The BLTS Archive - Outlands
second in the Riding The Tick series
by R.Schultz (cousindream@aol.com)

---

Disclaimer: All rights to Star Trek belong to Paramount, including the
first season character, Natasha Yar.  I am making no money from this.
Do not sue, and I will put ST:TNG back where I found them. Paramount
dropped the ball when they let Natasha Yar die an early death.  Bad!
Bad Network, Bad! Bad!

Story mine under common-law copyright.  March, 2000.  24,450 words.
Spoilers: none.

Summary: these Yar stories are set in a cruel universe in which Tasha
barely survived, prior to the Enterprise.  Yar is very, very, very far
from being an innocent in reality.  She was a ring-tailed 104% bitch.
Plenty of Angst, bad language, graphic violence, hetero. sex, and a
little love.

Warning: If your locale or country does not allow adult themes, or if
you are underage, please go away.  Part of my Natasha Yar series.
This is a nasty, murderous, and conniving Yar in this universe.  The
noble Yar we saw in TNG is years away from her present persona.  There
had to be a lot of rough road traversed before she started becoming
the Yar we all knew and cared for.  May be archived.

---

//Somewhere on Turkana IV, the weather is clear and mild, with
scattered cloud cover.  Temperature will be in the high thirties
Celsius.  It should be a lovely day, with possible incidental
artillery and sniper fire.//

---

Initially I thought we were the first into this town (or overgrown
village).  Whatever you want to call it.  That hope was destroyed when
we found four antique pattern armored vehicles in the big local
square.  They were Indigs, of course.  Some of our erstwhile allies,
or contractors if you prefer that term.  Fast movers, scouts, like
ourselves.  Friendlies.

We, meaning my ASV crew and I, had got here in the course of a night
and most of a morning.  Last night the Legion had shrugged aside the
last desperate armored assaults by hundreds of the local armor, with
their expendable divisions of foot sloggers.  By now most of those
Alliance pawns were undoubtedly prisoners in our own or Coalition
prisoner camps.

Our contract might be with country X (with allies)against country Z
(with allies).  We were, however, quite clear in our own minds who was
who.  Turkana was divided between one patch quilt outfit called
Alliance and another termed Coalition.  "Our" side had just put itself
in hock to obtain the services of an off-planet mercenary army.

We're artists of the Schwerpunkt, the focal point, we are.  We're the
Legion.  Ram a hole in needle thick and pour through the gap not in
days, or hours, but minutes.  The Legion is a group of professionals,
after all.

Banged them like they were a drum, we did.  Now it's tidy-up-the-
edges time.  Me, us, we're a broom.  We're the scouts.

Now we got complications.  We were the first Legion unit here, and our
job is to take and hold this little pimple on a map until other units
can join us.  Buddha knows how these locals got here first, but that's
fine with us.  Let someone else draw the fire or ire of some hold-out
or sniper.  Let them have the honor of getting shot by a last-ditcher.

The four vehicles were of two types, obsolescent as hell.  All relied
on sloping hard-metal armor for protection, and a slug-thrower, or
shell-projector, for offense.  Fast they might be. But lifted off the
surface of this mudball planet, they'd be in a museum instead of in a
war zone.

Still, there was no denying they could be fatal to the usual
unprotected (and half-trained) mud baller infantry and armor.  Dead is
dead, whether you catch a disrupter blast or a spear.  They were also
cheap enough that this planet could afford to build plenty of them.

Numbers could substitute for quality, of course.  A big enough swarm
of tiny insects could pull down a Capellan, if the front groups of
insects don't mind being stomped into the ground first. We've all
learned to our sorrow that obsolete doesn't equate into harmless.

Of course the genuine cost of all four of those wheeled armored scoot
vehicles outside on the square was negligible in Galactic terms.  In
REAL currency (almost anyone's galactic-standard money) their combined
value wouldn't pay for one of the Rhad power plants in the light
runner I was sitting in.  Even so, we and our little lifter were a
cheap item.  You try not spend a great deal of wealth acquiring
something you intend to keep putting in harm's way. Items like us are
expendable.

To buy a single modern battle-cruiser (such as are in the Second and
Third Battalions) it would cost more than four or even five hundred of
those cumbersome relics sitting in the square.  And to buy them they'd
need hard currency, latinum, real money.  Not the fancy dumper paper
the Indigs bought things with on this planet.

A cruiser is, after all, a complete ground-effects cruiser with
clamshell armor (collapsed neutron material armor plates).  Armor to
the bottom of its skirts.  Armed with twin phaser cannon (or an auto
disrupter), plasma launcher, a stored-charge and slug-thrower
automatic DxG.  Anti-Air and Anti-Missile, and Minoan Response. Finish
up with four Rhad fusion power plants and it's a lot of costly play
toy.  It would put a strain on the budget of a large nation, here on
the planet Turkana.  Add trained humanoids to symbiot to the
onboard's, and you have an item guaranteed to bring tears to any
tax-payer.

Which is why the bill is so costly to rent the Legion.  The Legion may
not guarantee to destroy any conventionally equipped enemy it faces,
but it's bound to make them sorry they fought the war.

Last night the enemy Indigs did more than feel sorry.  Last night they
collapsed.  We were on the outskirts of the actual dying, but we were
there.  The Indigs disintegrated.

That's what the Legion does best.  Win dirty little wars quickly. Now
we were in the process of deconstructing the remnants of our present
enemy.

Last night we watched on our vehicle BattCom displays as the Legion
punched a hole in their defenses.  We ourselves had rolled over a few
defense positions with hardly a pause.  Isn't much unshielded can
withstand a plasma blast.  Now everything was decided but the shape of
the table the peace treaty would be signed at.  Scouts like us were
making sure the other side knew the war was over.

We were a hundred and thirty-five klicks ahead of the slower Legion
cruisers.  Two hundred twenty klicks away from Battle Y, or whatever
they'll call it.  Yet somehow allied Indigs were already here in this
rural town.  They must have rolled through the night like all Hades
was after them.  If the 'front' had collapsed that completely,
obviously our contract must be almost done.  Almost. Which was why the
four of us were carefully eyeballing the situation.  Almost can still
get you killed.

We, my troop, squadron, was the modern equivalent of the cavalry scout
or the armored car.  We were here first, and our job was to blunder
into nasty situations (if any), and trigger any traps. Still, no one
wants to get dinked in a war.  Especially now.  To be the last to die
in a war is downright embarrassing.

However, we had a steel nameplate melded to our turret that said it
all.

It said we were "Trouble."

Yes, we were the finish on the bright spear of the Legion forces,
yeah.  But who worries much if the finish gets a little chipped?

To put it bluntly, we were expendable.  So was our runner, our ASV
lifter, Armored Support Vehicle.  Ground-effects scout.  We were a
cheap substitute for a real cruiser, and a lot faster.

We had clam-shell armoring on front and turret, and in a belt around
our power-plants.  Four Rhad fusion power-plants provided boost to our
lifter scout.  Main armament was one auto-Plasma gun (which belonged
in a girl's shooting club, according to Happy).  An onboard system
which worked, which is all you should hope for from an assemblage of
chips and molecules.  According to Kebnebe, our driver, the computer
system must date from the Eugenics Wars, but he was prejudiced.  It
would too-politely tell him whenever he tried an impossible maneuver,
and he hated being embarrassed.  So he'd override and do it anywise.

We had the ability to do two hundred and better klicks an hour across
flat terrain and smooth water, carrying a few miscellaneous weapons,
and the four of us.  We might have been a trifle obsolescent
ourselves, but we were still "Trouble".

Expendable rejects, all of us.  Four walking piles of trash from
across two quadrants.  But we were garbage with the ability to kill.
Expendable, immoral, we stank like old crotch cloths, and our scout
stank of sweat and hot composite.  After a week buttoned up in our
vehicle, outside air tasted too cold and too flat.

We don't salute too good either.  We were Legionnaires.

Without my having to verbalize a command, Happy augmented the heads-up
on our helmet visor screens.  Now we four spent a minute in studying
the data on the displays.  I touched the receiver jacks in the back of
my head to be sure they were well seated.  If the connections were bad
I would have known, but I had this nervous habit of checking whenever
the onboard and I were faced.

The two symbiot cords led from the jacks to the base of my helmet, and
the helmet received comp from the onboard in the vehicle.  If I wished
I could directly input feed from Squadron or Battalion as well.  Out
in the bush like this, it wasn't necessary.  Battalion or Troop
BattCom updates were just useless clutter at this point. I did note
the nearest armored Ambulance was a hundred klicks back.

The symbiots allowed me to 'taste' the electronic input from the
vehicle sensors.  Above us the sky seemed clear, and image tickles
lightly reminded us hundreds of minor biologicals - birds - were in
the sky above.

We hadn't encountered any Sunday or Dumbboy missiles on Turkana yet,
but onboard knew to watch for that five-kilo style of aerial mine.

We were now wired to the scout, and could 'eyeball' in 360 degrees.
See the bottom of our scout, and the sky above.  You learned not to be
disoriented by the wrap-around senses when faced with the scout
onboard array.  You discerned where input indicated green spots of
varying brightness, automatically correlating scannings into
information.  Translating for the larger life forms in the immediate
vicinity.  I swung my sensor 'head' three-sixty to focus overlay and
confirm array.

Plenty of live bodies in the town, a few dead, no blinking greens to
indicate new friendly possible wounded.  Lives in some form of extreme
distress.  No glowing blue spots indicating Legion deads, no distinct
reds for dead friendlies, but that only worked if they happened to be
tagged with the proper implants.

We have a standard series of our own implants, one of which telltales
our lifesigns for Medico machines or Ambulance fliers.

The Indig friendlies simply registered as greens, same as the other
unknowns in this town.  Duplicating the heads-up, and skulljacks, the
greens on the vehicle display showed little or no movement. Almost no
clumpings or suspicious large groups.  Excepting in the yellow
building across from us.  Maybe eighty over there.  At least two or
three possible deaders. We'd have to check it out.

Of course one last-ditcher with a slug-thrower wouldn't stand out.
Maybe Starfleet could scan for single weapons, or equip every away
team member with a shield or field.  We couldn't, not on this junkpile
planet, and not in the Legion.  Too expensive.  Besides, you couldn't
keep your shield on all the time, if you had one.  And one die-hard
with a bow and arrow could dink you then.  They didn't need Klingon
disrupters.

We hoped there weren't a few dozen Indig Spetznatz lurking in that
building.  We had to check.  BattCom wanted this town to complete our
encirclement, trap of the hostile's, and we were `Trouble' again.

The local Indigs were staying home, in cellars if they had them.
Hiding their money, daughters, wives, cattle, and sheep.  And whatever
the Indigs called those big furry bastids with the two small horns
over the eyebrows.  They used them to pull plows and wagons.
Self-replicating machines would never go out of style in some places.

Damn, but those hairy beasts were ugly.  Computer said they were
descended from something called a `buffalo', whatever the hell that
was.

As we hovered millimeters above the packed earth of the square, a few
heads poked out of hatches in the Indig Police steel vehicles. They
must have recognized the Legion markings, and so gazed complacently at
our presence.  We were allies, after all.  They'd never heard the old
saw about today's allies being tomorrow's enemies.

No one else was in the square.  News of last night's victory (or loss,
depending on your viewpoint) had put a proper fear into the local
losers.  They were probably wondering what their future would be under
their new liberators, masters.

We didn't blame them for hiding in their cellars.  To lose a war
always meant some winner was walking about with a cheap blood-thirst
up, looking to have it satisfied by the loser.  You didn't want to
show your face in the first hours after a battle. Sometimes the winner
is willing to settle accounts for a bargain price.  A few heads to
ornament posts over a gate.  Yours, your wife's and your daughter's.

Kebnebe cursored the stripes on the vehicles in the square, Q'ed his
on-board, and the heads-up flashed titles.  From the contracting
authority, as the color flashes on the turrets had implied.  I had
already translated military titles and cursed. Kebnebe throat-miked to
make sure we all knew they were Military Police.

Lovely.  Police units.  Headhunters.  What the hell were they after?

Kilometers from any possible fighting, probably flushed with a heady
victory that someone else's blood had bought.  If Police were already
this far forward of the fighting, then indeed the enemy Indigs must
have collapsed.  With the war almost over, these Indig razzers were
probably eager to find someone to make pay for the war.  Loot,
revenge, hostile political's.  Looking for some fun before the force
of law returned.  A time to settle old scores, and maybe get a little
brass in pocket for yourself.  Police, mud baller's, rear-area
lizards, pointy-skulls, all of them gave me a cramp in the guts.
Double-damn every razzer to hell and back. They always meant trouble
for us, one way or another.  Sometimes we gave it back.

The local armor showed better than any computer display ever could the
level of relative poverty on this planet.  The Indigs couldn't afford
our level of sophisticated weaponry as an everyday expense. Better to
rent it - and the experts accustomed to its usage - for a
limited-period episode.  War to you.

But you better be prepared to deposit the fee in advance if you want
our merry little band of techno-wizards to do their magic.

Even knowing my wage was already on an off-world bank failed to soothe
my stomach.  Centurion Medico Dish had once said my stomach problems
were all psychological reaction, not physical.

Speaking of physical, I wouldn't have minded getting physical with
her, not at all.  She moved nice, she looked to me like she would
appreciate having her ears chewed on.  Just a little.  Too bad those
Talarians are so damned rank conscious.

My stomach would rather have seen us in one of our well-armored
cruisers than in this little scout vehicle.  Government police always
had a reputation as loose cannons, and long experience had told us the
reputation was deserved.

When you have government's supported by police with limitless
arbitrary powers, these selfsame police start thinking they're first
cousins to God.  Their behavior shows it.  Local razzers. Damn!

I'd have preferred to move on, or just ride around for an hour or so,
leave this place to the razzers.  Still, someone in the Legion was
supposed to scout this rat's-nest, and we were elected.  I
tongue-commed back to Squadron, but Section was emphatic.  We had to
test the water.  When we told them of the razzer element in town they
told us to try to be nice to the local Indig headhunters. Don't kill
too many of them.

No by-passing, Chips warned, no letting the Indigs do our work for us.
We personally were to check for die-hards and sticky situations.  My
stomach didn't like this.  I've been in other peaceful places that
blew up in my face, no thank you.  I had no use for another bad
memory.

However, with Indig headhunters already here, maybe I could
smooth-talk and trick them into searching the town for me.  If I had
to be polite to some Police asshole with a shiny slug-thrower on his
hip, I'd do it.  If I ask real sweet and nice maybe they'll search the
town and trip any ambushes waiting to be tripped. Better they get
dinked than me.

Dear Mister Policeman Sir, will you do me the favor of walking through
the next three dozen doorways first?  Pretty please?

Oh well.  Be quiet, stomach!  Time to unsaddle and check things out.
Maybe if I ignore the razzers they'll ignore us.

Keying Kebnebe, I indicated a spot for us to park by cursoring
display.  My chosen spot lay across the square, and alongside a
functioning fountain.  We could refill our vehicle tanks and personal
canteens with their water.  Incidentally the fountain gave us some
minimal cover from fire from the Police armored units. Never know when
you might have to dink a few allies.

Gold teeth gleaming, Kebnebe drifted us around the square with a
graceful flourish.  His curve had us lying next to the fountain,
armored skirts making a scraping sound as the scout brushed the
surface.  As usual Kebnebe did it in a manner best calculated to show
his skill with the vehicle's ground-effects fans.

Halfway around the fountain he cut power to the rear fan to pivot us,
and then boosted the front fan a second in order to lift the scout,
and coast us alongside the spouting fountain.  We were now an
acceptable distance from the local buildings.  And had also placed all
four Police vehicles in the line of fire of our plasma cannon.  If we
needed to disassemble them the hard way.

