived. The sky was red from wildfire smoke, the lights were out and armed elves were dashing around helplessly like it was the end of days.

It was easy, in the confusion. With most of the advanced tech and suits hidden under their cloaks, they waded into the crowd looking similar enough to Langstrom’s soldiers that nobody stopped them. 

Some poor saps were standing around a generator behind the stage, trying to get the performance back on.

“Hey.” Araro strode confidently towards them and put on the same voice she would use on misbehaving troops before she was shoved in a jail cell. “Chairwoman changed her mind. We’re moving our ‘guest’ to a secure location.”

The one still wearing a Central Committee pin on the lapel of her suit narrowed her eyes. “When?”

“Just now.”

“Why wasn’t I made aware of this? I’m the undersecretary.”

“I’m making you aware right now.”

“How do I know you’re not-”

Bang. Despite the size of the round, whatever alien magic Fenquen was jamming into the suppressors made the pistol hardly louder than a heavy box being dropped. Almost unnoticeable with the volume of the parking lot.

The other two shot up ramrod-straight and started backing off before the blood began to pool. 

Cairan gave Araro a look of irritation that she didn’t know the shortie was capable of. Did she think such a baldfaced lie was going to hold up under interrogation?

Yes, it seemed. She made no attempt to go for her gun and put a hand on each woman’s shoulder.

Brymys dragged the former undersecretary behind some fuel barrels while they whispered. It was about all she could do other than make plans with Araro about who was shooting the one on the left and who had the right.

But… It worked. They saluted Cairan and dashed off to the stage, grabbed whatever-his-name-was and dragged him before them.

“May we… er… may we go now?” Asked the one Brymys was supposed to shoot a minute ago.

Cairan crossed her arms. It didn’t quite sell the illusion, but tweedledee and tweedledumbass in front of her didn’t seem to be working on anything but panic. “Remember what I said. Three days.”

“Yes Ma’am!”

“Off you go.”

Brymys patted her on the back. “What’d you tell ‘em?”

“Langstrom’s from Central, so I just told them there’s going to be a purge. They’re good girls, of course, but they accidentally got on the list. I’m going to sort it out for them and pick them up from a cave west of the facility when this all blows over.”

“So that’s how you get people in boxes.”

Cairan’s stalwart professionalism evaporated all at once and she fired a weapons-grade pout at her taller companion. There was even a little lip tremble thrown in for good measure.

“Alright ladies, let’s beat it. You.” Araro pointed at their target. “Get under the tall one’s cloak and don’t make a damn sound if you value your life.”

Green eyes, dark skin, white hair. Yeah, this was the right guy. It helped that he looked completely lost and distraught, like a hostage would. “I… I… you’re-”

“In a rush. We’ll play the introductions game later.”

“My band! What are you going to do with them?”

“That them on the stage?”

“No! I told you that I want to see them when I’m done singing and you’ve broken your promise twice!”

“Yeah, they’re definitely dead then. In you go.”

“Oh, Mr. Pureheart. We’re here to rescue you, but we don’t have much time.” Sweet fuck, Brymys was really laying it on thick.

“But-!”

She swallowed him in her green cloak. Elven men being the height they usually were, Brymys was in a great position to rest her tits on the top of his head. “Okay. Everyone match my pace. I’m going to walk slowly.”

At least this Pureheart guy knew when to shut up and let the professionals go about their business. Any complaints he made weren’t audible outside the muffling tent of fabric.

The problem was that their group looked awfully funny, moving along the way it did. Excluding the fact Brymys’ chest looked bigger than usual, their pace was glacial compared to most everyone else.

Fortunately, the cut power still had everyone too busy looking for a fix to notice three women who didn’t look important.

Almost. Al-damn-most. They waved and were walking past the last gate guard when her radio crackled to life. 

“All sentries be advised, the guest and undersecretary are both missing. Halt any traffic in and out.”

“Got it. Hold up, you three. Nobody’s allowed to leave any more.”

Shit.

“Why?” Brymys kept on her I’m-trying-to-impress-the-man-under-my-coat voice, clearer and higher-pitched than the way she usually talked. 

“Missing person. It shouldn’t take long, so just stick around.” She tapped her fingers on the counter separating her from them. “…Have I met any of you before? I’m pretty good with faces and I don’t recognise you.”

Cairan rested a hand on Araro’s arm. This. This was the goddamned problem with this military prison system. You get convicted of an assault on a superior officer once, your team reads your rap sheet, then suddenly you’re the squad puppy skinner in their eyes. Not that Araro wanted to hear a former quartermaster’s opinion on the necessity of quick, decisive action. 

Brymys fluttered her eyelashes at the guard. “Don’t you remember that busy night at the canteen a while ago?”

“I don’t remember seeing you there.”

She heaved a dramatic sigh. “That figures. I was trying to catch your eye to buy you a drink all night.”

“I don’t do bribes, if you’re trying to get on my good side.”

“I’ll put it this way,” Brymys leaned over the partition in the guard booth and brushed a lock of hair out of the woman’s face. “I don’t mind opening your gate for you. Unless you’d like a look at mine?”

“Oh, er…” The guard’s ears turned pink and she became more conscious of her appearance. She straightened her hat, then her jacket before she cleared her throat and spoke in a huskier voice. “You’re a very pretty woman, citizen, but I’m afraid I’m on duty.”

“Oh, I love a woman in uniform. I bet you take your job really seriously.”

“Of course! It’s my job to protect and serve.” 

“Maybe you could use a little… service yourself?” Brymys smiled a little too wide when things went her way. At least Araro didn’t lead anyone on.

“I’m on duty.” The rejection lacked its earlier firmness. “And I barely know you anyway.”

“We could fix that.”

“You’re with your friends, aren’t you?”