Happy commanded onboard to lead a tap from a side port, and in seconds
we were refilling our water reservoir.  You never pass up a chance to
sleep, drink, replenish water, restock ammo and provisions, go to the
dumper, or dig in.  Sex, payroll, and complaints can wait.

Kappa popped her hatch for a second, and sniffed the air.  Her
ultimate telltale, which would supersede anything onboard.  She
whoofed loudly, satisfied in a conditional sort of way.   Then crawled
up front to sit next to Kebnebe.  Kappa affectionately kneaded
Kebnebe's thigh for him, but it was a little early in the day for
foreplay.

She looked an inquiry at me, her ruff of neck fur riffling quietly,
waiting for a command.  I unbuttoned my turret hatch and stuck my neck
out, practicing my own brand of direct trouble-sniffing. Happy says
I'm inviting some die-hard to push my button for me, it's my urge to
self-destruct.  And one of these days some last-ditcher is going to
give me my wish.  But then, who wants to live forever?

The heads-up still displayed no one moving, excepting minor
randomizing over in the big building beyond the Police armor.

Happy peeked out the other turret, letting fly a Pogo to test the fly
over defenses on the scout.  It blurred fast upward to 1900 meters,
than pulsed like a higher and faster object for our onboard defense
array.  The auto-tracker got it easily and clearly, the IFF inhibiting
our firing codes.  It seemed quiet, but we left the ports open on the
Minoan Screwdrivers, our Anti-Air's.  Like I said, we were edging on
obsolescence ourselves.  You needed all your edges.

The building opposite us intrigued me.  By the thick wall around it,
it didn't have the appearance of a typical human governmental
facility.  In small local urban operations humans liked their
governments, their Town Halls and such, to appear to be more
accessible than this.  This had a high wall and a big gate.  It might
be a temple, or school, or bank, it might be a lot of things. And here
were four Police vehicles.  Quite a few razzers in an area not yet
considered secure.  What, five, six to a vehicle?  On board confirmed,
adding an "at least" to the figure of twenty-four total razzers.

The on-board still indicated the building opposite housed a
concentration of bodies, the only sizable number of living human-sized
bodies around.  Almost all living, probably all sentient, probably all
human norms.  Turkana IV was a Terran colony, and both of the
combatants were Earth-norm.  On the second floor of the structure, my
heads-up said.  Fifty or sixty indigs doing what?  Time to earn my
combat pay.

I keyed both aural input and brightness of the heads-up downward with
my tongue switch.  Thus reducing clutter to an easily ignored level.
I muted the colorizing as well.  The helmet visor could still keep me
abreast of anything new entering the area, but not now distract or
limit my eye-balling.

Ignoring the side exits, I slid up and out through the turret hatch,
and slid to the ground.  I remembered P-Background saying it had been
a dry summer in this area of Turkana.  Certainly the flowers around
the park appeared almost dead from lack of water.

I made sure my suit flaps were closed, loosened my Phaser on its belt
catch, and reversed my tabs to hide the fact I was an NCO.  In some
cases you don't want your allies to know they outrank you.

I called Kappa in my throat mike, and she emerged from the side hatch,
her DxG-40 on a sling, and riding high in front of her.  Her spatulate
nose tested the air, and her thick neck ruff went up and down
constantly as we crossed the square.

Behind us Happy and Kebnebe buttoned the scout down, letting the scout
appear to be at rest.  Maybe empty.

Not so apparently the systems kept searching the sky and area for life
or threats.  No one could see inside, the vehicle was screened.  With
any luck, observing Indigs might have thought we two were the only
occupants.

As we paced across the square, one single Police Indig with a set of
headphones kept a suspicious eye on us.  We carefully walked in front
of their vehicles, but expected no comment from them.  No greetings
from the one with the headphones, or another head which appeared in a
hatch to his left.  Suspicious, but disinclined to leave their vehicle
and crowd us.  Acting like the boss wasn't around at the moment.
Ranking officer would probably have queried us and our purpose.
Perhaps he was in the yellow stone building?

Plan One, talking the Indig razzers into doing our work for us, seemed
unusable.  No one else was moving, so I sighed with tension. I would
have to do my own recon.  Well, hell, I'd trust my own eyeballs to any
Indig report anywise.  On to plan Two.

As we walked in front of the Indig armor Kappa smiled her friendliest
grin.  Both of us gave the Indig razzers a friendly wave, and both of
us continued towards the gate of the big yellow structure.  We're
safe, we're your friends, you don't need to bother with us.  Yeah.

There was an old ornate cast iron gate in front.  Knocked half off
its hinges.  From thread marks I'd say one of the Indig armored
scouts had bulled it apart.  The place tickled some suspicious place
in my back brain.  But then every place new did that.  This place
looked familiar, but I couldn't identify the function from out front.

The gate was inviting.  Some fools would have just walked inside. Not
Kappa and I.

She peeked around one side of the gateway, myself the other, pulling
our heads back quickly.  We'd learned almost any building in any town
could spring a nasty surprise.  But this one almost made me return to
the scout for another dose of stomach soother.

They say cats are curious, but I ain't no cat, and my innate curiosity
was dinked and cremated a long time past.  Kappa was trying to appear
calm, so she took a pull off her canteen.  But she kept her eyes open,
and I didn't believe she was relaxed.

She'd told me once her people had something akin to the spirit of
Bushido, an old Terran warrior code she thought I'd be familiar with.
On which point she was correct.

It was a style of life she had been raised in, and like Bushido, their
own system emphasized obedience.  They promoted the willingness to
perish if the need arises.  Buddha, what a concept. How glorious it
was to die in fulfillment of your duty.  I suppose it wasn't much
worse than being in the Legion and dying for a paycheck.  Kappa
probably belonged in the Legion.  At least Legion officers tended to
lead from the front.

We'd all seen Indig operations where Officers had shiny medals and
shiny pants and Police units in clean uniforms to enforce their
commands.  No thank you.  If my choice was between some mud foot in
front, and a razzer behind me (ready to reinforce my enthusiasm for
the assault with a pistol to my head), I think I'd opt for shooting a
few razzers.

This Bushido-style warrior code was strong on her home world, on Xenon
A.  After a few dozen years of peace on Xenon, she had gotten damned
restless, she said.  Now a Third Degree Ghost Saver like her had to
make do with other people's wars.  They had none of their own left.

Of course Kappa wasn't a typical, she said.  We both knew she had a
problem in her obedience profile.  As did I.

Time to jump in the dill again.  I licked my lips, tensing for yet
another scouting into the unknown.  Kappa met my eyes, and damned if
the raunchy bitch didn't rub her crotch.  Kappa was no fool, but she
loved combat, she found it erotic.  She said most warriors on Altair
did.  No wonder the damned planet used to exist in a constant state of
warfare.

When we got to end of contract I knew she'd looking to celebrate, if
we lived that long.  Hell, she'd probably want to do me tonight. Maybe
I'd accept one of her propositions.  Some day.  Maybe tonight.

There was, however, the example of Juice, over in AirArty, who had his
ear sewn back on.  No bad feelings seemed to exist between him and
Kappa, he patted Kappa on her butt every time they met.  So maybe
making love with a Third Degree was worth it.  Maybe.

Kappa covers me as I zigzag across a gravel courtyard to the open door
of the structure.  I peek in a high window, then the door, and wave
her in.  Damn, she could move fast!  Xenon A's are a semi-feline race,
and it shows in their speed.  I was remembering a campfire-lit night
and an inebriated Kappa doing a strip-tease for some twenty of us.  I
had to admit she was graceful as Hades.  All that furry female and
nearly hairless belly.

Eventually we're both within the building.  Smoothly gliding around
corners.  Happy whispers in our symbiot that conditions are still as
before.  A reminder he and Kebnebe are both alert and functioning.

Visors locked up so we could eyeball, still cautious as hell, and it
comes to me this is a religious building.  Here are benches, there's a
altar up front in a nave, or chapel, or whatever.  One of the
Christian sects according to the big cross I saw back of the altar.

We glide in and out of a dozen rooms, and find nothing.  Bottles of
wine in one room up front, and little biscuits in a canister. Ornate
robes and mysterious clothing things.  Boxes of Hymnal's Nice colored
windows.  Storerooms, offices, damper's.  Nothing, no one.  Excepting
one unlucky male Indig in a black dress, a habit?

He was lying in the middle of one room.  A big Angstrom had opened him
up at point-blank range.  You could tell by the ring of foam around
the entrance hole.  A little of it was in his beard and his eyes
looked surprised.  Just one more old Indig who made a bad stain on the
wall opposite.  Fresh, the pool of blood was still spreading.  Not
good.

Noises are reaching us from upstairs, and Kappa's ruff is standing
straight up as we ascend a wide flight of stairs.  We tiptoe around
the body of what we presumed had once been a female.  Face down,
leaking freely, making the stairs treacherous below her body. Another
Angstrom, looked like.  Someone had been making a point.

Slowly, slowly, sneaky, sneaky.  There's a lot of sobbing and crying,
and commands were being barked.  My nose said it smelled bad, and my
stomach agreed.  They both said I should turn around and back out of
here, mount my scout, and quietly buzz around town a few minutes.
Tell BattCom the town was safe, and continue down the road beyond the
town for a half-klick.

Once past the woman, we backed up against the far wall.  Me first.
Very quietly easing ourselves up the stairs.  Our heads cleared the
floor level until we could both see into the large room.  We continued
easing upwards, on tiptoes.  Still backed against the far wall,
partially in shadow, scanning the room.

Maybe it was a dining hall in more normal times, maybe it was a
teaching center.  I never asked.  There were maybe fifty to sixty
women there, and maybe ten men.  Whatever it was before, it was a
center for rape today.

The men, humans all, were in various stages of dress or undress, and
not a few of the women.  We humans have this disagreeable habit of
sometimes forcing our women to have sex, and its not one of our nicer
traits.

We're not the only race to do so, but it's still a nasty thing. Rape
has almost nothing to do with sex, of course, and a lot to do with raw
force and power.

Only half of the Police were engaged in forced sex at the moment. Yet
from the number of naked, near-naked, and weeping women in the room
I'd have bet ten bars of gold-pressed latinum all the Indig police
present had already had a chance to crank someone.  Power was a great
aphrodisiac, and this crew was probably going to continue raping women
for some time.

We should have turned around and left, right then and there, but my
stomach was in a state of upset one remove from ejecting.  If I had
retreated from this spectacle, as my good sense was suggesting, I
would have had the cramps for a week.  I felt like killing each and
every razzer in this room.  Kappa probably expected me to retreat, but
as I kept moving upward, she decided to back my play.  You don't walk
out on a comrade in arms.  She didn't know I was traversing on
auto-pilot.  Not a gram of sense in my head at the moment.

We continued up the stairs, very quietly.  No one seemed to notice us
until we reached the top.  Then we were able to move apart by four or
five meters.  Kappa pointed to a couple by the wall, with a
jacket-clad male on a female's back.  It took me a minute to realize
the unlucky girl draped over a chair didn't have any breasts.

She was female, all right, and regretting it at that moment.  She was
human, too.  At one time a very pretty one with her flaxen hair.

She was a child.  That did it.  I hated these Police.

This place was a school, or orphanage, or something close to it. And
this group of Police weren't limiting their victims to grown women.  I
shouldn't have been surprised.  There are two types of razzer.

The one screws it's criminals.

The other screws the local people.

The first razzer to notice us was a dark-haired dandy with his boots
and cap still on.  He was standing, and a naked woman, girl rather,
was fellating him.  The slug-thrower he held in her ear might have had
something to do with her cooperation.

Gradually a quiet came to the room as they each in turn realized we
were there.

Next was the realization we were armed and in uniform.  That spooked
them.  If they could have read our thoughts they would have reached
for their weapons.

Closest to me was a trio on a mattress.  The thin kind of mattress
they use for gym and exercise.  Two of the razzers were  having a
long-haired blond woman from front and rear.  Meat in a sandwich. At
least this girl looked to be a grown woman.

I think the Police on the bottom was cracking his biscuits, he had his
eyes cinched closed, he seemed to be in happy pain.  Completely
wasted, unaware of me and Kappa.

The blond looked up at me, long honey strands in her eyes, and she
looked like absolute hell.  She stared at me and cried for help. Not
understanding whatever she said, still I knew she was making a cry for
help.  The razzer on top hesitated in his pumping as he saw me.  Then
he smiled and held out a hand to me.  I recognized the word 'Legion'
in whatever he said to his fellow rapists.

Evidently he thought we were friends because we were allies, sort of.
One doesn't mean the other, thank you.

The police relaxed, you could feel it in the air, in the way they
started talking to each other again, real loud and relieved.  They
wouldn't have been so relieved if they would have understood Kappa's
stiff and unmoving neck ruff for what it truly meant. Kappa's apparent
indifference was a frigid rage, and I was breathing in tight whispers
myself.

I mentally debated turning off my helmet camera, but elected to leave
it on.  Three fingers got Kappa's attention, and they tapped the side
of my helmet.  I motioned at my record-keeping eye, and she spared a
second to be sure hers was on.

I didn't like this situation.  I especially didn't like the odds I had
for walking back out again without trouble.  If I had to dink any of
these razzers I wanted two hardwire records of what caused it.
Nevertheless I was prepared to leave these Indig sumbitches to their
sick fun.

The Police were being nasty sumbitches, but it was their world, and
their codes, and there was no military advantage in dinking these
crankwad's over this.  If we got back with the wire in our helmets,
and our hides intact, we could always register a complaint.  In the
past, antics like this had made supposedly safe regions dangerous as
hell to us and Allied Indigs alike.  Blood came up among the defeated
Indigs, honor of their women, etc.  Guerrillas appeared like magic.
If anyone in the Legion got dinked by a fanatic or sniper it failed to
amuse us.

We might also claim contract violation.  Indig stupidity endangering
Legion personnel with unprofessional behavior, etc., etc., and so on.
Fines, in other words.  Anyone who thinks this is a joke is unaware of
the scale of fines we sometimes impose on the contractors.

First things first, however.  We had to get out of here alive, then we
could file.

I just smiled at the manure-heads, kept the barrel of my Phaser
slanted to the floor, and began backing towards the stair.  The odds
were too lopsided, we were allies of a sort, and I'd long since
abandoned any urge to correct all the evils of the universe. They
might be using children as women, but it was still none of my
business.

Then some razzer fool, with no pants on, comes toward us.  Pushing
ahead of himself a slim naked girl with tiny breasts.

Likely the girl was no more than thirteen T-years, if that.  She was
crying silently, and he was holding her by her straw-colored hair.
She would probably be pretty when she grew up, if she lived that long.

She looked to be in shock, and by the smears of blood on her thigh she
probably wasn't a virgin anymore.  The razzer indicated with a gesture
that this one was real tight.  I think.  Wonderful.  These crank-wads
were inviting us to join the party.

Excuse me, but my stomach could never handle fruit that was that
damned green.

They must not have realized Kappa was female, and they probably didn't
know an Xenon Altairan from a Gorn.  Kappa was not pleased by the
invitation to join in the fun.  Of course, if I were to even touch one
of these children Kappa would have my liver for an evening snack.

After she'd roasted the hearts of every razzer in the room.  Turned
them on a spit, then ate them.  For a gal she could sure eat a lot,
she could.  But then she was a big gal.

I proceeded to smile and retreat and sweat, all at the same time.
Trying to turn down this fool's generous offer as graciously as I
could without being able to speak the local language.

I'd forgotten about the long-haired blond to my right, but she hadn't
forgotten about me.  She'd realized I was retreating, she said
something loud, and bent to the razzer she was lying on, who was
having her from the front.  At first I thought she was kissing him,
then arterial blood splattered all the way across to my face. She had
torn his throat out, torn out the crankwad's jugular.  With her teeth.

I knew it was possible if you bit down hard enough with good teeth.
I'd heard stories.  This was the first time I ever saw it happen.

All hell broke loose, total bloody hell.  The blond twisted as I
watched, grabbing the thick black hair of the Police butt raping her.
Her face was distorted with gouts of blood, and she was biting the
face and throat of the razzer who had been on top.  Then punching him
in the neck.  Maybe trying to break his windpipe.  Who knows?  The
razzer certainly knew he was being hurt and in deep trouble.  He was
screaming, trying to hit her, get away from her.

It was obvious the bottom rapist would never smile again, he was
already white-blue, twitching, going into shock.  He'd lost an artery,
and his life was pouring out in pulses.

Blood was over half the room, and the Policeman who had been on top
staggered to his feet.  That was hard to do because the blond was
still attached to his throat like a weasel on a snake.

For a few seconds it appeared as if someone had thrown a bucket of
black paint on the both of them, trying to separate them.  Then the
pair broke, and it could be seen how fast the razzer was losing blood,
pumping fast from a fist-long tear in his neck.

In desperation he finally threw the blond to the floor.  A long wail
of fright came from his mouth as he tried unsuccessfully to stem the
flow of blood with his hand.  The manure-head was already dead, and
hadn't realized it yet.

Kappa stuck her tongue out to taste the rich salty copper smell
filling the air.  Hell, Kappa was happy as a Klingon in this abattoir.

If at that second the blond had bent her gore-splattered head and
paused to drink the blood of her two victims, I think I would have
just smiled.  Grinned and nodded my head in approval.  I'd have
admired her sense of theater in doing so.  I half-expected her to do
exactly that.  I wasn't thinking too clearly.

The naked blond was now stalking one of the other Police as if he was
her next victim, streaks of darkness in her long blond hair as if in a
fashion set-up.  The razzer probably WAS her next target.

He pulled a short-barreled stored-charge pistol and waved it at me,
then at Kappa.  The last was his fatal mistake.  She aimed the DxG-40
at him, and the fool responded by firing at Kappa.

Maybe he was a pretty good shot when he was half a meter away and the
victim was kneeling in front of him.  In a combat situation where
twenty people were screaming, and the room looked like it was going to
be ankle deep in blood; when there were unknowns in front of you
holding weapons, his aim was a joke.  He blew away chunks of the wall
behind Kappa, and I could hear bits of building rattling down the
stairs behind us.  Too bad.  You missed your turn.

Kappa had counted coup forty times, and she didn't rattle easy. She
gently caressed the trigger on her stored-charge machine gun, and four
spent plastic wafers were soon wafting through the air towards me.  It
was a text-book hit, just four shots.  Not much was left between his
sternum and belly button.  Not at this range.

One or two of the students, nuns, whatever, fell down behind him, but
I think they just fainted when they became spattered with
ex-Policeman.  The rest of the Police started scrambling for their
weapons, and Kappa put another five wafers into the ceiling.  As the
plaster and wood settled to the floor it could be observed everyone
was re-thinking their impulse to start shooting at us. For now.

Shit, this was already a dill situation, we were deep in the pickle.
We had to get out of here.  Preferably without having to disassemble
any additional razzers.  After all, you shouldn't dink your allies,
right?

Mind you, I had no great moral qualms about dinking Police who had
been cranking children.  Crankwad's are crankwad's, and they all need
dinking in my view.  I'd just as soon watch the blond tear all their
throats out.  I'd enjoy it and sleep tonight like a babe. But we're
professionals in the Legion, and it would not be professional conduct
for us to be judge, jury and axe man about happenings which might not
even be crimes in the local mores.

Hell, maybe here they celebrated the birth of female children because
it meant Papa would have handy sex partners for years to come.

Maybe they worshipped fresh cow chips.  I don't know.  It takes all
kinds to populate a galaxy.  I don't judge 'em, I just kill 'em.

ALMOST everyone froze.  The women were wailing like banshees again,
but that damned blond retrieved a short-barreled Angstrom from
somebody's holster.  Buddha, but she had cojones.  Absolutely no
common sense, but a giant pair of cojones.

I saw her grab the stored-charge pistol, and warned her to drop it.
Instead she looked at me like I was crazy, and kept pointing it at the
police.  Hell, I thought, I didn't want to kill her, and my phaser was
set on ten.  This blond was beginning to be a real pain in the rear to
me, she just wouldn't quit while she was ahead.

I was frightened to hell and back just by looking at her.  With blood
spattering her as it did, she looked like Death herself come to visit.
Damned if I wasn't excited as hell too, painfully aware of the
erection cramping me in my crotch.  You figure that one out.

There she crouched, blood on chin, elbows, running down her hips and
belly, hair with red stripling's, and all I could think of was how
she'd be a top-style woman without the damned blood all over her tits.

To say I was inputting contradictory messages would be to understate
my confusion.  I was almost ready to phaser her anywise, lust be
damned, and wonder later why the blond was giving me a diamond-cutter.

Here I was, with my life hanging by a thread.  The room was filled
with screaming females.  Kappa had her mind primed to dink everyone in
sight.  Several Police were in a killing mood.  And I wanted to share
a sleeper with someone who scared me out of my mind.

For once I could understand Kappa's view that near-destruction could
be exciting as hell.  Medico Dish would probably say I had at last
found my dream woman.

Stupendous!  I not only find my wet-dream. but I can get dinked at the
same time!

Anywise, the blond was pleading with me, and maybe she was going to
drop the weapon in her hand.  I was certainly yelling loud enough.
Even if she didn't understand my words she got the drift of them. That
was when she got shot.

She cried out, and I clearly saw the spurt of flesh when the
slug-thrower round took her in the thigh.  I turned and phasered the
fool firing.  Maybe he was going to shoot me next.  Possibly. In a
second he was a glowing memory and Kappa was putting charges into the
rest of the police.  So much for my hopes of amicable cooperation with
the Indig Police authority.

Damn, damn, damn!

Maybe a few would have been glad to surrender, but at this stage we
couldn't trust any surviving Police at our backs.  Call it Fog Of War.

I got two more with my phaser, and Kappa worked her way from center to
left, blasting the rest whether they wanted to fight or not.  In a
period of confusion, you've got to do what feels right at the time.
Killing them now seemed the most sensible course.

Kappa was an artist with the DxG-40, and she only did one of the Indig
women who got in the way.  Here we are shooting, and one female
decides to run into the lines of fire.  You figure it out if you can.

Kappa's tongue was flicking in the air, and my own nose was rejecting
the smell of the room.  Crap and blood.

We ignored the panicky females and inspected the Police bodies. Happy
was requesting data through the neckjack.  The telltales indicated a
number of greens had become deads, and they had heard shooting all the
way to their side of the square.  The symbiot allowed me to tell him
we had trouble here, and were going to try to return to the scout.

I shoved one screaming woman away before she could get hysterical all
over me, but raised my head when Kappa touched my arm.  She was
pointing out one of the windows, indicating the Indig armor units
outside the gate.  Three humans were standing on their vehicles and
another was on the ground, waving a rifle of some type in the
direction of this building.  More trouble.  They'd surely heard the
shooting too.

I looked around again.  There didn't seem to be a back exit and I
never was much good at jumping out of windows.  Besides, my scout was
on the other side of the Police armor.  The premium-grade blond was
efficiently tying off her leg with a belt from the Police, all by
herself.  For some reason it pleased me to see she seemed able to
cope.  Even bloody and murderous she had a great body to her, sweet
pinkish nipples on firm breasts too.  Alpha Prime female.

What pleased me a damned sight less was her pulling a long brown dress
over her head, and then sticking that short-barreled stored-charge gun
in a side pocket.

"You've got to take me with you," she said to us.  "Are there more of
you here?  You came in a vehicle of some sort, didn't you?," she
queried.  Only a slight quaver in that lovely voice.

In Standard, bold as you please, like it was a quiet afternoon on
Mars.  She didn't waste any time saying Thank you very much, you're a
hero for saving my life.  Why, thank you, Ma'am, think nothing of it,
we rescue ladies in distress every day.  Nothing like that. She just
baldly told us we had to take her with us.

Unfortunately it was not assured whether we'd be able to take our own
bodies to safety, much less hers as well.

"You speak Standard," I said, like it wasn't obvious what she was
speaking it.  "How come you didn't speak it before now?"  That's me,
room spattered with blood, and I get right down to the core questions.

"I got out of the habit of speaking it while I was here," she simply
stated.  "They speak Lithuanian, one of the old Terran languages,
locally."

A spasm of pain etched her face, and she suddenly leaned hard against
me.  "I've got to get out of here," she finally stated. "Would you
please let me come with you?" she asked.

Practical minded Kappa asked, "Can you travel with that leg?  If you
can't walk out of here with us, we'll have to leave you."  I looked at
Kappa and intruded in their dialogue.

"I'm NCO commanding, damn it.  You may have your stripes back
tomorrow, but I'm in charge today."  Nonetheless I didn't countermand
her offer to the blond to let her leave with us.

Looking the blond in the face I had the opportunity to notice the
clean lines of her face.  How pretty she looked, with that pointy
nose.  She had great bones, when the blood was off her face.  (When
the hell had she had an opportunity to wipe her face clean?  With
what?)

There was still smearing's, and I pulled one bandanna from around my
neck to wipe at it.  It was sweaty, but it cleaned part of the mess.
She thanked me with those blue eyes of hers, really looking at me for
the first time.

"Can't you wait here for your local medical facilities to treat you?
We're not here to rescue people, it's not part of our job."

Damn, she had some great cheekbones on her, and I hadn't seen that
shade of blue eyes in human space for some time.  She kept trying to
favor her bad leg, and privately I doubted her ability to travel far
with a thigh shot like hers.

Around us three or four of the older women were getting the situation
under control, getting all the girls dressed, throwing some big cloths
on the bodies of the Police.  Wise move by the, what were they called?
Yeah, Nuns, the ones in the darker dresses.

With a small shock I realized the blond had dressed herself in one of
the brown dresses they had the young girls in.  Not black, brown.  She
wasn't an adult, Nun, whatever.  She was young, teens Terran anywise.
Hades!  I had been getting attracted to a big damned child.

"Please," she asked me and Kappa, "let me come with you.  I can walk.
I must.  If I stay here they'll kill me.  I've got to leave, and now
is the time to do it."  I half-expected her to get hysterical, but she
only leaned on me and looked at Kappa.

I held that arm for a second, enjoying the feel of muscle under that
smooth skin.  She must have realized Kappa was another female, for she
spoke, and appealed, to our better natures.  To Kappa, not me.

"Let me come with you, please, I'll do my best to keep up with you,
only don't leave me here.  They'll kill me when more of them come."
She reached out and touched Kappa, woman to woman, the entreaty plain
in her face.  She didn't need to state her death might be the least of
it.  The razzers would return, and their tempers would REALLY be high
then.  They would have their fun with her first.

Kappa spared a second to look out the window, the blond following her
glance, probably noting the vehicles still outside, and several
additional razzers now milling about in front.

"Lean over," Kappa told the blond.  When she did, Kappa poured water
on the blonde's head from her canteen.  Then Kappa rubbed most of the
blood out of her long hair, using a pair of Police pants as a rag.
The blond almost looked presentable with her hair cleaned.  A cross
breeze through the windows moved the strands of her blondness.

"Do you have a name?" Kappa questioned.

"Tasha," the blond replied, "Natasha Yar."

"How are you so sure they'll kill you?" I asked.

"I used to work for the Sctchaekii bastards," Tasha said.  "They work
for the Coalition, and I left them months ago.  I quit, and they don't
like that.  They consider it an insult.

"I think those shlyooscha Police might have come to this place just to
find me.  Planning to take me back to my ex-bosses.  That's another
reason for me to leave.  Gone, this school isn't the target it is now.
If I'm gone, they'll ignore this school.  I hope."

And if at some point in the future they didn't ignore the school,
there wasn't anything she could do about it.  Like I said, we weren't
in the business of rescuing damsels in distress.  Tomorrow or next
week we'd be gone, unable to help.

At least Tasha seemed to be working her options calmly, trying to
survive.  My fault, not hers, if I kept noticing those blue eyes every
time she looked my way.  Also, not many females could bounce back from
a rape, a double rape, and a punctured thigh that fast. She may have
been a youngster, but she was acting like a grown.

Her sweet face was covered with sweat, it was dripping off that
classic chin of hers.  She had to be in constant pain with the leg
wound.  For all of those distractions, she seemed far from hysterical.
Determined, clear-headed, making necessary decisions while ignoring
her pains.  Maybe four hours from now she might collapse or start
screaming.  Right now she meant to reach the dubious shelter of our
vehicle.

Frankly, she still looked like hell.  Yet I was thinking if she just
was a little older she'd be a real silk, a genuine cream of a woman.
Great Buddha, I wanted her bad enough to taste it.

Wonderful timing, Hero.  Good place to feel erotic.

Tasha tied up her hair with someone's ribbon, and Kappa was
eye-balling the clot of Police down in the square again.  Happy commed
us through our helmet symbiots, and he reminded us that weaponry had
been heard all the way to the square.  Of course the scout's
instruments were probably a few orders or magnitude more sensitive
than that of the Indig armor, but from the agitation visible amongst
the Police, it was obvious they'd heard something as well.  Happy had
quietly put a charge up the spout of the Plasma cannon, but he didn't
like the notion of firing when we were so close to target.

Kappa used more water and cloths to improve Tasha's appearance, and
was eye-balling me as I admired the blond.  A shawl was obtained, and
Natasha had become a merely distraught woman, nothing more. The blood
on her leg was hid when she tied another shawl around her waist.

A big lean woman with a dour look and a black dress exchanged tearful
farewells with the blond.  They seemed quite close to each other.
This one had already realized Tasha was leaving their group, which put
her four steps ahead of anyone else amongst the women.  None of the
others seemed coherent enough to be bidding good-bye.

This older woman was babbling something in standard about Tasha
keeping up with her linear calculus.  But I think it was just one
woman trying not to say to another how afraid she was for the other.
I assumed this woman was the Centurion, or Mother-General, or
whatever, of this place.  Farewells over, the black-clad Centurion
straightened, and turned her back on Tasha.  No more farewells, and no
more tears.  Time now for needful things.  She took her charges in
hand, barking orders to Nuns and girls alike.

As we began to go downstairs with Natasha between us, the Centurion
Nun called to us and gave the blond a pair of archaic metal handcuffs.
Whathell, and real metal, of all things.  You tell me how old metal
handcuffs were in a school.  I didn't want to think of possible
scenarios.  How friendly was she and Tasha?

Natasha seemed familiar with them, and put them on, unlocked, loose,
on the one wrist.  She just held the other end in her other hand.
Holding her wrists out to us, Kappa got the idea.  Tasha knew as well
as we did we'd have to run some type of bluff on the Police in the
square.  If possible we'd just walk past them, mount the Scout, and
happily roar away.

Tasha held on to a railing, and was hopping down the stairs on one
leg.  She began to fall when negotiating around the dead woman. Kappa
and I saved her.  After that Kappa just put her on a fireman's carry
across her shoulders.  Telling her she had to walk or be left behind
hadn't been exactly true.  Kappa was still as strong as a big
higher-gravity planet female two meters tall can be, even ten years
after she'd left home.  But there had been no sense in advertising
variant options to the blond.

Which move left me free to confront the three Police who came through
the doors of the building.  Their weapons were up,  and surely all
three had their safeties off.  I smiled as broadly as possible and
walked right up to what looked like the senior razzer officer.

He seemed to be surprised at the friendly greeting, and the babble I
spoke at him.  I greeted him like an old friend, waving my arms and
patting the head of the blond across Kappa's shoulders.  I quickly
indicated the handcuffs Tasha seemed to be wearing, and in a
conspiratorial tone of voice continued talking to him.  Buddy to buddy
type stuff, you know, babbling like a drunk or crazy.