“-And we still have to do that perimeter sweep,” Araro interrupted. Why the hell was she trying to make the guard look inside her cloak? Was she just too horny to remember what she was doing or what?

“…You’re with the Defence Force?” The guard was taken aback.

“Yeah. You two can flirt all you want once we’re done.”

“I wasn’t-!”

Brymys winked. “You hold down the fort, cutie. Maybe if I do a good job, we can get to know each other over a bottle of wine?”

“I’ll, er… consider it. You should get going before you get in trouble.” This was it. The hard part was over. All they had to do was turn and— “Hey, uh… is there something under your cloak?”

Fuck.

And Brymys. She just couldn’t help herself, could she?

Holding the fabric shut just barely over the VIP’s head, she pulled open a gap over her chest—right where her suit was zipped open. The only thing visible was a patch of bare, umber skin. 

“Nope.”

They slipped out while the scarlet-cheeked guard was still tripping over her words.

Araro waited as long as she could stand. They were out of the line of sight of the security station and still walking toward the woods before she started the lecture.

“Brymys, what the fuck was that?” She hissed.

“What do you mean?” She whispered back, not as quiet as she should have been.

“You nearly exposed us multiple times trying to get a crumb of pussy is what I mean, you dipshit.”

“You don’t think I had a plan, PO? I’m hurt.”

“If there was one, you sure didn’t bring it up with me or Cairan.”

She frowned. Opened her mouth, then shut it again. “Why are you-”

A few soldiers popped out of the treeline, rifles at the ready. Fuck. No cover, unarmoured VIP they might shoot by accident, and of course Fenquen hadn’t thought to even give the team long guns. “Hey!”

Cairan and Araro went for their guns as slowly as they could. Five targets in front. Maybe Brymys could chuck the VIP over her shoulder and put her body between him and the bullets. Cairan could go with her and Araro would cover the rear and hold off reinforcements. Catch up if she made it.

“Are you done flirting yet? Do you know how far they could have gotten by now?!”

“Sorry, sorry. I just didn’t want to miss my chance, you know?” Brymys called. “Any luck so far?”

“Nothing. We’ve got this direction, you go over to the right there.”

“Copy that, boss. We’ll start screaming and shooting if we find anything.”

“Quit screwing around. The Chairwoman’s going to have all our asses if we don’t get the entertainment back. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t sit right for a week last time.”

“Alright already. Good luck, God-Tree be with you and all that.”

“You too.”

Brymys raised her white eyebrows at Araro and started trudging toward ‘their’ sector. 

Fine. Araro followed behind Cairan and jammed her irritation down into the same  overloaded can with the rest of her gripes about this mission. Ready to talk or not, she had a job to do. “…That’s far enough. You can let the VIP out of your coat.”

The short man burst out of Bymys’ cloak like he’d been holding his breath the whole time. “I have a name, you know!”

“Bet you do.” Araro gave him the first real look beyond making sure he was the right guy. ‘Suboptimal’ was the best way to describe him.

Slip-on shoes. Shorts and a crop top that didn’t cover much skin. Blindingly white socks with obnoxious purple and neon green clothes. Thin. Soft hands. Defiant eyes.

“Don’t you know who I am?! You can’t treat me this way!”

Araro leaned over to meet his eyes, hands on her knees. “You’re Penlod Pureheart and my team is supposed to be getting you back alive. Now you look here and listen good. I don’t give a solitary shit if your mom is the Chair of the Central Committee and you’re going to tell her I’m a big fucking meanie when you get back. Alive can mean that you walk, or alive could mean we zipcuff you and carry you to our extraction.”

“…You wouldn’t.”

“I once kicked the husband of a planetary governor in the nuts during the course of a mission like this. You know what I got? A fucking medal.” Pureheart shut up for a few seconds at least, so she stood and got on with the business of saving his stupid ass. “Cairan. Do we have something green to cover this guy with in the survival kit? I could see him from ten klicks out.”

“Uh…” She dug around in the bag to make sure and came up short. “Negative, PO.”

“I’ve got it,” Brymys said. She doffed her cloak and buckled it around the VIP’s neck. “There you go, Mr. Pureheart. Don’t mind her, she’s just got her mind on the mission.”

He was still trembling impotently. “Fine.”

“Good. Let’s get going. We don’t want you caught again, do we?”

It quickly turned into the pain in the ass Araro suspected. Progress was slow through the heavy forest, even on what passed for a trail. As much as she hated to admit it, sailors weren’t well-prepared for a long hike. The heels of their suits caught on tree roots and didn’t provide great traction in mud, regardless of the tech built into them. 

And, of course…

“Can… ha… Can we take a break yet?” The VIP was already panting from thirty minutes’ worth of walking.

“No. I’m not getting my team killed because you can’t keep up.” She was hoping to make it to the extraction point sometime tonight, but that scant hope was dwindling.

“I just need a minute, you slave driver! This stupid cloak is heavy!”

Brymys put a hand on his shoulder like she wanted to point out that he asked for no pickles on his desperate escape burger. “We’re probably out of the critical window, PO. I didn’t see any vehicles that could go down a path like this.”

Araro grunted in response. “They could have bikes.”

“I hope so. Three dirt bikes could get us to the LZ hours faster than this.”

“Fine. Everyone, sit. We don’t know if we’ll get to again.”

Pureheart dropped himself onto a patch of moss and leaned back. “Finally. How much further?”

Brymys put her tactical glasses on and navigated through the menus with a few flicks of her eyes and taps of the button on the side. “Looks like… fifty-eight kilometres.”

“Fi-! Why can’t they just come get us?”

“Aha…”

“Smooth talk all gone, Brymys?” Araro crossed her arms.

“Think of us like… knights-errant! Just us, rescuing our damsel from her tower and going on a great journey to return her home.”