I got to where I was touching him.  At this time Kappa was yelling at
Natasha.  Kappa put her on her feet, cuffing her alongside the head in
a pretense of hostility.  Also incidentally laying the barrel of her
slung DxG-40 directly at the Police by the door.

"Tell them they're covered, Natasha, and they had better drop their
weapons or they're dead men," I told her.

Suddenly standing erect, Tasha commanded the Police to do something.
Her words must have been effective, for weapons quickly clattered onto
the hard stone floor.  Tasha limped behind the two who had had rifles,
and handcuffed them together through the inside handle of the door.  I
hadn't had a lot of faith in the handcuff trick anyways.  Leave 'em
here.

With my phaser on stun, I gave them each two bursts to make sure
they'd be quiet.  Happy headaches.  At least you'll be alive.

Resetting it to ten, I let the other razzer note the process. "Tell
him it's lethal now," I told Tasha.  She said something to him, then
showed the stored-charge handgun she had in her pocket.

If seeing the way I had stunned his partners (rather than killing
them) had managed to reassure the razzer, the sight of Tasha holding
that man killer had quite the opposite effect.  He also must have been
thinking of reasons why his buddies weren't coming down the stairs.
Not being much comforted by some of the possibilities.

It didn't take him but once to learn what he was supposed to say to
his buddies in the square, the ones with the armor.  Gotta take this
woman to HQ (or God, or equivalent authority), the Legion will get her
there faster.  So-and-so did a little shooting upstairs. Dumb fool.
He's being sent down with so-and-so, and then you guys can go upstairs
for your turn.  Or something to that effect.

Tasha and the Police Officer seemed to have a sincere little chat, and
that Angstrom in his ear must have facilitated his understanding of
what was required of him.

For safety I emptied the Angstrom he had been holding of its tube of
plastic wafers, emptied the chamber, then gave it back to him. He
walked slightly in front, the now-useless weapon in his hand. Kappa
dragged/supported Tasha, and relaxed ol' me had my helmet in my hand,
carrying it by the strap.  Ol' smiling fool, that's me. The helmet
hiding the fact I was carrying my phaser in my other hand.

Hell, didn't all the kids adventure tales show how bold brave troopers
like myself were doing this ingenious stuff all the time, and fooling
the dumb enemy?  Right.  Let's do it.  Now, before anyone got more
suspicious.  Or I lost my nerve.

I didn't really expect it to work.  Hoped, yeah, but expect?

Actually it started out rather well.

The Police Officer managed to walk more or less normally.  The sort of
over-confident stride I expected to see from a Turkana razzer. Maybe
he was just walking funny from trying not to dump in his pants.

He hadn't seen the abattoir upstairs, but he had to believe all his
buddies were debits by now.  Some of them at least.

Kappa, bless her little heart, was seemingly pulling the blond along.
Tasha herself was moaning and crying to convince anyone of her horror.
If she stumbled and leaned against Kappa at times, well, it probably
seemed the thing to do.

I wiped my face with one of the bandannas around my throat, and smiled
like the village idiot for these Police.  Hoping they would let us by.

I kept one eye on Tasha, for she would be the one to indicate if the
razzer in front of me was giving data to the others that he shouldn't.
My other eye was on the razzer.  Trying to gauge if he was preparing
himself for a desperate run for safety.  A yell for help, or some such
foolish notion.  If I was going to Hell, he was going to arrive ahead
of me.

Be a good little Policeman and come with me to my scout, and tomorrow
you'll be back in the arms of your friends.

Maybe we could dink every razzer here, and their vehicles.  Maybe not.
And maybe not with yours truly amongst the survivors.  Or Kappa.  Or
the blond.

I tried very hard not to notice the glances she gave me.  Like I was a
superman, capable of getting us out of this.  A hero in fact.

Like I said, it started well.  The trouble came when some suspicious
razzer with a bare chest came out of a side hatch to halt the whole
parade.

He came forward with an archaic form of automatic slug-thrower in his
hands, and he had us lined up from the start.  He kept watching us,
me, while bellowing something at the razzer with the empty Angstrom.
Four or five of his buddies joined him, and an unpleasantly
lethal-looking barrel in an oversized turret began to track towards my
scout vehicle.

Our hostage suddenly had friendles's on either side of him, and I knew
he had to be thinking of making a break for it.  We'd assured him of a
safe-conduct back if we made it, but maybe being returned to his
bosses after a failure was not something to look forward to. Maybe he
just panicked.  But he moved, and as he moved the wrong way, he shot a
worried look over his shoulder at me.  That was the moment when Tasha
screamed.

Every eye went to her when she let go of this nerve-shattering
screech.  Frankly I didn't think she had it in her.  It was all
stagework, of course.  She'd realized the hostage razzer was making a
break for it, and reacted with cool intent.

Their eyes went to her, but their weapons hadn't quite followed yet.
In that second or two she shot the big razzer with the bare chest.
She shot him twice with the Angstrom, right over the machine-gun, and
the charges opened his chest out like he'd taken a mini-Plasma.  If he
wasn't dead, he was a great actor.  Tasha had correctly realized (I
thought) that the big razzer was the most immediate danger to us, and
nulled him first.

She shot some fool next to him who had his pistol out, and Kappa
filled the air with hot wafers as she went on full automatic.

I got the Police next to me with my Phaser, but our hostage seemed to
have gotten away.  I took the time to hold my phaser fire on the
barrel of the turret that had been traversing.  It was pleasing to see
my risk rewarded with the sight of it bending.  By then Kappa was
yelling, and it was time to run.

Tasha stumbled, and without waiting for her to get to her feet I
simply grabbed her by the arm, hauled her to her feet by main force.
The pains of protesting muscles made me gasp.  My shoulder and arm
muscles were going to be complaining tonight, if I ever reached
tonight.

By the gouts of dust blowing in my face I knew someone had tried a
stored-charge burst in our direction, and I tried to orient myself as
to where the scout was.

Then Tasha and I were blown off our feet by what I knew was a Plasma
blast behind us.  The whole square shook from the blast, and all three
of us were blown to the ground.  A flash of redness flew over us from
the blast-wave, and I felt my helmet leave my head, symbiot jacks and
all.

More than likely Happy had laid a hit on the Police armor furthest
from us, trying to silence them, and yet not kill us at the same time.
There should be greater distances between plasma tube and target than
was present here, and certainly we should be further from the target.
I've seen Plasma spatter, and I'd rather die from having my head blown
off than from Plasma burns.  I hoped I wasn't burning from Plasma
spatter, didn't feel any eating into me, but couldn't think to tell.

Someone grabbed both Tasha and me, it was Kappa.  She was minus her
DxG and helmet both.  Five or six spots on her was burning, two or
three on the blond.  Kappa brushed my back and butt clean just as the
pain registered.

We stumbled, crawled, jerked across the square as another vehicle blew
up behind us.  Probably a victim of the first Plasma hit.  An
overpowering whooshing sound enveloped us, along with a sandstorm of
dirt.  I felt rather than saw the scout come between us and the Police
armor.

It settled a little and Happy was at the side hatch pulling Tasha
inside.  Just before I dived inside I looked for Kappa and saw her
down, on her knees.  I returned to her, feeling rather than hearing
the explosive charges denting the armor of our scout with ponderous
boomings.  Someone was alert amongst the Police, and was already
laying projectile cannon fire on our scout.  My eyes teared from grit,
and the square stunk like Satan's crotch from Plasma and explosives.

Kappa was bleeding and I swung her in first, diving after, the scout
ringing like a broken bell from the continuing explosives being hurled
into her.

My legs were still sticking out the hatch as Kebnebe rammed us in
emergency reverse, fans complaining in a high screech as he fought to
give us firing room for the plasma cannon.  Another blow rocked us
like mice in a box, but the fighting compartment held integrity.

By feel rather than sight I pulled a med unit off the compartment
wall, and Tasha took it from me.  She seemed to both know how to use
one and was willing to do so.  As I finished entering the hatch I
could see her dose Kappa with a combination coagulant and pain killer,
then start applying sealers to Kappa's neck.  I wanted to hold Kappa
close, and tell the big feline that things were going to be fine.

Instead I left Kappa in what seemed to be capable hands.  I had to
deal with our biggest problems first.  Back to command, back to
staying alive.

You do not, I repeat, do not want to be close to your target when a
Plasma charge bursts.

Kebnebe backed us frantically, our composite body scraping ground
repeatedly as Indig artillery fire from the two remaining Police
vehicles hammered into us.  They must have had a good auto-loading
system in those turrets, from the fast-paced blows we were receiving.
This close they were a genuine threat to us, even with their archaic
weapons systems.

As stated before, at close enough range a bow and arrow are deadly.
Someone in those vehicles knew how to use those cannon, too. Inside it
felt like we were fighting inside a giant bell being rung, and I had
trouble thinking from the explosive crack-of-doom sounds.

At some point one of those AT or S-Charge rounds were going to
penetrate, and we would be canned meat.  We needed some room, dammit!
Onboard seemed to be down.  I couldn't think straight, and was near to
blindness.

Happy couldn't wait any longer.  The vision ports were dark. the other
side of the compartment showed a dozen ominous bulges from hits, and
Happy was cursing the aiming and turret mechanisms. Happy tapped
Kebnebe on the shoulder, and in shorthand sign-language indicated the
Plasma had to be aimed by swerving the entire vehicle.

I blew the vision ports with the emergency charges, and we at least
had slits to open air.  We could see what was happening in the square.

We could see the anteroom to hell out there.  Bodies and scrap steel
lay everywhere, and red and black oily smoke rolled across to us,
obscuring the Indigs.  The turret on one Police armor blasted us as we
watched, the impact throwing us again to the square's surface.
Kebnebe worked the scout around until Happy could see by eyeball the
tube was approximately where it should be.

Then Happy hit the foot switch, without waiting for a command from me,
firing the round the auto feed had tamped into the chamber. The world
suddenly turned a bright and vivid red as the plasma blew.  I was
blinded temporarily, right through my closed eyelids. I could see
illusory white wave lines for hours after.

Out the still-open side hatch the sky turned black and red as the
Police vehicles turned into trash.  I had been thrown to the deck
below my turret seat, and without thought I scrambled back.

Kebnebe backed us further across the square, between two low
structures, and Happy fired once more, just to make sure.  I don't
think it was necessary, and we were still much too close according to
the textbook, but Happy was in no mood to gamble.

I worked a sore body upright, because for once every bone and muscle
in my body was complaining.  For some reason auto couldn't pop the
hatch on the turret.  The reason became apparent when I found I could
climb out of it as it was.  Somewhere, somehow, one of the blows to
the turret had sprung the hatch, and another had torn it off its
hinges.  Somewhere in the square my turret hatch was lying, part of
the scrap littering the wreckage-strewn area. We would find it, no
doubt.

Outside it was like night, from the smoke, a night in Hell from the
red streaks that came from burning armored vehicles.

An intact-looking turret came down from high in the sky, landing on
its gun barrel and clanging to our right.  That one must have
approached near-sub-orbital heights.  It was hard to determine which
piece was from what area of what vehicle, and it didn't much matter.
No one was going to reassemble these items.

There was burning Plasma splatter and flaming wreckage over half the
square, and patches of wall, gate, and fountain were burning. There
was even a circle of water in the fountain's basin on fire. Splatter
from Plasma strikes can do that.

Of more import to the locals, the buildings around the square were
beginning to burn.  The school, whatever, it too had three or four
sections of it's stone walls knocked down and on fire.  Being stone,
it should eventually go out by itself.  Maybe.

As for ourselves, there didn't seem to be a speck of paint left on our
turret, or the port side of the scout.  Our nameplate was gone
somewhere, and perhaps it was time to rename our scout.

Smoke was rising from the depressions sledge-hammered into us.
However, from inside it appeared we had retained integrity.  We
smelled of nitrates and sulfur, we smelled like a Demon-vehicle.

The scout rocked a little as Kebnebe tested the ability of our runner
to respond.  He had blown his bent driver's hatch upwards, out of the
way, and he and Happy were eye-balling the square as we made a small
circle of it.  The Rhad power plants seemed untouched, but the skirts
were obviously slewing.  We undoubtedly had missing skirt panels.  The
main turret was jammed, but we could still fire the Plasma rifle.  Our
elevating mechanism seemed to operate with only a small complaint, and
a jerking motion.

Happy went out the side hatch with a long steel pry in his hand. He
began scraping Plasma shards off the body, turret and front glacis
before they burned their way through the armor.  He cursed non-stop as
he labored to clear the scout's surface without melting down his pry
in the process.  His hair was smoking, but he ignored it.

My throat mike was still attached, spitting static, so I keyed in the
comma unit, and took a mike from off the aux-board to speak with.  I
made a note to recover all helmets and weapons, if we could.  I'd need
the hardwire record in the helmets to spare myself trouble from
Command.  And my own stubborn streak wouldn't let me leave any weapons
around as souvenirs.  Hell, I'd find that damned hatch-cover if I
could.

Just prior to keying in Section, and making a report, I smiled to
myself.  We were bent in a few corners, but we had made it through
okay.  I was still smiling when I saw Natasha's face, and my good
humor, my euphoria at surviving, died in an instant.

Kappa's head lay in Tasha's lap, and it rolled gently to the uneven
movements of the scout.  Her alien arms lay at her sides, quiet, at
peace now, no more wars for her.

Tasha had closed Kappa's eyes, and was singing a simple repetitive
tune for Kappa, like she was a baby Tasha was trying to lull to sleep.
The blond stroked Kappa's black-and-gold hair, tracing the eyebrows
with a fingertip, touching the face as if not to disturb her sleep.
Yar's thumb brushed the upright cat's ears on top of Kappa's sculpted
head, an action I knew would have provoked an irritated twitch if
Kappa had felt it.  Tasha was not watching me, but Kebnebe and I were
watching her with Kappa.

She bent and kissed Kappa on the forehead, just once, quickly, then
took the hem of her dress and began cleaning that brazen face of the
blood and filth staining it.  There was so much blood on Tasha's
garment already, from Kappa's throat hit, it wasn't doing much good.

The report could wait another minute or two, so I pulled a few towels
from the locker and wet them from the reservoirs.  One wet towel I
handed to Tasha, and together the pair of us tenderly cleaned Kappa's
graceful face of its fouling.

It had never struck me before how lovely Kappa was.  Her features were
clean and smooth, and in repose she took on a strong and peaceful
beauty.  Maybe it was better, now, never to have loved her.  I didn't
believe it.

In the background I could hear Kebnebe on the comm, making prelim
comments so Command would know we had trouble, and the nature of it.
I think only Tasha saw me give Kappa a farewell kiss, a regret kiss,
on her soft lips.

We would have to get another slogan on our runner.  I no longer had
much enthusiasm for "Trouble".  It seemed like a good time for change.
You can tweak the noses of the Gods just so long, and then they get
pissed at you.

Time to let Section and Troop know what exactly had occurred.  They
would not be happy with us.  As I began to speak into the aux-board
mike, I wondered for a moment if it was true what Natasha had
suspected.  Not the war, that was a simple power struggle.  Every
trooper in the Legion knew that.  But the Police presence in this
town, why had they hurried here in such force?  Had all this happened
because they wanted her?  It didn't much matter, not really, not now.

We don't dwell on it if we can avoid it, but we all know our odds.
We're all dead already, but just haven't yet matched up our deaths
with place and time.  With luck we would receive a few farewells
before our cremations.

---
NIGHT, TWO DAYS LATER
---

It would be four hours before lift-off, and I was spending it away
from everyone else.  I still wasn't in much of a mood for company,
however well-intentioned.  It had been two local days since the
incident with the Indig Police.  The Shut out At the Nowy Radom Corral
it had been termed.  I failed to see anything even faintly funny about
it.

Sitting upright, back against the big stump, my poncho under me, it
was possible to drift, to lose something of reality.  A black mood had
settled in, and scattering Kappa's ashes across a local sea hadn't
improved my humor.  Tasha had asked to help, and we had let her ride
with us in the rear space of the scout.  Kappa's place.

The waters were calm as we rode the repaired fans out to the middle of
a small bay.  Eighteen other vehicles from the Legion were out in the
bay, laying their own ashy residues onto the embracing ocean.

My present somberness wouldn't last, I knew, but at the moment I was
as I was.  A bad-tempered fool who was feeling older than his years,
and was regretting never having cranked a fellow trooper when it would
have pleased her.  My mistake was I'd once more gotten accustomed to
thinking of myself, her, us, as having tomorrow's.  Time enough
tomorrow to do what was needful.

If I hadn't decided to investigate that school, if I'd left as soon as
I'd seen what was happening there.  If, if, if.  Once more I was
blaming myself, when really there was no one to blame.  If I'd done
this, if I'd done that....  Attempting to mentally reshuffle the
cards, to un-deal them, and give us all new hands.

I'd miss her grouching in the poker games, I'd miss her dirty jokes,
especially the ones about Romulans, I'd miss her coolness in the dill.
I'd miss never having held her, and bit her, while we cranked each
other to exhaustion.  She'd never purred for me in that special way,
and held my throat in her teeth, and I wondered now what I'd been
afraid of.  Maybe caring for her in that way.

Below, within the spaceport fence, vehicles and equipment were being
transported up to the Baolian freighters.  Our turn for extraction
would be within a few hours.

Someone had climbed the trail to this little knoll by the perimeter,
and I idly wondered who thought I was worth bothering with.  When I
made out the long pale hair, I knew it was Tasha Yar.

She'd stayed around the camp as we formed up for extraction, and I
think she was feeling lost.  I wondered if she was going to be part of
my life now, if I had traded Kappa for her.  I firmly drove those
regrets away.  It did no good to blame anyone, it did no good at all.
In time I knew I could also stop blaming myself.

"How'd you find me?, I asked.

"Happy showed me," she replied.  I stared up at her until she finally
asked; "May I join you?"  Since I gave her no reply she sat down
anywise, our arms touching.  We sat in silence for a time, until I got
tired of staring at the cloudy night sky, and turned to look at her
instead.

I'd acclimated to the uneven light from the extraction zone and
examined her carefully.  Not thinking of much, but noticing how pretty
and how tired she looked.  The blue eyes were black in this light, but
I knew they were there.  She returned my gaze, smiling a thin reply,
like she hadn't any heart to put into it.  I knew where I had become
both tired and old, but I wondered where she had?  How could a
teenager become so weary, so sad, so beaten?  She looked like she had
already lived two or three lifetimes, and they hadn't been easy ones.
Unexpectedly she began to speak to me.

"Kebnebe could use a little help also, you know," she commented. "She
and him were at least occasional lovers, and it bothers him that their
last words together were cold and distant.  He is not the only one
hurting."  Meaning I shouldn't be such a hog in my grief.  I sighed,
knowing she was right.

"Happy says you two were never lovers, were you?," she asked, filling
the silences that had returned.  Remind me to tell Happy to mind his
own business.  Once in a while at least.

"Is that why it hurts you so much?  It's all right, you know. Happy
says you loved her anywise, they all knew that, and she knew it most
of all.  She loved you, too.  She believed sex was just something the
two of you hadn't gotten around to yet."  There was a long pause, and
I felt her hand on my arm.

"Do you know she had a scheme to solve your reluctance?  She told it
to Happy, and Ears, and Lawyer....

"She was going to trick you into entering the Scout with her. Alone,
probably just before extraction, like tonight.  She was going to force
you to take her, under threat of biting you where you least want to be
bitten.  She was going to rape you.  It would have probably have been
tonight."  If she had lived.  Tasha didn't say it, but we knew the
phrase was there.

"Does everyone in the Legion have odd names like that?", she asked in
a change of subject.  She didn't wait for an answer.

Her hands moved in the night as she sought words, remembrances.  I
could see the thin smile on her lips, and wondered to realize she also
felt pain.  I might never know why.

Her eyes glinted as she finally managed a small but genuine smile. She
ran fingers through my long black hair, and I thrilled at
the...whatever...I saw in her eyes now.  "Do they call you Hero
because you go around rescuing women in trouble?", she asked.

"No," I explained.  "My given name is Haaro, that's spelled H-i-r-o.
It's from Old Japan, back on Earth.  Actually I come from a planet
called Shikaku, we're in the Federation now."

I remembered I'd once thought of taking Kappa back to see my Home
world.  If for nothing else to see my brother's faces turn hard and
disdainful once they viewed what sort of a non-Japanese I had on my
arm this time.  My face must have changed when I thought of Kappa, for
Natasha talked of Kappa again.

"Kappa'd been told of old Terran rituals and was planning to bring you
flowers, a ring, and a large box of imported genuine non-replicated
Earth-style chocolates."  Tasha looked away, but both hands were on my
arm, and I hurt to look at her, to feel her hip against mine.

"The chocolates and ring were in the Legion safe box", Tasha added.

"Then if that didn't work, she was going to rape you."  She allowed a
small chuckle, but I had caught the quick pause at the word rape.
Medico Dish would only say Tasha was recovering, whatever that might
mean.

"Kebnebe loved her too, you know, in his fashion.  Again, someone else
is hurting and could use a friendly touch from someone close." I may
have showed understanding.  We were family inside the scout. I guess
Kappa was friend and lover to all of us, she was our wife, a sea-wife
to all of us, even me, even if I hadn't ever cranked her.

"I owe her my life, don't I," she stated.  It was not a question. "She
took me along, she was willing to risk it for me, she made the
decision."  Again, statements, not questions.

Tasha leaned against me, her hand touching my arm, my leg.  "I don't
blame you, you must understand.  It was not wrong to look to your own
survival, and of Kappa's.  Nothing was your fault, if anyone's, it was
mine.  If you did not want to take me, in the end you did, and I thank
you for it.  I owe you my life, and I owe Kappa for it too.

"Events occurred, without plan or purpose, they just happened.

"I was in that convent, trying to hide from myself more than from the
Coalition.  They found me anyways.  And maybe I was spared much worse
than death by your arrival."  A pause, and she looked up at me, her
hand tightening on my sleeve.

"I'm not a person with a pretty past, and I've much to regret, but
right now I regret never having known Kappa any better than those few
minutes allowed me to.  She seemed a good person, from what Happy and
Kebnebe have said.  I think I would have liked her.  I think I could
have loved her.  Like you do, did.

"Maybe we could have even been lovers.  I would have liked that."
There, she had said it to me, what I had surmised before this.  She
looked out over the camp for a second, then turned again to look me in
the eye.  Defiant, on edge, ready to defend herself, or simply leave
me to myself.

Suddenly I could not bear the thought of losing both Kappa and this
blond woman.  Losing not what we were to each other, which was next to
nothing, but what we might yet be.

Maybe I was still hoping for a future where she could be my woman,
foolish though the thought might be.

Maybe I wanted her as a friend.  We don't make many in the Legion, and
the list of them dwindles with each war we fight.

Maybe I just wanted the company, and didn't want her to leave.  I
reached over and held her hand as she touched me, and twisted to kiss
her on her forehead.  Then I turned back to contemplate the lights of
the extraction zone.  Marveling at myself, I realized I had just done
something right with a woman, for a change.  I did not press the
matter.  She was hurting inside, as I was, as others were, and I had
just expressed sympathy, for her.

In response she leaned onto my shoulder, both hands on my arm, her
cheek warm through my jacket.  Could she ever...?  I tried to put such
imaginings from me.  If she didn't join the Legion, and do it now,
tonight would be the last time I ever saw her.  She was leaving my
life and I should not hope.

Would she...  Best not to think of that possibility either.  She was
hurting, she had said she loved women, it was not the right moment to
try to love her.  My yearnings remained.  To fulfill my fantasies
might take months, years, until the wounds of her rapes to heal.

Don't even think of trying to kiss her, or caress her, or ask for
anything beyond these touchings.  But, ah!  I burned...!

Take comfort in the presence of sympathetic humanity, and leave it at
that.  I wondered how her straight blond hair would feel in my hands,
how I wished to lay my tongue in that hollow at the base of her
neck...   FORGET IT!  It will not be....

In a seeming veer in subject she talked of her leg wound, from the
convent school.  Her other wounds, her rape, we did not mention.

"My leg was healed without a scar as soon as your Medico got her hands
on me.  She is very talkative, isn't she?  She was very efficient, and
quite good.  You have to examine my wound closely to find it, now.  I
haven't felt any more pain from it since, once I had an hour's rest.
It's like it never happened.

"I never knew you could be repaired like that.  Where is she from? Is
it normal to have female doctors in the Legion?," she finished.

I debated my words, wondering if I should tell her I knew she had been
walking on a broken leg, as well as a slug wound, back there in Nowy
Radom.  Centurion Dish had leered at my interest in Yar, speculations
evident in her grin.

"I think female Doctors, Medico's, are common, at least out in the
Galaxy.  Maybe not here, but out there.

"And yes, she's very good at her job.  The Legion may not equal
Starfleet in equipment or resources, but yes, she treats us very well
indeed.  Medico's like Dish earn more than the Legion Commander, I
have been given to believe.  She earns it.

"She's had her professional hands on me a few times before.  Her and
the other Medico's in the Legion.  Removal of the scars is just one of
the bonuses of truly modern medicine.  We need the best medical care
possible, in the Legion," I ended.  I didn't add; "If we survive to
reach her hands," but I thought it.

We gazed at each other for a minute until she continued with; "That
sort of medicine costs a great deal, doesn't it?"

"It comes with the job."

She leaned on me, her breath a living warm thing in my ear, her hand
warming me where it lay on my thigh.  "But I don't work for the
Legion, do I?"  It was another statement, not a question.

"I asked," she breathed in my ear, her lips touching it.  "The Medico
said you had authorized drawing on your personal funds to pay for my
medical care.

"I don't know what the figures she gave mean.  It's not in a currency
I'm familiar with, but I had the impression she thought it was a great
deal for an NCO to pay, even in the Legion.  For the care of a
stranger."

I felt a line of sweat roll down my forehead.  Looking sideways at
her, painfully aware of how I was erecting as her hand moved softly up
and down on my thigh.

I shrugged for her, trying to pull my thoughts away from her hand,
fearing and hoping she would find my erection.

Actually it hadn't been much of a loss to me, the money for her
medical care.  I didn't need it any more, my brothers had their own
farms now, so that was taken care of.  I couldn't go back home with my
disgraceful history of Exo sex partners.  I would die some day,
another expendable of the Legion.  Why hoard it?

Besides, I had hoped that Tasha might stay, become a part of my life.
Maybe a vain hope, but small hopes were all we had sometimes.

Maybe Centurion Dish would have repaired Tasha anywise, without a chit
signed by me.  Maybe not.

Maybe the CO or Exec might have negated the request for treatment of
an Indig.

Like I said, hoard it for what?

Her hand was on my crotch now, and every word she said was a whisper
straight in my ear.  She rubbed my erection through my pants, sending
shivers throughout my body.

"I owe you, Hero, I owe you my leg, and my life.  I owe you a great
deal, and I always try to pay my debts.  Do you like what I'm doing?
Of course you do."

Her tongue found the swirls of my ear, and it probed the beginning of
my inner ear like a snake's head, making my head twitch and my eyes
un-focused.  Each breath felt like warm caresses there. Tasha's hand
found the pants closure on the front and was unsealing it, bringing a
moan of pain and anticipation.

"You've wanted me, haven't you?  From the first time you saw me, you
wanted me, didn't you?

"You wanted to have me, like they did, you wanted to sink your cranker
in me, to feel me around you, didn't you?  To feel my warm, wet body
from the inside, to have me?

"Did it excite you, to see me kill, to see me with their blood on me?"
I must have reacted, because her voice changed, became rich with
anticipation.  "It must have, yes, it must have!"

She had released me from my underwear by now, and her hand was
twisting and stroking me, and bringing sweat to my face as she
caressed, and held, and rubbed.

"It confuses you also, doesn't it?  It confuses you to be excited that
way, it confuses you to think of me as a killer, and yet you want me,
don't you?  You want to be inside me, but you want to love me, and
hurt me, and be hurt, all at the same time, don't you?"

"Have you ever had anyone who hurt you, have you ever had a woman who
PINCHED you, like this, or made you cry with pain?  Is that your
secret, Hero?  I can do that for you, I can hurt you, and fuck you,
and let you hurt me, make me moan.  You can be my Hero, all MINE!

"We can be together, you can have me, and hurt me, and I'll hurt you,
too, and it can be our secret, babe, our secret.  We can be together,
all the time, making love."  She bit my ear, then my lips, and then
she was kissing me, her tongue probing my mouth, but not entering.
When she broke, one hand held my face close to hers.

"Do you want me, babe, do you want to bury this lovely thing inside
me, babe?  I don't mind men, you can be my man.  You can hurt me, I
won't mind.  It can be our little secret, what we do!"

With that she lowered her head to my stiffness, and I entered paradise
as her lips and tongue and teeth began to work their flame on me, to
bring me each second closer to release.

Tasha stopped abruptly when she heard the hammer cock back on my
antique slug-thrower.  Her head, her tongue, her hand was around me.

Sweat was pouring off my chin and nose, my eyes swam with its sting,
and I never hurt so much in my life as I did then, seconds from
release.  Not even when I took the mine back on Camphor VII.

"It's a Nambu, from Old Earth, and it predates the Gene Wars.  It has
a one-and-one-eights-kilo pull, and I want you to stop that, I don't
want to do this in this way.  I don't want to have you like this.

"Don't whore me, please, don't whore me.

As her head lifted from my crotch, I continued with an accusation.
"That's what you've been, isn't it?  I've had enough whores on enough
worlds I know how they act and how they talk, and that's one of your
problems, isn't it?"

She sat back on her legs, staring at my pistol, then at me, the shock
naked in her face.  I don't think she'd ever known a man to refuse her
before, certainly not at that particular point, and not in this way.

She was more astonished when I handed her the slug-thrower.

My face was red with embarrassment as I put myself back in my pants
and sealed.  I looked towards the ground, and could not meet her eyes.
I could see her holding the pistol, but not her face.

"It was not loaded, so pointing it at you was an empty threat.  I am
so deeply sorry to have frightened you, and if you leave now I will
understand.

"I have just insulted you, accused you of being something you may not
have been, and I have just refused your generous and lovely offer of
your beautiful woman's body.  I want very much to have you, to love
you.  Yet I have been very cruel to you, and I am ashamed.  My words
must have hurt and I am now without honor.  You may give us both our
honor back by shooting me."

My hands fumbled a loaded magazine out of a small carrier on my
Utility belt, and laid it on her thigh.  I went white inside to think
of her using it, but I had to allow her to regain her own honor.

It was important to give her the chance to wipe away my words. Whether
false words or true, she must have her honor, her dignity, I could
bear the thought of nothing less.  I must give her back some measure
of her pride.  With my death, if necessary.

I loved her too much, already, to allow her the chance of anything
less.  My erection continued to pain me, as I waited.  My memories
kept returning to the points of her pink nipples, the gentle swells of
her arms, the honey colors of her sex hair.

"You load it by pulling back that little knob on the bottom of the
pistol grip, and pushing the magazine in."

When she did nothing, I gently took the pistol, never meeting her
eyes, and inserted the magazine.  I released the safety and slid the
receiver back to chamber the first round.  Then I put the loaded
weapon in her hands.  She simply held it, and I closed my eyes.

"I have dishonored you, I have called you a bad woman, and refused
you.  I know not the code you were raised under, but if you seek
correction of a wrong, I am a servant awaiting your command."