“You’ve been reading too many of those ‘romance’ novels starring burly human men with a thing for elves if that’s what you think of it.”

Pureheart didn’t think it was funny. “Well, what happened then, Ms. Negativity?”

“Our boss didn’t vet her intel and there was more anti-air than she thought. Our shuttle got shot down on the way in, so we have to hike if we don’t want it happening on the way out, too.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“…Is there backup?”

“Beats me.”

“Well, the War- I mean, the Commander said she’d be sending in Bravo team, PO,” Cairan interrupted.

“Yeah, to kill Langstrom. Who knows if they’ve been able to land.”

“Who even are you people?” Aha. The VIP asking the big question way too late. 

Brymys took the opportunity to grab his arm and commit the handshake equivalent of assaulting an innocent old lady on the street. “Bella Brymys. You can call me Bella, if you want!”

“Thanks.” He looked disgusted enough Araro had to bite her lip to keep her flat, professional expression.

“Cairan.”

“Petty Officer Araro. I’m gonna bet that wasn’t the question, though.”

“Names are important. I remember the names of every one of my fans.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“…Are you going to tell me who sent you?”

“Maybe it was one of your fans.”

“Ha ha.”

Cairan frowned and kept glancing at Araro. A few moments later, she made a slow, overcautious approach like she thought she might get a fist in the chin for answering. “What we mean… is… We’re from the Navy. A special forces organisation called CSAT.”

“Well, are you any good?”

“They’re experts, definitely.” She pointed at her teammates. 

“We’re feeling each other out,” Araro said. “The team only got pulled together recently.”

He crossed his arms. “I can tell.”

There was a pause in the conversation. An unnatural stillness in the woods, like nature itself was holding its breath. Cairan’s ear twitched and Araro squinted down the path.

“Are you ignoring me now? Can’t stand the truth, can-!”

“Shh.” Brymys displayed a shocking amount of restraint by laying a hand over Pureheart’s mouth without sticking any fingers inside. 

A few shadows flickered through the trees, one or two twists down the path. One, two… at least six. Running, and at a much faster pace than the team had been making. Shit.

“Let them pass, then into the woods. Cover your tracks if you can and stay off the paths.” Araro brought herself up to a crouch.

“PO?”

“I’ll meet back with you if I make it. Don’t wait up for me.”

“Awfully dangerous, boss.”

“We need these guys off us and that motherfucker-” She pointed at their VIP, “is gonna start singing marching songs any time now. I don’t wanna hear ‘em.”

“You want that to be the last words on your tombstone?”

Araro cracked a grin, stood, and started sprinting down the path, lobbing a few potshots toward the patrol with her pistol.

+++

“Can’t we stop yet?” Penlod’s socks were wet, his stage shoes rubbing up against his heels, and his shoulders were starting to ache from the damp, heavy cloak dragging on the ground and resisting his every step.

“No. We’ve got to keep going as long as we can. It’s going to be nightfall soon and we’ll stop then,” the short, blonde one said. C-something, but he’d forgotten and wasn’t going to bother asking again with such a rude group. 

“Care to consider my offer again, Prince Charming?” The tall one—Bella Brymys, he remembered that—held out her arms for him. Classic crazy fan, but at least she wasn’t being a hardass all the time.

“Just… don’t touch anything you don’t need to, okay?”

“I am a humble knight, not a predator, milord. Perish the thought.”

C-something spun all the way around to raise her eyebrow. He was playing with fire, but he couldn’t go another ten steps. Whatever. Maybe he could pretend the ass-groping was a massage.

Brymys picked him up and the world became significantly higher, even in a princess carry at her chest height. The woods were pretty, now that he could see above the brush. Lots of birch, dyed red in the twilight filtering through smoky skies. Even the stream they were about to wade through looked peaceful.

“Comfortable?”

“…Enough.” Her equipment was digging into his side, but none of these women seemed to care about his complaints anyway. Some rescue this was. The ladies holding him hostage were far nicer.

“Alright, Cairan. What now?” She asked.

“Huh? Me?” The blonde flinched with all the grace of a startled doe.

“Who else?”

“I thought you had things handled.”

“Nah. I’m carrying something heavy now. You do the thinking.” Brymys jostled Penlod up and down like he was nothing more than a slightly inconvenient sack. 

“I don’t really think I…”

“The boss is gone. It’s a great time to mess around.”

Cairan twirled a lock of hair around her finger and grimaced. “Okay. Um… Let’s cross halfway, then go a little upstream so they lose our trail. They usually look straight across first.”

“Damn, where’d you get that one from?”

“Uh… I read it in a book somewhere.”

Brymys laughed. Penlod wouldn’t have been so conscious of it if it didn’t make her entire body jiggle and threaten to open the zipper barely keeping her chest in her clothes. “And here I thought they censored all the useful ones.”

“You just have to know where to look.”

Didn’t these girls know you couldn’t just talk about these things? Did they want to get put in some ‘vocational training’ camp? What if the police thought Penlod encouraged or sympathised with them? He was already on notice after his old drummer made a joke about Cencom’s chairwoman having a flat chest. She said she quit on her own, but he had his suspicions.

Anyway, he needed to get them off this topic, and fast.

“Maybe I should sing to keep our spirits up?” He suggested.

 “Sounds great! Want to do a duet?” 

“Do either of you have a favourite song of mine?”

“I’ll let Cairan pick. I think I know all your songs pretty well.”

“Oh, uh… You just go ahead with whatever.” Cairan turned back around and started wading through the water.

What the hell? Was she doubting what he could do without a band? If she’d watched the feature length documentary (and everyone had,) she would know all of the Pure Hearts’ best songs came from tunes he hummed to the members on the instruments! “Anything! I’m serious. Just name any song and I’ll do it.”

“I don’t know.”