I closed my eyes, trying not to think of her using that, hoping she
would not.  I sweat, my closed eyes trembled, I sat cursing my
upbringing, my ancestors, my father.  How the hell do I get into
situations like this?  And then I have to respond in some way that's
six, seven centuries obsolete.  I never learned.  Crazy, that's me.

After some moments of nothing, I opened my eyes a crack, then sneaked
a sideways glance.  She was doing da nada, the pistol still in her
open palms.  Fearing the quiet, I raised my eyes to her face.  Her
look was that of a whipped child, a scene of utter desolation, of
despair, of lack of hope.

She fell into my arms, turning to me without coherent words, turning
to what human comfort was about at a moment when she needed
comforting.  The pistol fell to the ground unnoticed.  It has a hair
trigger, which I should repair some day, but it failed to discharge.

Her hold on me hurt, but they were minor hurts, small pains,
insignificant compared to the open wounds she showed me.

She was too big to fit on my lap, so we made do with her alongside me,
lying down, weeping into my shoulders or chest.  For long minutes she
could do nothing but spasm against me, and finally she began to leak
her tears, and to mumble phrases, words, they might have meant
something sometime.  But not now, not here.

When she began to speak words in Standard I knew the worst was over.
For the moment.  There was a tough, competent exterior to Natasha, but
tonight she was showing me her bleeding wounds. Inside she was old,
spun glass, and a hard wind could break her.

"You called me nothing...it's true...a whore, that's what I am, a
whore, and at times a cheap one...kill people...the blood, the blood
is all over me..."

There was more, much more, only part of which I comprehended.  She had
a sister, probably dead now, Ishara.  Tasha had abandoned both her
sister and her female lover to flee from her past.

To Nowy Radom she had fled, and had meant to stay.  She had killed,
starting with her mother's brother, she had killed many times, so many
times she tried not to count them.  Always tears or small twisting's
of her hands punctuated her streams of words

She relapsed into crying again, small hacking's, worrying my jacket in
her strong lovely hands, incoherent again, babbling things in
languages I was unfamiliar with, or could not now translate.

She relaxed, notch by notch, and laid, exhausted, partly across me. I
could feel the shivers still working their way out of her, and let it
all come out, whatever poisons she had in reservoir, and could spill
out, over my body, at this time.  There was more pus in her soul, but
some had spilled out tonight.  Perhaps enough.

We were interrupted, eventually, as I knew we would be.  I knew Happy
was here when I saw his bottle glint in the light.  He raised it for a
healthy swallow, then passed it to a dark figure I knew had to be
Kebnebe.  It was nearing time for extraction, and we had to leave
Turkana IV.

As I sat up, Tasha raised herself as well, leaning on me in confusion,
with dark eyes that seemed to leak less than before. Her face was pale
and unknowable when she leaned close to me, kissing me on my cheek.
She smelled of salt and something bitter, and I was conscious of the
softness of her breast against my arm. She looked to Happy and Kebnebe
as they rose and joined us, slender hands wiping her pale face.

Happy gave Tasha greetings, as did Kebnebe, his damned gold teeth
sparkling even in this light.  They sat next to us, and Happy neatly
wiped the lip of a bottle with his jacket cuff.  Then passed the
bottle to me.

Knowing the usual quality of his genuinely alcoholic treasures I had
only a small hit on the contents.  It was surprising to find it quite
smooth, though obviously of high percentile alcoholic content.  Happy
passed the plastic container to Tasha.

"Privyat!", Tasha whispered, then repeated it loud enough for us all
to hear.  Happy said, "You're welcome."  Then waved her to take a
drink of it.  She took a hit, but I noticed she only took a small one.
My estimation of the potency of the drink was probably correct.

"Yayatamiay, no, I meant the bottle, that's the name of the drink you
have here," she said.  The label was a script unknown to me. She
passed the bottle back to Happy, who wiped the lip with a corner of
his jacket before returning it to me again, letting me keep the warmth
going inside me with another swallow.

"I know, lass, and you're still welcome.  You can empty the bottle if
you wish.  I've gotten a case of it stowed in the space between the
engines, and that should last us a while."

"Where on Turkana did you find a case of 'Privyat'?  Goveenkka, they
went out of business twenty years ago or so, on another planet, and
it's treated like a treasure now...  Never mind, but thank you," she
said, when Happy would have put the half-empty bottle in her lap.

We all held a moment of silence as Kebnebe took a swallow, carefully
wiping the lip with a white cloth.  Then letting out his breath in an
exaggerated hiss as the liquid went down.

"We have to go now," he stated to all of us.  "All of us, our turn is
now, and now is when we have to go.  You know that," he spoke to me,
but the words were for Tasha.  They asked no questions, held their
peace, waited for an answer.

If I was quitting, now was the moment for it.  That was unlikely for
anyone in the Legion, perhaps, but on every planet a few always left.
Rumors said one or two drivers in the Second had opted to stay with
their new loves.  For the rest of us Turkana had a bad smell about it.
Rumor said the Legion had turned down a profitable contract for the
other side.

The recent war was just the fifth step, or the tenth towards a dill
situation to end all dill situations.  Someone had been air-testing
thermo-nuclear, dirty ones, and I think we all wanted out of here.

I rose to my feet, Tasha with me.  She leaned close to my face, a wild
glint to her eyes, and whispered intently to me, grasping my jacket
front hard.

"Take me with you," she begged, leaning against me.  "Take me with
you, please, take me with you, I can't stay here any more, there's no
place for me here, I've no home, a dead sister, no family, take me
with you, I beg of you!"

Happy saved me the words when he picked an object from the weeds, and
handed my loaded Nambu back to me.  Happy checked the chamber, his
eyebrows going up.  He ejected the bullet, and ejected the magazine,
giving both mag and pistol to me.  Kebnebe gave me the ejected bullet.
Eventually he turned to Natasha and told her the truth.

"Only the Legion leaves with the Legion, lovely, only we leave with
ourselves.  We have no hangers-on, or camp followers, or sutures's, or
any of that.  None of that, only the Legion, and maybe a few paying
passengers with the officers in the Adman ship who are willing to take
pot-luck as to their destination.  You don't have the credit to fly
low passage in cold sleep, do you?  Much less high, awake all the
time.  No, I thought not," Kebnebe ended.

"You have to be part of the Legion to leave with us, the rest of us,"
Happy continued. "You're part of us or you stay.  We have no
stowaways.  They space the stowaways, so that's just a death-sentence,
lovely.

"We must go now, lass, so it's to say your good-byes to my buck here,
and we'll be off."

The more Happy drinks, the worse his accent gets.  He only drinks
after a contract, but makes up in intensity what he might lose in
duration of drinking.

"Please," Tasha said, her throat sounding dry.  I didn't want to do
this because I wanted too badly to do it.  I wanted her, I wanted her
with me, and I hated the power I had, at this moment, over her. The
others both knew her options.  They waited for me to offer them to
her.  They knew what she, what we must do if she were to join me,
leave with me.  She must join the Legion.

"There's no way you can come with us, Tasha."

"I'm young, I'm only sixteen Terran, and I've got a good body," she
husked in my ear, "and I know things those women you've known before
probably never dreamed of..."

"You join the Legion or you stay," I finally blurted out.

She gazed at my eyes, her hands on my jacket, then looked to Happy and
Kebnebe.

"You can join the Legion, Natasha," Kebnebe finally said, the liquor
beginning to slur his words.  "We'd be all quite proud to have a fine
lady as yourself to join us."  I tried not to bristle at his soft
encouragement, for I realized Kebnebe wanted her as well.

A dry choice she had, indeed.  Stay here, and die, or become a
mercenary, and kill or die.  Maybe it wasn't far from whoring.  We
sell our bodies to those who would have us.  We give them what they
want or need, then leave.  Hiro Samagutchi, galactic whore.

Her look was as desolate as any I've ever seen on a woman, and her
whisper hurt something inside me to hear it.

"More killing, is that it?  Is that the choice I have, Hiro? Others
die, or I do?  Is this all the future has for me?  Killing?"

She held me close, rubbing her face against my shoulder, until she
finally was still.  Her face was turned from us, she looked out upon
the darkness of the Turkana night, perhaps seeing other dark vistas
before her eyes.  I think she cried some more, silent tears with no
shaking sighs to them.  Like she had come to the end of a narrow road.

Only I heard her next words.

"Will I ever be done with it?," she murmured.  I wondered what she
spoke of, and maybe she did too.

Finally something small broke inside me, and I held my lips to her ear
and whispered to her.  "It is very foolish of me, and very,
incredibly, selfish of me, Tasha, but I think it is love, I think I
love you, or I want to love you, I can't tell the difference any more.

"It would gut me to think of leaving you, of you leaving us, me, would
you please come with me?  I don't know if you can love, or love men,
or me, but would you let me try?

"Please?  Come with me?"

She turned my head to look into my eyes, then kissed each eyelid in
turn.  "I'm a good whore," she whispered to me, and maybe the others
heard some of it.  "Maybe one of the very best.  But I don't know if I
can love a man.  Can you live with that?  Me not able to love you
back?  Think carefully about that.  I may never love you.

"Worst, perhaps, I may love someone else, another woman.  Be sure you
could live with that.  Knowing I might find someone else, a woman, and
my dreams would be of her.

"I might leave you at any time, can you bear to think about something
like that?  I believe you, you understand, I believe you're falling in
love with me.

"Crests knows why.  I feel old tonight, I feel eighty years old
inside.  My body is sixteen Terran, but I feel so old.

"I'm an old whore, Hiro, a skilled whore, but old, inside, where it's
felt.

"I've killed people, not in a war, but because I was told to.  I've
killed from hate, and necessity too, and I guess you have as well,
from necessity, and because they told you to.

"I can only promise a whore's loving, Hero.  Is that enough?  All you
get for your love will be a tired old zxherobiay whore, Hero." Had she
noticed that now she was using Standard, no longer Hiro, but Hero?

My lips found hers, and we kissed.  We kissed without passion, or
warmth, at first.  Then she began to return it, and I held her to me
hard enough to strain with the effort.  She finally broke from me, her
hands insistent on my chest.  Her eyes were dark blanks, and her smile
was marginal, and very sad.

"A whore's love?", she asked.

"Anything," I answered.  Meaning it.

She looked in pain, sighed, then put on an insincere smile.  She
turned, releasing herself from me.

"Where do I go?," she asked, "to join?"

"Ye an do it right here, lass, nothing to it," Happy said.  He pulled
out a hardwire recorder from his own Utility belt, and flicked its
side.  Kebnebe did the same, and both trained their hardwire camera
eyes on her.

"Just state you are eighteen years of age, Terran, and you wish to
enlist in Falkhyn's Legion for a period of time to include at least
six months, Terran, or more, at the discretion of yourself, and with
the concurrence of the Legion."

For a few seconds she refused to lie about her age, then she realized
how silly it was to argue it.  We all took turns then, coaching her
through the enlistment, the few statements outlining her understanding
of the Rules of Contract and Rules of War as practiced by the Legion.
Happy told her there were chips for her to look at later, to review,
to understand what those rules and laws of conduct actually entailed.

It was much as it had been with Kappa, and with Sleaze, and Thumper,
probably.  But he was before I joined the Legion.

Tasha was cold looking, her lips thin, her pointed nose sharp in the
night air.  She stumbled repeatedly, but Kebnebe said it was good
enough for the record.  And it was all that was needed.

Later we would tell her all the rules and restrictions, but I didn't
think we should burden her with them at this moment.  More
specifically she had joined our scout crew, and we would train her. As
best as we could.  Train her to survive war.  To learn something of
the running of the vehicle.  Some day she might even get the
neckjacks, and be able to symbiot with the on-board's and BattCom.

Despite the lack of time, Happy paused at the end of the enlistment,
and held up a hand.

First he pulled a container from a pocket, and smeared five lines of
dark dye on his face and forehead.  The ingredient was Woad, and it
would be blue in a better light.  Then he pulled a another tiny packet
from an inner jacket pocket, and laid three or four small dark fruits
into his palm.  He had done this same ceremony for Kappa, and probably
other females in other crews or units.

"I'll have you to know I'm a certified priest of my religion, and I
wish to welcome you, in a fashion, to our family."  He crushed the
berries, pieces falling to the ground.  Happy mumbled words under his
breath, he swore they were ancient Gael words, they sounded very
beautiful and musical in the night air.

He smeared a line of holly-berry juice across her cheeks and chin, and
a palm smear across her forehead, staining her blond hair.

Both the imported pigment, and the Holly berries were imported all the
way from Earth.  Cost him a small fortune, I knew.  The Legion
replicators could reproduce them down to a molecular level, but he
said it wouldn't be the same.

Still, why not pay to ship his little pleasures all the way from
Homeworld Terra?  We all had some dream, or vice, or luxury. Besides,
maybe he really was a druid priest.  He believed it, and carried his
little golden scythe in his kit-bag, certainly.

"Pignal ann Haag," he finished.  "You are now welcomed into our family
as bride, you are now one of us, and we of you.  You are now our wife,
and we promise always to guard you and love you and honor you, from
this night forward."

Tasha started at that, but Kebnebe quickly added; "It's just the
words, lovely, just the words.  You are not our wife, we are simply
bound to honor and help and guard, if we can.  Your body is your own,
and we all, none of us, we make any claims upon you, or your body.
You do have the wife's honoring though, just not her duties.

"Though a man can hope, now can't he?"  With that he laughed a mule's
laugh, and much of the tension in Tasha fled into the darkness.

"This a summer new moon's night," Happy pointed out.  "First night of
the new moon after summer solstice, adjusted for Turkana time." The
big BattCom computers could easily keep him abreast of actual Terran
seasons, even the time in any Homeworld locale.

"The traditional night when marriages should be made.  It's a good
sign, lass, and I think we shall be a happy crew, aye, I do."

Maybe I was the only one who noticed he did not predict long lives for
us.  He may have been a fake druid, but he wasn't without ties to
reality.

Happy and Kebnebe kissed their 'bride' first, then she turned to me.
Her hands were lightness, but one hand was all too real on my neck.
She looked hard in my eyes, then she held her soft lips to my ear
again.  "Call me whore, Hero."

I jerked, and held her to see her face, shaking my head no.  With a
strength I hadn't suspected she pulled me close again, her lips again
pressed to my ear.

"I'm a whore, Hero.  I won't lie to you, not now, and I don't want you
to lie to me.  You may love me, hell, maybe I could even love you
back.  All things are possible.  Not always probable.

"But I won't promise you things I cannot make so.  You may want me,
but I'm still just another whore.  Tell me you know it.  Tell me you
understand you're getting goods that have been severely damaged.

"You're getting a whore, and that's all you're getting.  Not a woman,
a whore.  Tell me you understand.  Say it to me.

"Say it loud.  Loud enough for the others to hear you say it."

Again my head shook, I could not do it.

"Then you must erase those records of yours," she loudly said.  "I
won't join you as a lie.  I'm a whore, not a recruit, at least not
now.  I'm a good whore, as whores go, I guess, but I'm still a whore,
and it's all I am.  Say it, or I leave.  Now.

"Say it."

How had she become so implacable so swiftly?  Or was I only now seeing
something in her unsuspected?  Was she made of Ming metal or
Composite, somewhere in her bones?

My spirit chilled to realize she meant it.  There was no use looking
to Happy or Kebnebe for help.  This, she, was my problem, and I would
have to solve it. "Please," I asked her.

"I'm a whore, Hero," she commented.  Crisp, loud.  "Say it."  A long
pause, during which I felt her stiffening in my arms.  Why this need
for self-flagellation?  Was this a test of me, or of her own resolve?
I could not think, I was confused, would she actually leave?  Now,
when she had passage off-planet?  What was she made of?  What sort of
people did they grow on this mudball planet?

When I felt her hands loosen their grip on my jacket, terror, fear of
loss finally forced the words from my lips.

"You're a whore, Natasha."  A croak, not very loud, yet both our
witnesses heard me clearly.

Then I told her: "I love you."

She cried in my arms, it was a night for tears, for I cried too. For
me, for her, for us, for Kappa.  Even on Shikaku it is considered
shameful to cry, especially in front of others.  Thank you very much,
Father.  I needed to be fucked up in that fashion as well.

Her lips were so very soft, like the skin of her neck, she kissed my
ear and cheek and whispered again to me alone.  "Thank you."  It was
all she said.  She let me hold her hand as we retraced our steps to
the transporter hand-stand.  It was time to leave Turkana.

---
ON BOARD THE BAOLIAN FREIGHTER, DAYS LATER
---

It was light inside the scout, it spilled out the side hatch, warming
a section of freighter deck.  Around me I could hear the
almost-inaudible white noise of the hold of a Baolian cargo-carrier.
The familiar stink of a Baolian vessel surrounded me, down here in the
hold.  Old plastics, hot oils, maybe a scorch of over-heated metals
with a hint of alien spices.

It would be muted inside our vehicle, but there.  By the end of voyage
I knew it would not be smelled or heard.  Planetfall would seem
unnaturally quiet, and tasteless, once that background sirrus was
gone.

I pulled myself in the side hatch, forcing Tasha to move her body to
one side.  She looked at me without voice, wondering perhaps if I was
going to object to her being here alone.  Her new boots gleamed soft
in the subdued yellow lighting inside.

I'd kept my own battered boots this time, instead of replacing through
the replicators.  They felt comfortable.  Maybe I'd have these
imprinted for replication.  As they are, already broken in and fitting
perfectly.  Samagutchi Specials, each pair with their distinctive cuts
and scrapes.

Tasha leaned against the compartment wall, eyeing me cautiously. For a
second she tried to hide the PADD she had been writing on, then put it
in her lap.  We hadn't said much to each other since the night on the
knoll,  A forced hello over mess, in the corridors.  She was just a
hair wary of me now, wondering about my reactions to her.

"Increase lighting," I said to the computer.

The lighting rose instantly, and Tasha blinked in the strong light.
"Decrease by twenty percent....ten percent more...another ten percent.
Thank you," I said, as the lights softened.  "You're really quite
welcome, Corporal," the onboard replied, the woman's voice managing to
seem just a little bit anticipatory and sexy.

Happy said he had to work quite hard to instill just the right
compliant tone of voice into the onboard.

Tasha looked down at her PADD, then glanced at me.  "Thank you," she
commented.  "I'd wanted more lighting in here, but didn't know how to
get it.  It didn't seem to want to obey me, and I couldn't find the
manual switch."

My hand went to what appeared a half moon near the hatch, and I spun
it darker, then lighter.  Then I called out to the onboard. "Computer,
have you registered the person with me?"

"Of course, Hiro," it returned.  "An Earth-norm human female, apparent
age approximately seventeen standard, weight..."

"You have her voiceprint," I interrupted.  "This is Trooper Natasha
Yar, ID number...  What is your number, Tasha?"  She read it to me,
and I repeated it for onboard.  In seconds more onboard had accepted
Tasha as a member of our specific scout's crew.

"She'll obey my commands now?" she asked.

"There are inhibitions built in, but for most purposes, yes, it will
obey you now."

There was a long pause during which the air exchanger could be dimly
heard refreshing our personal atmosphere.  She fingered the edges of
her PADD, avoiding my eyes until she finally spoke.

"Why did you turn the lights up," she asked.  Not quite a question.

"To be able to look at you better," I smiled back.

She flickered her eyes at me, then returned to her PADD.  Her new
shorter haircut looked well on her, like she was wearing a honeyed
fuzz on her head.  Very military, I guess.

"I am a whore, you know," she stated in cold tones.  "I'm sure you're
honestly in love, yes, but it's not with me.  You're seeing me from
the outside, you're seeing a sweet and lovely girl, you're in love
with someone who wants to be held and protected and loved.

"I may look young, but I'm not.  I may look nice and clean and
innocent, but I'm not.  I'm a hard-nosed dyke Crocodile, a bossy
Kakashekiia Lesbian, with a lot of blood on my hands, and there's not
much future in your loving me.

"I've been whoring, I've been a prostie since I was ten years old,
Terran.  I think.  There probably isn't an evil I haven't committed
since that time."  Her eyes looked black in the lifter's interior
lights.  "Inside there isn't a clean spot left on me.

"There isn't much anymore I do that I don't want to do, and if someone
steps on me, I bite back.  And I like making a woman come. It's
something I do exceedingly well."

Yes, indeed, she bites back, and hard, I winced to hear.  It hadn't
been a week since the firefight at the convent.

My eyes still regarded her without fear, without wavering.  I hoped.

Mentally I felt weak, helpless, useless.  What use was I in the face
of such inner hate and loathing?  Urges to enfold her in my arms were
stifled.  Maybe she had been held too often, for too long, for the
wrong reasons.  It seemed impossible to know what to do.  Protests
would be useless, for she felt dirty inside, and expected me to
object, to say she was clean, she wasn't unclean, or it didn't matter.

It mattered to her, the past, the evils she had committed, under
whatever duress once compelled her.  She was a prisoner to her past,
and I lacked the keys to her many chains.

She was also right in another way.  She had objected I was in love
with a dream, an outside, what I saw, not what she was.  So be it. As
a child I had chased dreams, and little had changed.

"What are you doing?," I queried.

The change of subject, the lack of protestations, they surprised
Tasha.  Startled, it only took nanoseconds for her to leave her well
of abasement.

"Onboard was displaying files to me, miscellaneous files that didn't
relate to vehicle function."  She reached out to caress the big
transparent aluminum screen by her shoulder.  Kappa's screen.

Tasha hit a button on her PADD, and screen displayed a few lines of
Standard.  Poetry, I realized.  I hadn't even known onboard had files
on anything like this in it.

She laid a slender finger on a spot in text, then began to read.

"O wad some Pow'r the Giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us.
/ It wad frae mony a blunder free us, / And foolish notion! / What
airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us / And ev'n devotion!"

She broke off, her finger dropping, her eyes seeking mine.  She was
unsure of herself in here, this was a strange place, it was not hers,
it was mine.  Maybe ours, later, but not right now.

She had gone from defiant dyke to little girl lost in seconds, and it
hurt to see her unaware of her sea change.

"What was that?," I wondered aloud.

"Poetry by an Old-Earth figure known as Robert Burns," she returned.
"I'm not too sure on all the meaning in his poetry, it's written in a
dialect I'd never encountered before.  Some of it I understand."  That
look again, seeking approval, permission to continue.  Now she was the
pedagogue, the teacher, maybe mostly a child glad to show off her new
shiny toy.  So many facets....

""To see ourselves as other see us."  I understood that much.  It does
what poetry does best.  Give a little light upon ourselves and on
others," she hinted.

That again.  I am not someone sweet and pretty, she was reminding me.
Not at all nice, inside, where she could see it.

"Happy show you how to use our onboard?," I wondered aloud.

She hesitated, a lie almost spilling off her lips.  "No," she
admitted.  "I've been in here since mid-meal yesterday watch,
learning, and reading.  It wasn't really very hard to learn its
patterns.  We had comps at the convent, and I guess function is a
constant.  You just have to learn how each system handles input and
outputs.

"Actually its been rather fun, trying to decipher its user codes, and
call up its memories."

It had taken me nearly a week to become proficient on the onboard,
when I had first joined crew.  To her it was fun.  The first
intimation came to me that Natasha Yar might be far beyond me in most
mental gifts.

DAMN my upbringing!  Why should it matter?  I wondered how many of the
women I had disdained on Shikoku as being a little bit stupid had been
adhering to our culture's norms?  Women were not as bright as men, and
that's why it was proper for men to take the lead and make the
decisions.  Sure they were.  How many times had my mother's looks at
father been one of hidden anger and frustration?

"Is there much more like this in the onboard?," I asked.

"I'm not sure.  There are large segments in languages I don't speak,
others in mathematical constructs far beyond my own comprehension.  I
think I was able to tap into the ship's memory at one point.  But I
don't comprehend Baolian, and I cut out rather quickly.  I didn't know
whether our hailer's might object to my breaking into their systems."

She rippled another series of controls on her Padd, and a full-color
schematic of an unknown weapon appeared onscreen.

"This is a manual on the Arkady Kalashnikov-1947 Automatic Assault
Rifle, a Terran Twentieth-century slug-thrower.  With variations, it's
still being made in an arms depot in Chisel, on the Western Continent,
here on Turkana.  This manual's in Russian, but I understand a great
deal of its text.  It's an upgrade, actually, of an earlier design,
stolen from an enemy of theirs, the Nazi's.  The Fallschirmjaeger
Maschinesgewehr 1943."

I let pass her slip about 'here on Turkana'.  It would take months for
mistakes such as that to leave her.  To accept and understand in your
bones just how much had changed in your new life.  She seemed happy
rooting through onboard memory and the past, as she was doing now.  It
had never struck me before that she could enjoy such scholarly
pursuits.  It reminded how little of my own past education had rooted
itself firmly within me.

"How many languages do you speak, Tasha?"  Troopers like myself was
accustomed to using loud Standard, or a translator through neck-jack
symbiosis with an onboard.  We dreamed of having Comm and translator
badges like Starfleet had.  She was beginning to awe me with her
unforeseen talents.

"Hmm," she began.  "Standard, of course, Lithuanian, German, some
small French and Russian, partially conversant with Italian, Spanish,
and Turkish.  Fairly good at reading Polish and Czech.  A little bit
of Hindi, some phrases in Greek, Swahili, Chinese, Vietnamese and
Parsi."  She looked at me with her thumb touching her teeth.

"I was hoping you would teach me some Japanese."  Pause.  "Would you?
Please?"  She smiled when I nodded assent.  Again she was a young
girl, eager to learn of the world.  So many facets!

Then she punched in a four finger spread on the PADD, and a play
appeared in my lap.  I jumped, as I'm sure she meant for me to do. She
laughed into a fist, and slyly smiled at me.  It took a few seconds
for me to realize the miniature holographic figures were ancient
Shogun-era Japanese warriors, and they were speaking an almost archaic
version of my mother tongue.

"The play is called 'Ran', but I don't know what's happening in it.
There's a Standard translation, but I still don't understand.  They
used to have..different...ways of thinking in Old Japan, didn't they?"

"It's the code of Bushido," I explained.  "It's a warrior's code, and
it was, yes, it was quite complex.  It was a lifetime's work
comprehending it in all its ramifications.  If you wish I'll try to
explain it to you.  Later.

"I didn't even know onboard could do holographic presentations of old
plays of this nature.  Just terrain analyses, BattCom displays, that
sort of thing.  Relating to our primary function as a fighting unit on
a planetary surface."  Hell, I hadn't even knew it had a repertory
sequence mode in its innards.

The gesturing figures in lacquered armor disappeared, and new figures
appeared on the side screen.  Tasha called up a few pages, and froze
on some highlighted passages.

"I think I've got a new name, maybe, maybe for the troop, would you
listen to them?  Do you still want a new name for our ASV?"

Nodding yes, my back comfortably against the back of Kebnebe's seat.
She gazed down, reading from her Padd.

"On Ancient Earth a culture, the Attic Greek, had the legend of there
being three furies.  Their job was to first pursue, then torment,
punish, and destroy evildoers.  Their names in Standard were Alecto,
Magaera, and Tisiphone."  Her smile, an innocence she stated she no
longer had, it shone in that quick impish grin.

"You could get Metals to fabricate a new plate for you with one of
those on it today, and have it melded on tonight.  There are three
scouts in each troop, maybe you might mention it to the other two in
our troop, maybe they'd like to change to something new.

"The three of you then could be known as the Furies.  Wherever you go,
you could think of yourselves as nemesis's of evil."

She gently bit her lower lip, the lips I wished to kiss, and glanced
at me for a second.

"Maybe it's a bit too cute...", she trailed off.

"No...," I began, then; "Maybe it is," I managed to say.  "But it has
a power to it too.  I'll put it to Happy and Kebnebe, this watch.
Then to Dry Run and Tiptoe, they're the NCO's commanding the other two
scouts in our troop.  Anything the three of us agree on will be fine
with Whitefish, Lt. Chub.

"That's got a nice ring to it.  The Furies.  Tiptoe'll love it, she
writes poetry, you know."

"She's already had me read some of it," Tasha admitted.  Looking
blankly at me she tried to grin.  "You're humoring me."

"Partially," I managed to smile a little.  "Furies is a nice name for
the three of us, I think it could feel comfortable to say in a short
time.  Furies.  Alecto.  Magaera.  Tisiphone.  We'll see."

A silence descended inside the fighting compartment, and Tasha watched
me out of the corner slit of her eyes.

"Tiptoe, she, she likes to talk, doesn't she?"  She was waiting for a
comment from me.  Gauging me.

"Her last lover died in a firefight," I replied.  "Quite some time
ago.  Her hair was brown, not blond like yours, but she was pretty,
like you are.

"Tiptoe's never made any secret of which sex she loves, few of us in
the Legion bother to hide something like that."

During the pause I tried not to ask if she liked Tiptoe, if she could
love her.  If they had already had sex together.  Tiptoe wasn't a
person to let rust accumulate under her boots.

It felt a little hollow inside, already wondering.  Tasha was right,
of course.  As a lover of women, all my share of her loving could be
was the smallest portion.  Not much.  I'd better practice living with
that knowledge, if I wanted even that small bit from her.  I had said
it wouldn't matter, so it was time to live by my words.  Still, it
pained to know already she had found someone else who wanted her.
Maybe it wasn't so pleasant after all.

Loving a pretty woman.

Again I cursed my upbringing.  On Shikoku we tended to treat our women
as dearly prized possessions, but possessions nonetheless.

I didn't own Tasha, and knew I never would.  It was foolish to be even
possessive, or jealous.  If I tried to own her, nothing could drive
her from me more surely.  This was a truth realized days before.

It also came to me Tasha would always have to wonder about me,
question me, try my limits.  She was more frightened than I was.

She was frightened of being rejected.  Again.  And again, as she had
been so many times before.  She was not a hard woman, uncaring,
callused.  Quite the opposite.  All her life, all the life that
mattered, she was a thing, not a person.  Even if I was a man, still I
was someone who was now important to her.

Maybe this confusion showed on my face, for Tasha edged closer, her
hand bridging half the distance between us.

"I'm sorry," I whispered.  In her own confusion I had to give a short
sad laugh, a wry smile to her questioning eyes.

"I've made things harder for you, haven't I?  Instead of solving your
problems I've screwed everything up, and now you've more problems than
before."

Tasha laid a hand on my chest, then watched as I pressed it hard
against my jacket-front.  Wondering, questioning, worrying.

"We can have you assigned to someplace tomorrow, anyplace you want.
Even to Tiptoe, if you wish.  Section owes me.  Just tell me where you
want to go, and I'll get you there.  You'll be a new face, and it
won't be easy, until you're trained, but I think you can do almost
anything you set your mind to.  Will that be good for you?"

"Are you trying to get rid of me?," she whispered.  Already, she
meant.

In response I grabbed her hand, and kissed her palm, inhaling the
faintest skin scent of clean woman.  I kissed her knuckles, my tears
wetting her hand.

She covered my hand with her other hand, leaning close to me.

"Why?," she slowly breathed.

"I'm hurting you," I explained, "trying to hold on to you.  Neither
one of us knows what to do about it, so I've got to...

"....There's an old saying.  'If you think something is yours, set it
free...'"

"..If it never returns, it was never yours to start with, I know the
phrase.  Is that what you're doing?  Setting me free?  Hoping I'll
eventually return to you?"  I nodded yes again, my eyes feeling tight.
"And if I don't want to leave?"