“I Love You Like I Love Cencom? How about Rations for Nothing, Loyalty for Free? Or Last Night the Party Saved My life?”

“I haven’t heard any of those.”

“What? You’ve at least heard Elf in the Mirror.”

“I don’t really follow that stuff. I hadn’t heard of you before this morning.”

“What?! Do you even listen to music? I’m a superstar!”

“Uh… not really. I do books on tape sometimes?”

How could-! But-! This was ridiculous! He’d packed stadiums with half a million fans! He was on every radio station! He sang for the opening ceremony of the party resort month at the Nandai Beach and they threatened to chop the hands off anyone who didn’t clap!

Brymys must have noticed his cheeks getting darker. (The only cheek, by the way, was the absolute cheek he was getting from all three of his so-called rescuers.) She started singing some familiar lyrics. “We’re no strangers to glory… You know the rules, submit yourself! A full commitment is mandatory. You wouldn’t get this from any other elf!”

So Penlod let it happen. Honestly, she was a very competent singer for some random soldier. She kept up easily and her huskier voice complimented the high, sweet tone he favoured. 

They ran through a few hits until they were across the water and a few minutes down a deer trail. Who the hell hadn’t heard Elf in the Mirror? That was one of the few ones he managed to get through with almost no extra Party messaging! 

“So?” That had to have—

“Yeah. Really good. I like the part where you did, uh… You know.”

SHE WAS JUST BEING FUCKING POLITE? How? Literally how? He was—not to toot his own horn—probably the best singer in the entire galaxy! She wasn’t even looking at him. Maybe that was it. Even women who probably hated his singing voice would hang around for nothing but his looks, and that was just common sense. Penlod was damn cute. How couldn’t he be? There was a world-class corps of stylists who travelled around with him to make him look like the most handsome, fuckable man this side of… anywhere! 

“So, do you like my costume?” He opened the cloak a little to give Cairan a better look at the amount of skin he was baring. Just the right amount to keep it interesting. Brymys looked like she wanted to unzip the crop top or see if there was anything visible up the leg of his loose shorts, which was the intention. “I have a pretty skimpy one for Four Hundred Fifty-One Green Balloons.”

No. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. There were two options. One: ‘Oh, wow Penlod, I think you look perfect as you are right now,’ or two: ‘Oh, wow Penlod, that sounds really sexy’ (preferably while blushing.)

So what were with those dead-fish eyes she turned on him? He didn’t even want to hear it any more. She could be script-perfect on what he wanted to hear and it would still be ruined. 

“It’s pretty cool, I guess.”

Penlod Pureheart went limp in Brymys’ arms.

She took a few steps before she shook him a little. “Penlod?”

Nothing.

“Hello? Prince Charming?”

Silence.

“Cairan! You broke him!”

“I was just trying to be nice!” She shot back. “The PO is probably going to actually be mean to him, so I was just being supportive. He’s still breathing, right?”

“You might’ve given him a heart attack. The poor boy’s probably never been turned down like that.”

“Please don’t joke about that? We should probably settle down for the night, anyway.” Cairan peered into the trees and found it even darker than she expected. In another hour, she wouldn’t be able to see any more than silhouettes.

“Yeah. Any ideas for where?”

“Let’s just find a depression with enough foliage to cover us.” She flicked on the night vision in her glasses and found it just slightly too bright to keep on. Ugh.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Ah, the VIP was awake again. “You’re going to make me squat in a damp hole until dawn? Spiders and worms crawling all over me?”

“We can find a dry one.”

“No! Absolutely not! I’d rather die! Can’t we find a cave or something? We passed a cave a few minutes ago!” So he was conscious the whole time. And now he was desperately trying to worm his way out of Brymys’ arms.

“Mr. Pureheart, that would be the first place they would look for us.”

“Maybe it’s worth telling you that I’m important, since you clearly don’t know! I’m sleeping somewhere sheltered. You can sleep in a puddle for all I care.”

Cairan was really starting to come around to PO Araro’s point of view. Was using her electric stun baton to knock him unconscious a little excessive? Maybe. But it was getting more tempting by the minute. She was hungry and tired herself. That was bound to make her snippier than she liked.

“Maybe we can leave before dawn, Cairan? Let’s eat, sleep a few hours, then move on.” Brymys was talking sense, even though her insistence on taking Pureheart’s side was annoying. She was definitely not someone to hit with the stun prod. No matter what the little voice in the back of Cairan’s head said. “There’s plenty of other hills around here we could die on.”

“Okay. It’s ten now, let’s leave at 0400.”

“Deal.”

“But-!” Pureheart started.

“There’ll be time for beauty sleep later, Prince Charming. I don’t think anybody’s going to be sleeping well on rocky ground anyway.”

He grumbled, but thankfully didn’t argue any further.

The cave, at least, was a deep one, with enough of a turn that they wouldn’t be seen from the entrance. Still, neither Cairan nor Brymys were confident enough to generate more light than the single survival candle Pureheart would have to rely on. 

“Food?” Brymys asked.

“We’re a little light.” Cairan dropped the survival kit onto the floor and her shoulder thanked her for it. “Three 24-hour packs, so we should only eat about half, just in case.”

“Ugh. At least tell me it’s good.” Pureheart had no idea what he was in for, did he?

“D-rations. They’ll keep us alive.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Aha. That’s the bad but not-quite-worst rations.” Brymys pulled open the first pack. “E-rations are the really awful ones.”

“There’s one tier lower, actually.” Cairan slid one over to their VIP and opened her own. “The F-grade powder can be rehydrated into something a little worse than the nutrient paste in E.”

“Ew. Why?”

“The packs are shelf-stable for about a hundred and fifty years.”

“Wow, I sure do love D-rations.”

Cairan chuckled. “What did you get?”

“Uh… Ah, shit. Veggie lasagna. What’d you get, Prince Charming?”

“I think…” He struggled to read without the convenient night vision of tactical goggles. “Omelette? That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Oh. Uh, you oughta just chuck that. Eat whatever else is in there.”

“I can handle some eggs, I’m not a baby.”

The chemical heater warmed up their meals to a little over body temperature, at least. Not hot, but something. 

Cairan tucked into her ‘tuna’ salad. It was on the low end of the D packs, but a heap of warm imitation fish on a cracker was about the best this survival kit had to offer. At least it wasn’t—

Pureheart started retching the instant his tongue reported the flavour of the food to his brain. “I—ugh!”

That. She had tried just about every variety of ration when she worked as a quartermaster. And frankly, some of the E-grade nutrient paste was more appetising than the ‘good’ old cheese-and-veg omelette.

“It tastes like vomit!”

“Yep. Want some of mine?” Brymys was a merciful woman.

“Just to get the taste out of my mouth…” He took one bite and made a face that advertised the very slight improvement. “Ugh… you live like this?”

“Only when we have to.”

“The problem is the ingredients,” Cairan said. “There’s no real eggs or cheese in it, and the vegetables are rehydrated at the plant before they go into the packet. I read the breakdown and I think it was something like 6% yellow dye.”

“I want to puke…”

“If you do it into the bag, it’ll improve the flavour,” Brymys laughed. “Just have the hashbrowns. They’re okay.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, the omelette pouch leaned against the wall like a threat. Cairan finished, then started field stripping her pistol to keep herself occupied. 

It was well-built. She hadn’t gotten a chance to take a close look at it before, but she could appreciate all the little details now. It was a large-bore automatic gun and she was curious about the feed system. They had lethal ammunition this time, but on the team’s first mission, they’d used a nonlethal stun round. How’d they manage that?

Hard to say, but the feed ramp was polished to a mirror sheen, and the lockup between slide and frame was a thing of beauty.  Aha. It wasn’t marked on the outside, but the inside of the frame had a maker’s mark. KK Arms.

That was a fancy company, to say the least. Went quite a way to explaining the self-contained electronics package buried deep in the frame. 

“So when is this other woman getting back?” Pureheart asked, still picking at his mediocre hashbrowns.

“We don’t know if she’s going to.” 

“What do you mean?”

The two women shared a quick glance. Really?

“Er… look.” Brymys gave him a pat on the shoulder equal only to an absentee father trying to slip back into his childrens’ lives. “We might not see her again. Bad things happen to people in our line of work all the time.”

“Are you saying she’s dead? She sounded like the only one who knew what was happening!”

“Could be.”

“And that doesn’t bother you even a little bit?”

She shrugged and Cairan kept her head down. He didn’t care for that.

“You’re psychopaths! Do you give a single damn about the value of an elven life?!”

“Well, yeah, but it’s just part of the business. She seemed like a good fighter who wanted to go out on the job.”

“And your partner is just playing with her gun when she could be out there somewhere?”

Cairan finished admiring the hammer assembly and met his eyes. “She could be. But chasing after her would jeopardise the job. We might even die.”

It was distant, but the chatter of gunfire rang through the woods. Full-length service rifles, by the sound of it. All the nonsense talk from Pureheart made her wonder if one of those cracks was one that ended PO Araro for good. Even if she knew it was probably search parties jumping at shadows.

Regardless, it was too close for comfort. Cairan slapped her pistol back together while Brymys snuffed the candle and drew her own.

It was quiet for a minute. Then two. Three heard rustling near the entrance. For goodness’ sake. She told them that anyone would look here for someone staying the night. She slowed down her breathing as much as she could, aiming for the spot they would turn around the corner. Squeezed the trigger to right above the break, and—

“I should have set us a challenge and response before I ran off, huh?”

“Just say your name?” Cairan said through gritted teeth. She didn’t know her teammates’ voices well enough to recognise them anywhere, but it sounded like…

“Aila Araro. Double-A 2238109.”

The group’s collective sigh of relief was enough for the PO to walk around the corner, several rifles over her shoulder. 

“I brought presents, since Fenquen can’t supply us with even the damn basics.” She dumped four guns onto the floor and picked up the discarded omelette pouch. “Dinner?”

“Yeah,” Brymys answered. “But that’s-”

“Got any coffee powder?”

She tossed a brown mix-in-the bag pouch to Araro, who dumped the contents into the omelette and took a bite. 

“Fo. Any t’ouble?”

“I—PO, what the fuck?”

She swallowed. “What?”

“The vomelette?”

“What about it?”

“Coffee?”

“Yeah?”

“She added coffee to it?!” Pureheart screeched, practically blind in the darkness of the cave.

“Yeah. They’re okay normally, but the coffee makes it taste better.”

“PO, I mean this respectfully, but that is the nastiest fucking shit I have ever had the displeasure of imagining.”

“Let’s get back on track, ladies.” Araro took another bite of her foul concoction. “Any problems while I was gone?”

“None. Cairan’s pretty good at ducking the people following us.”

“Good. What’s the plan, stay here the night?”

“I was planning for us to leave at 0400, before they started really searching. If that’s okay, PO.” Cairan tapped her boots together and finished her meal.

“Fine by me. The sooner we get this shit show over with, the better.” She—oh, sweet God-Tree—she poured the rest of the gelatinous mass of ‘egg’ and instant coffee down her gullet and swallowed it like a bird swallows a fish. “Mind if I take the first nap? I’ve been running a merry chase for hours.”

“Be my guest.”

Sleeping anywhere was a valuable skillset for any member of the military, and Araro set herself apart as an experienced veteran. She tossed her cloak on the ground to use as a seat, leaned up against the cave wall and closed her eyes. 