"Then you don't," I offered.  "You can stay here, just be my friend,
if that's all you can be.  Or more, if you wish.  Or not. Tiptoe's a
good woman, and there's..."

Tasha laid a finger on my lips, quieting me.  "Maybe I will crank
Tiptoe some day, maybe not, two boss Crocodiles like us could have
some really hot sex.  But I don't want her today.  Today I don't even
want a woman.  Right now."

Leaning on one hand she bent and let our lips meet.  It was soft, and
very tender, pecking's of one set of lips at another, eyes open, each
of us testing the edges of the other.  Her tongue came out and she
pulled across my cheek to my ear, where she nibbled gently on an ear
lobe.  "Right now I feel like trying my luck with a man.

"Hey," she whispered, "you're a man.  What a coincidence.  Care to try
your luck with a woman, babe?  It might be a lot of fun."

She stuck her tongue in my ear, giggling at my shudder, then nibbled
her way down my throat.  Her tongue pushed my shirt edge away,
reaching the hollow of my throat.  It was erotic to feel her probing
there.  I managed to ignore visions of men with their throats torn out
as Tasha lingered there.

Her tongue went up my chin, back to my lips.  There was nothing gentle
about our kiss then.  It was hard, and my hand mashed her head to
mine, until our teeth met. She was on me then, we were prone, and she
was squirming her body over mine, paying particular attention to my
erection.  She lifted her head, looking down at me, one hand rubbing
and grabbing at my erection, her breath coming faster.

Then she sat on her heels, and kept me down when I would have risen as
well.

"You got that goddamned Nambu pistol with you, don't you?," she asked.
"Give it to me.  Now, right now".  I fumbled with my holster, and she
grabbed it before I could get it out.  It immediately went sailing
over Happy's gunner's seat to land clanging on the floor in front.

"Any more weapons on you?"

I pulled out my stored-charge pistol from the small of my back, and
then the phaser from its belt catch.  Both of them also sailed over a
seat to land on the floor in front.  She pulled out the Bowie knife in
my boot, and the throwing knife from behind my neck, to throw them up
front too.

"Shit," she breathed, "you guys are walking fucking arsenals, do you
know that?  Are all of you paranoid like this?  It's a fucking wonder
you don't kill more of each other than you do the enemy, do you know
that?  You're fucking wonders, that's what you are!"

Smiling, I pulled the garrote from under my shirt collar.  Then the
push knife from behind my buckle.  She found the kit in my other boot,
and turned it over in amazement.

"What in the name of Saint Levy's flying camel is THIS!?!"

"It's a blowgun kit.  Watch it with the darts, the tips are poisoned,
they're supposed to be fatal to eleven sentient species and races."
That she just edged under Happy's seat.

"Anything more, hothead?  No?  I suppose you know a few ways to kill
someone bare-handed as well, right?"  I nodded yes.

"Crank you.  I'll just have to risk it.  God, you merc's really take
things seriously, don't you?  Paranoid sumbitches."  I didn't point
out she was a merc now.  I just smiled.

"Well, give me your jacket."  Her hands indicated impatience as I
stripped it off, hard to get it off lying down.  She took her own off
as well, and I could see the swell of her breasts underneath her shirt
now.

Tasha put a folded jacket under each knee, then shoved me prone again.
"Relax, babe, I got interrupted the last time I tried this, but I
don't think anything's going to stop me this time."

With that my trouser's binds finally released.  I lifted my hips and
she skinned them down.  When she opened me to the air, she touched my
erection tenderly, lightly, almost lovingly.  She looked to me,
enjoying the hopeless anticipation I must have showed.  She grabbed me
more fiercely, working my skin back, her eyes sparkling with glee as I
moaned into her movements.  Then she bent down to lightly lick the
head.  She nibbled on it, her eyes always on mine, her tongue working.
Then she bent her head, eyes closed, and took me into her mouth.

---
LATER
---

............It could not have been a minute from first caress to
finish.

I felt sweat runnel off my forehead as I forced my trembling arms to
support me.  Levering myself up, one hand went to Tasha's soft-haired
head, and she gazed at me as she pulled her head off me.  She bent to
kiss me there again, light pecks now, her hand caressing.  I was
exhausted and satisfied.  I caressed the downy back of her neck, the
giving fragile rigidity of her ears, the silk of her lips and eyelids.

I rose to a sitting position, marveling at the feel of her hair and
head.  I hoped I had not tried to force her or hold her as she had
worked that lovely face and lips on me.  She closed her eyes to accept
my kiss, her mouth soft and open, her tongue tentatively touching mine
as I probed.  She was not sure whether I would want to kiss her lips,
her mouth, after the gift she had given me.

An arm stole behind my head as I pressed harder, and her eyes opened
as she twisted her head against mine.

"Thank you," she intoned, her eyes closed again.  They opened, a
strong smile warming her face as she saw my confusion.  "Thank you,"
she repeated.  "For what you gave me, and thank you more for being
clean, and smelling fresh for me....  Most uncircumcised males....

"Thank you, again, for being clean."  She kissed me again, gently, her
lips trailing to my neck and earlobes.  I tried not to think of
the...hundreds?...of men she must have had like that.  Must.  Tasha
might be a whore, as she kept reminding me, but right now she was my
whore, and it was all that mattered.

Biting me softly, she whispered into my ear, causing me to shudder
from the tickling.  "You don't seem to want to get soft, now."

Indeed, I was acutely aware of her hand kneading me.

"Obviously you must have that condition fixed.  You can't walk about
the ship like this," she giggled, "Which probably means I must do
something about it.

"It should be put in a place where it is dark, and damp, and much too
warm," she proclaimed.  "And I know just the place."  She pulled my
head to hers again, kissing gently, her tongue tip touching my teeth.

She looked at me closely, biting her lower lip, shaking her head in
some negative she failed to share with me.  She turned, and unlatched
the two back cram's.  The metallic panels rolled up into the roof
deck.  With quick glances towards me she began pulling out our scout's
sleep-bag's.

Sleeping units, padded cloth items for sleeping outside.  With some
nervousness she rolled them out flat, with my help.  Making our scout
deck into an area where we might find each other's bodies. No, a place
to lie together, a place to find some fraction of the love we both
needed.

"You want to undress me, Hero?"  There was just a hint of quaver to
her voice, I thought.  "Please?"

The space was exceedingly cramped, but she cooperated as much as
possible.

First her newly issued shirt, then halter, her pebbly nipples
stiffening in the cooler air.  I went no further, then.  Instead I
attempted to pay those soft treasures the homage I felt their due. Her
skin was so smooth and soft, her breasts so light and heavy both.  My
lips attempted to maintain the pinkish nipples in their small spiking
state, loving to suck on them.

Finally she said, with some tightness in her throat; "They're not
going to collapse if you bite them," she pointed out.  "They're tough,
able to take a lot of rough handling.  They're not going to break...."

My teeth probing their texture, she sighed, rubbing my too-long black
hair.

"Yes," she whispered.  "Bite them, bite them both.  Harder, harder,
dammit!  O-o-o-o-hhh, yes, now the other, I like attention paid to my
breasts, I like just a small bit of pain.  Pull on them, suck them
hard, make them red and sore, you sumbitch, yes, the other one again,
make me know you're there.

"Handle them, rub them, you sumbitch, GRAB them!", she commanded.

Then she was on her knees, helping me start her pants off.  Her hands
found the closures of her boots and pants, as she fell back on her
shoulders.  In seconds she was naked, and her hands were working on my
own clothes.  They followed hers to the sides, and then we were
rolling on the bags.  For a few seconds I was in her. But I rolled
away, holding her from climbing on top of me.

She was confused, but I pulled her face to mine, kissing her again and
again.  "Please, Tash," I spoke in her ear, "let me love you, let me
love you more, please, let me do this, for us both."

She ground her hip against my belly, my stiffness.  Her voice low and
hoarse.  "You ARE loving me...  Oh," she paused.  Her sudden smile
warmed me, and a finger and thumb tweaked my nipple.  "You want to use
your mouth?  It doesn't bother you?"

"I want to love you," I said again.  "I want to feel you with my
teeth, I want to taste you, inhale you, love you again and again. I
love you, and I want to love you and make you happy.  I think women
are so lovely there, I love the way they open...."

She thought for some seconds, then lay back, her warm body against
mine.  "You sometimes have a genuine way with words, babe.  I'd like
that, Hero, I've always loved that, I've always loved being loved in
that way.  Are you sure you want to do that?"  She laughed softly, her
hands on my shoulders as I began to crawl on top of her.

"A warning," she husked.  "If you do it well, you might make me come."
Teasing.  "Would you like that?  Is that what's on your mind?  To make
me into a helpless female coming for a man, coming for you?

Then she paused, searching my face.  "I'll be double damned.  You are
in love with me, aren't you?

"Or are you wanting to show this old dyke a man could make me smile?"
I told her I loved her, but she had to know the urge to compete with
her Lesbian lovers was part of it as well.

Her hand followed the line of my chin, both of us knowing my least
bristle against her thighs would remind her she was being loved by a
man.  Quick, quick, she bent.  Her tongue touched the line of fuzz
between belly and crotch, but I refused to raise to her bait. Her eyes
softened then.

"Would you like me to show how to make it better, how to make it good
for me?  Do you want to be a good lover there?"

Taking my smile and nod for an assent, she stroked my hair and laid
herself open for my attentions.  "Then you should learn to make love
to a woman like a lesbian does."

There was more, much more, hints, orders, begging, commands. Starting
with kisses and sucking her nipples, all the way to when she stiffened
and I tasted her.  I was patient, ignoring my own onset of softness.
There would be time for me.  This was her time.

Later, much later, she talked to me.  More....formally.  There, that
first time in the scout, her teaching was grunts, ooohing, guiding my
head, spreading herself with fingers to ease my tongue on and in her.

That was surprising.  Tightening the flesh around her clit, her stiff
bead, that made it better.  What made it even better was venturing
other places, licking, probing.  Learning to alternate hard probing's
with feather-touches of my tongue.  Using my lips to flow over her
open flesh and lips.

CHANGING patterns and loving's.  Lengthening the climb to her own
comings.  Building the fire.  She explained how the skin changed, how
everything centered more and more.  Working her own breasts and
nipples as my fingers penetrated, then withdrew.  Changing.
Prolonging.  Arching, caresses, hands pulling my hair as she came for
me.

Yet always she said for me to continue doing what I was doing. What I
lacked in finesse, evidently I made up for with gusto.

Later she sought her own answers to questions never previously asked.
Namely, what was different from a man loving a woman with his mouth,
to a woman doing the same thing?  Apart from feminine stamina, and
their also being women, what makes lesbian lovers better at this?  If
so.

"Maybe it's that our whole being becomes involved, this and all the
other things we do.  We focus into doing it well.

"You men use words describing a woman's body as cuss words.  It's a
way to make us ashamed of our bodies.

"Lesbians know how beautiful a woman's body can be.  It's a way for us
to feel good about ourselves, to realize we are lovely there. To us
your cuss words are words of beauty, something to be shared when we
love one another."  She licked my ear at that point, distracting me.

"They're words of power, they DESCRIBE me to myself and other women.
Clit.  Cunt.  All of them.

"A man tends to worry about losing his stiffness, he wants his own
pleasure, and what he does to and for a woman is secondary to him. A
side affair.

"To a lesbian, pleasing a woman until she glows like an over-heated
bar of Ming is the main event.  It gives meaning to our lives."

"Or at least that's what I think happens.  Does that sound right to
you?"  Eventually she laughed and kissed my jaw

"Men's pleasure are their cums.  A dyke's pleasure is the cum she
gives.  Am I making sense?"

Metaphysics of sex, a cum as a transcendent state?  She sounded like a
Shinto priest.  "You make an act of loving sound like embarking on a
holy crusade."

She hit me so hard on my chest I got a bruise.

She was - in a limited fashion - my woman?  I would take what I had,
and try not to think more deeply.

Our lips met, again, and she relaxed as I probed her tentatively with
my tongue.  After much caressing she eased herself over to lie beside
me, my face enjoying the scent of female in her short-cut hair.

I idly picked up the tube of lube, reading it was  Kiwi-Strawberry,
fruit-flavored.  A bit on a finger, the taste and scent good.
Pleasant, unfamiliar without being overpowering.  Kiwi.  Maybe it was
a Turkana fruit.

"Where'd you get this stuff?  It smells and tastes lovely.  Bring it
from Turkana?"  Then I realized she had no chance to bring anything,
not even her old blood-stained dress.  Did Legion replicators have
this on their menu's?

She bit her thumb, worried, and I knew the answer.

"Tiptoe."  Not a question, a statement.

"I asked for some," she hastened to state.  "She gave me this.  It was
all she gave me, apart from a few questions, a few poems."

She hesitated, then continued.  "I got it for you, for us, for me,"
she said with a rush.  "I'd hoped something like today would happen.
We would make love, we would fuck, crank, give ourselves to each
other.  I hoped."

She awaited anger, rejection, something unpleasant.  Instead I guided
one dark rosy nipple into my mouth.  It was a surprise to her, and she
shuddered in sudden reaction.

"Stop that," she pleaded.  I continued, and she saw the twinkle in my
eyes, my smile.  "You Stachakaii sumbitch."  For minutes she moaned or
breathed deeply.  "Damn it," she finally asked, "aren't you going to
tell me to stay away from Tiptoe?"

"Why?," I asked, for once sure of what I must do.  "Would you?"

She raised up to look down at me.  "No, probably not," she faintly
said.  "Especially if you told me to avoid her.  But aren't I your
woman now?"

"Are you?"

For a second I thought she was going to hit me again, then she dropped
her fists.  "Don't you want me?"

"Very much, I've told you before, I love you.  If I love you," I
continued, "then I happen to be loving a lesbian, someone who has sex
with other women.

"I got into this with eyes open, I don't own you, or even have a
lease.  You're my shield-brother, and I hope you'll be a good one.
It'll take a lot of work from me, Happy and Kebnebe, and others to
make you into a Legion trooper.  And you can't own a shield-mate, a
brother, sister-in-arms.

"I love you, but I can't pen you in.  You may never love me, the real
thing.  Even if I wanted to own you, it'd be impossible.  I don't want
to worry about a sudden firefight divorce.  Besides being terminal,
they're messy as hell.

"If you want to bed Tiptoe, or any other female, well, I just hope
you'll return.  To me.  Maybe with a satisfied smile on your lovely
lips, but return.  Just consider coming back to me, periodically. I
love you, and would miss the touch of your soft silk skin."

We kissed, her body warm and real on top of me.  She did not thank me
for my fine words, which was wise.  I had made promises, both said and
unsaid.  Only time would show whether I had the resolve to live up to
them.

The first time she came back, if she came back, and another woman's
kisses still lingered in her eyes, well, then would be time enough to
find whether I could keep these promises.  It would hurt, but I hoped
it would be overshadowed by her returning.  By whatever she might be
able to continue to give me.

No guarantees.  Take it one day at a time.

Hell, maybe someday, somehow, she would come to love me back. Another
one of my child's fantasies, surely.  Yet don't we all live for our
fantasies?  There is a Don Quixote in all of us, an adventurer.  And a
lover.

Tasha still had said I would have been a damned good lesbian, if fate
had been kinder to me.  That statement made me feel proud.  I had
accomplished something in her eyes.

Later on, clothed, still bundling, I promised we all would teach her,
help her, make her a good merc.  Not protect her.  That was
impossible.  Still, maybe our next mudball war would be a simple
in-and-out.  Something to accustom Tasha to modern mercenary warfare.

Instead she was wounded twice, and I almost died.  The planet was
named Tri Thi IV by the Indigs.  We called it Green Hell.

---

continued in the third story in the Riding The Tick series 'Riding The Tick'