“Well, time to turn in for the night.” Brymys tapped Pureheart on the nose. “Need me to tuck you in?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” he grumbled. It took him a while to find a spot of floor he was happy with, and even then he tossed and turned for a few minutes.

A loud click caught Cairan’s attention and Araro’s cursing shortly after caught Brymys’.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” She was curled up into a foetal position and rocking back and forth. What?

“Oh! She didn’t turn that off?” Brymys crossed her arms and laughed.

“Turn… Gh… Turn what off?”

“The Warden built in this security feature where if we fall unconscious for more than a minute, all the restraint magnets in the suit turn on. She said it makes it harder for terrorists or whatever to steal the tech, but… you know.”

“Can we turn it off, or has that dipshit’s mistake fucked us? If you’re going to have to roll me like a snowball to the extraction, you may as well just leave me behind.”

“There’s a…” Brymys reached into the angry ball of green hair and soft armour. 

Araro’s restraints came undone and she popped back up to a standing position like she was under spring tension.

“Release. Right on the collar.”

“I am going to kick Fenquen’s ass to hell, go down there, kick her teeth out and then kick her right the fuck back up here.”

“May as well just get used to it, PO. Someone has to pull sentry duty anyway.”

“No. Fuck no. I am not sleeping one more time on this goddamn mission. I’m not giving her the pleasure of masturbation material as a reward for this cavalcade of fuck-ups.”

Brymys shrugged her shoulders. Fair enough.

But… Something had been percolating in Cairan’s head ever since their hard landing. “PO?”

“What?”

“We… I mean… is it okay to speak freely?”

“Cairan, you’re not in boot camp.”

“I was just thinking…” Was it a good idea to even bring it up? What if… “I don’t want you to get mad or anything.”

“Look, talk or don’t.”

“We don’t have to go back. We’ve got leverage with us.”

Suddenly, all eyes were on Pureheart. Even if he could barely see, he noticed the pressure. “What?”

“…Cairan, you know we wouldn’t get far.”

“We could! I have this cousin who managed to duck a full-on secret police investigation. The guy’s got to be a genius. He could help us, easily. New identities and everything. All we need is the VIP to make sure we don’t get shot down as we escape.”

“Look. I don’t like being in jail, sure.”

“Exactly! I made a little mistake that got blown out of proportion, plus you and Brymys don’t deserve this at all!”

“But. I agreed to run this mission in good faith. I’m going back into the Navy as soon as I’m out. That’s the reason I’m working with Fenquen at all.”

“You’re criminals?!” Pureheart pushed himself into the furthest corner of the cave, eyes wide.

“I earned my prison sentence fair and square, Cairan,” Brymys added. “I’m proud of how much I stirred up all those stupid lawyers. Maybe things are shitty, but I’m fulfilled here. Living on some stupid civvie world just kicking my feet and not working isn’t my style.”

“Are you ignoring me?!” He screamed.

“But…” Cairan trailed off. Were they serious? Maybe their punishments in jail were exciting sometimes, (and only sometimes) but they were just going to stay? “I didn’t mean…!”

“Cairan.” Araro put a hand on the top of her head. “Moment of weakness. I can tell you’re tired. Get some sleep.”

“Are you serious?!” He was still going, huh?

“Pureheart.” Araro gritted her teeth.

“W-what?”

“Do you want to get out of this or not?”

“I’m not sure any more!”

“Great. Stew about that until 0400. You can think long and hard about why they’re letting armed criminals run around with guns and rescue hostages.”

+++

Brymys woke up with her wrist cuffs stuck to Cairan’s knees, right ankle to her left, then so on and so forth until she and the cute blonde were a magnetically-locked knot.

“0400,” Araro said dispassionately.

It was still dark out. Yeah. That tracked.

Cairan was still asleep, so she took the opportunity to use her limited mobility to kiss her on the nose. “Good morning, sunshine.”

“Uh-!” She thrashed against the restraints for a moment, then calmed down when she remembered where she was. “Uh… good morning.”

Cute.

“Up.” Araro kicked Penlod’s foot before Brymys even had a chance to untangle herself and get him up gently. Now he’d be all grumpy and out of sorts. Maybe banging him was a long shot at this point, but she was still holding out for a thank-you kiss. At least his number.

“Ugh…” Yeah, he wasn’t happy. “Give me a minute, you animal.”

Araro hit the release for her team’s suits, then handed them rifles. “Here. Resistance is bound to be stiff today.”

“Oh, an underslung grenade launcher for me, PO? You shouldn’t have.” Brymys teased.

“Don’t use it unless we really need to. There’s only two shots.”

“I’ll make them count. They used to call me the one-woman mortar crew back in urban assault school.” Specifically because they’d left her alone with a pallet of training rounds one boring afternoon, but she’d gotten pretty good with them. It certainly impressed the instructor enough to get her a date that evening.

“Here.” Araro ignored her and tossed a rifle to Penlod.

“What’s this?” He asked.

“Rifle. The lever on the side goes down to shoot and up when you’re done shooting. Don’t point it at yourself or any of us.”

“Are you-! You want me to shoot people? With some giant machine gun?”

“There’s lots of kids out there that manage to use one every day. You’ll be fine.”

“Do any of you even know who I am? Listened to my music? Anything beyond a name?”

“I do-!”

Brymys was cut off by Araro. “Sure have. Hate the music, hate the political bootlicker messaging, and I am trying so hard not to call you ‘Peenload Pureshart’ at every available opportunity. Now get over yourself and pick up the rifle.”

“I have never been treated so callously in my entire life!” 

“Better suck it up if you want a chance at the rest of your life being long enough for more people to treat you like a grown elf, then. Ready to leave with your criminal escort?”

“…Yes.”

The sound of a helicopter and its accompanying floodlight cut the conversation short. 

“Let’s move. Not far now.”

And it wasn’t too far, physically speaking. The one hitch was the growing number of helicopters. The foot teams came out about an hour after that. 

Every fifteen minutes or so, something would catch Cairan’s ear and they’d all squat in a bush until a patrol passed or it proved to be nothing. They weren’t going to get lucky forever, though.

And Araro exploded about as loudly as a whisper could get when a call came over the radio. 

“Golf, this is Bravo. Where the hell are you? Over.”

“Oh, now there’s backup. I am going to fucking—” She punched the ground before she picked up the call. “Sitting in a bush, Bravo. We’re close.”

“Can you hurry it up? Eagle is crawling up Command’s ass about running cleanup. How copy?”

‘Who the fuck is Eagle and when can I put my high-tech, magnetic boot up their ass?’ was what Brymys got out of the glare Araro gave her.

“Yeah. Copy. This would go a lot faster if you could find some way to take the heat off us.”

“Golf, we’re stuck babysitting the shuttle until you get here. I can’t risk it. Over.”

“So send them on a wild goose chase. I’m stuck babysitting the only reason any of us are here in the first place and it’s going to take another six hours at this rate.”

“Fine. Give us fifteen mikes. Out.”

They stayed still and quiet for a few minutes. When were they supposed to go?

An explosion far in the distance answered the question quickly.

“Go!” Araro hissed.

Well, it wasn’t as simple as running to the LZ. The jog was still two kilometres, so halfway through, Penlod needed to be picked up and carried. Not that Brymys minded. He was light and bound to be appreciative of her efforts to keep him comfortable. At this point, it was obvious Araro would be happy to throw him over her shoulder and leave him with a bruised stomach and aching back. 

Quick as they could, though. Half an hour wasn’t bad time.

There it was. One shuttle like the one they’d come in with and a trench with three black-suited women the tactical visor identified as Bravo-A, -B and -C. Just a hundred metres left at most, across a grassy clearing.

One last dash, and—!

The ground between them and their exit exploded.

Araro was quickest to shoot, but the shots ricocheted off the attack helicopter over them. “Fuck! Bravo, are you packing anything bigger than service rifles?”

“Negative, Golf! I’ve got my sniper attacking the canopy. Pull back into the woods!”

“Copy, moving—!”

A second helicopter dropped something behind them. Whatever it was hit the forest floor hard enough to shake the ground. 

“Mech!”

So it was. A square, crablike box, complete with a half-dozen legs and a pair of gigantic pincers it used to cut through the trees standing in its way.

Pure, brave Penlod tried firing a burst of bullets at it, but only succeeded in knocking himself out of Brymys’ arms. Well, points for trying. 

“Bravo, tell me you’ve got explosives! We have a mech behind us!”

“Negative, Golf! We blew them all on that distraction!”

“Shit! Coming your way.”

“HA! Run you worms! I’m fucking invincible!” Oh, great. The mech had loudspeakers on the front. “When you get to hell, tell ‘em Langstrom sent you!”

The crab claw slammed down just behind them as they sprinted toward Bravo’s trench.

The helicopter didn’t bother shooting them as they ran across the clearing. Figured. The pilot knew they weren’t going anywhere by now.

Brymys slid into the trench next to Bravo-B and gave her a pat on the back. “Hey, Valenta. Come here often?”

She just laughed and took her next potshot and the helicopter canopy. Maybe she’d make an annoying crack with a few more shots. Exciting!

“It’s over, little rats! Come out of your hole!” The mech stomped into the middle of the clearing, right under the helicopter.

“I think that’s your target, by the way.” Araro said.

“Thanks.” Bravo-A spat. “What’s our next move?”

“Looks like die or surrender, then die.”

“Hang on!” With the attention of five soldiers and one cute pop star on her, Brymys couldn’t let this chance go to waste. They were probably going to die, but she wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, damn it. “Give me a chance.”

“Brymys, if you walk out of this trench and try to seduce that woman, I swear to-!” Wow, stereo. Bravo-A (being her old team leader,) Brymys expected, but it was heartwarming to know that Araro knew her so well already. And both women were so in sync!

“Relax! I’m going to go take care of business.” She climbed up out of the hole and brought her rifle with her. 

“Those claws could rip a tank apart, dumbass! Stay away from it.”

Oh yeah. They sure could, but Brymys didn’t care. 

All eyes were on her. The small, grassy field a stage. 

“Chairwoman Langstrom!” She called. Look here. Yes, right over here. Maybe the helo pilot was looking too. That’d be funny. “I’ve got a little magic trick for you!”

“You’d need magic to get out of this one.”

“Great news.” She loaded one of those wimpy little forty-mil grenades into the launcher on her stolen rifle.

Damn Araro, showing her up and running off like a hero earlier. Even Cairan got a chance to be cool in front of the team. What was Brymys supposed to be, a baggage handler? No time for the cute guard, no interest from Penlod, and not even a chance to have a few minutes’ worth of magnetically-mandated cuddle time with Cairan this morning. She’d show them.

“Oh, go on. Give it a try. I’ll give you one shot with that thing, you fat little slug.”

“At least I’m not a crab.” A grin and a thumbs-up went toward Golf and Bravo alike. Then she pulled the trigger.

“I think you missed.”

Fair assumption. Brymys did shoot the grenade up at a pretty steep angle. “Did I?”

“You’re stalling.”

“Am I?”

Finally, the grenade hit something and popped. 

Specifically speaking, it hit the attack helicopter in the centre of its rotor. It spun out of control and started dropping simultaneously. The tail hit Langstrom’s cockpit and she screamed, more out of surprise than pain. The rocket pods sparking, then exploding, on the other hand, probably hurt a little. It sure took out the crab’s legs.

“Alright, Bravo. You’re the hit squad, all up to you now.”

“Bravo-B to Golf-B. Nice to see you’re still in top form, you showoff.”

“Love you too, Valenta. Celebratory kiss once you drag the body out?”

“This is Bravo-A. Will you stop goddamn flirting over comms?”

“Aw, you’re no fun.”

+++

It was probably three, four weeks after the Pureheart incident ended. Things were getting a little better in the cell. Every so often, Brymys and Cairan would start talking to each other. All three of them would even have the occasional chat over cards, even if Araro was usually found exercising in silence. 

That was about the state of things when their briefing monitor turned on. Fenquen.

“Good morning, Golf.” She was grinning. Probably a bad sign.

“New mission?” Araro asked.

“No, actually.” Yeah. Some dumb thing where ‘I have to tie you up and have my new rocket-propelled autonomous buttplug/camera climb up your ass. It’s for science and improving your equipment!’ was going to be the rationale. “It’s—pff—I’ll put it on screen.”

Well, well. Who should appear but a recording of the only pop star Araro hoped to ever meet. 

“Ready?”

“Wait, what is this?” Brymys asked. Figures she wasn’t paying attention until there was someone she thought was attractive on TV.

“Think of it as… a gift. Is everyone watching?” 

A round of ‘yeah’s and she unpaused the video.

“I’d like to dedicate this new song to my knights in shining armour from Navy Team G. We went through a lot together and I want this to be my thank-you for all the work you went through. I just, uh… hope Ms. ‘A’ will forgive me just this once. I’ve never had anyone treat me the way you all did before.”

Oh boy. It was instantly so much worse than Araro prepared herself for. Video. Three steel-plate knights waded through a misty field toward a mockup of a castle, where Pureheart was doing his best woe-is-me damsel impression with a harp he probably couldn’t actually play. 

“You just had to keep planting that stupid ‘we’re like knights’ thing in his head, huh Brymys?”

“PO, I don’t know why you joined the special forces if you didn’t want civvies to think you’re the most badass elf in the galaxy.”

“Sure. Bring a sword next time, see if I care.”

That’s when the singing started. It was that sort of babbly pop style where you couldn’t even tell what he was saying half the time, only really emphasising the party-approved messaging and the chorus. Sweet god, the chorus. 

It was all couched in flowery language like the job they were doing was some kind of romantic quest, with ♪Meine Märchenprinzessinnen♪ jammed in like the songwriter picked up the phrase this afternoon and wanted to see how many times he could get away with saying it. 

After a charge toward the castle, the knights took off their helmets.

Even Cairan couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Is that us?”

“I guess?” 

Strictly speaking, it was three pretty, high-profile actresses who were… sort-of, kind-of matched up to each of the three of them. Their ‘Cairan’ was too tall, ‘Araro’ too scrawny and under half a pound of cosmetics, and…

“Oh, come on!” Brymys yelled at the TV. “I don’t look like that at all!”

…Yeah. Blonde instead of white-haired, shortest of the three of them, and… minimally-chested. There wasn’t any mistaking her for being the Cairan stand-in, since her tabard had a big ‘B’ on it.

The annoyance Araro felt during the mission had long since faded, but a friendly jab was too easy to pass up. “Guess he liked you the least, what can I say?”

“Did not!”

“Uh… Actually, she was in Deadly Weapon, so they probably figured she’d be a good pick!” Cairan awkwardly rubbed her shoulder.

“Oh, no kidding? I didn’t recognise her.”

“Well… the fifth one. She was the recast.”

“Ugh. Thanks for nothing.”

By the end of the video, they’d defeated a black knight (there was some argument whether it was Langstrom or that one secretary Araro shot, since it came first), slain a dragon (probably the helicopter?) and picked up Pureheart from his dramatic tower. They walked off into the sunset, princess-carrying him while the castle exploded in the background.

“That sure was something.” Araro drummed her fingers on the table.

“I mean, he basically wrote us a love song! I thought he was scared of you!” Brymys laughed.

“Now, ladies, that was just the context.” Fenquen popped back up at the corner of the screen. “You’re going to love the next part.”

A news broadcast laid over the old footage. 

“And in other news, a recent music video by party-pop superstar Penlod Pureheart is making waves among fans today—and not in the way he might have expected. On the scene is our reporter, Legolas Langley.”

“Thanks, Rina. I’m here outside Galactic Music Studios, where a crowd has gathered to protest the content and themes of Mr. Pureheart’s new song, Märchenprinzessinnen.” The reporter held up the mic to a red-faced woman with mascara running down her cheeks.

“They-! I can’t believe-! They ****ed him! They must have ****ed him! They stole away his virginity and now he’s-! It’s over! It’s so over!”

“Yeah!” Another girl in a similar state yelled. “I’m going to ****ing kill those sluts if I ever see them! He was saving himself for me!”

“Nuh uh! I was going to-!”

A scuffle broke out and a third woman approached the reporter as he was trying to extricate himself. “And I heard there’s a secret scene where all the actresses in the video take him home and just gang **** him for hours on end! If you know where to find it, just, uh… you know. Let me know, so I know how to avoid it. Yeah.”

The reporter yanked his mic away as the fan began to ramble. “In additio- get off me! In addition, all three actresses involved in the video portion have received a slew of death threats, including…”

“This is ridiculous!” Brymys yelled at the TV. “I didn’t even get to fuck him and they’re acting like this?!”

“Oh, by the way, PO…” Fenquen trailed off, stupid grin growing by the second.

“What.” 

“Mr. Pureheart actually sent you a little love letter. I had to screen it for security reasons, of course, but he sent you a lock of his hair and the most saccharine poetry I’ve ever read.”

“Warden.”

“In fact, he said he wants to meet you again. I could arrange a little time for you to spend together, since he says it’s fate.”

“Fenquen.”

“Hmm?”

“Launch that dumb shit into the nearest sun for me, would you?”

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