CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Kade

T he moon was bright tonight, and as I rounded a curve in the rocks, I could see clearly enough to follow the Geshtoch’s movements. Sure enough, one of them had what looked like a rocket launcher on his shoulder, another one loading a new round into the tube to be fired. But they were fairly out in the open at the moment, which wouldn’t give me any chance to sneak up on them.

A crack sounded from the pillar above me, and I grinned as the Geshtoch – there were four of them, not five – went scrambling towards the nearest cover. That was better, but I really needed them to move forward a bit if I was going to get behind them.

But it wasn’t likely that the rest of the team would be able to do much in the way of battle coordination. Their main concern would be keeping the Geshtoch ducking for cover, to prevent them from firing another rockbreaker at them. Ironically, the Alliance sometimes used the shells to help with terraforming efforts, and I idly wondered if the Geshtoch used them for the same purpose. They had managed to terraform a significant portion of their own territory, after all.

In the end, I decided I wasn’t going to be able to reach them from here – the north side of the rock cluster – so I sprinted as quickly and quietly as I could all the way around, until I was coming at them from the south. Here, they were slightly ahead of the last row of rocks, giving me a place to come at them from behind.

But just then, they managed to launch another shell at the top of the pillar, and I had to assume they had infrared scanners with them. Even I couldn’t see Bryce and the team up there with my eyes alone.

In the noise of the explosion, I darted forward and slit the throat of the one closest to me, clamping a hand over his mouth and lowering him silently to the ground as he died. It was a risk; I wasn’t sure I was far enough back to avoid the attention of the second one, but hopefully, he would be distracted enough by the noise and light to not notice me. A second later, I was back in cover, knowing damn well that my team would be shooting at the Geshtoch standing only a couple of metres from me. The one at the front crouched down, keeping his eyes on the pillar and yelling for the others to reload the rockbreaker. And seeing their complete lack of awareness of their greater surroundings, I agreed with my master’s earlier assessment that they were rather stupid creatures. They must have some redeeming qualities, to survive wandering the desert like they did, but battle strategy was not one of their fortes.

But I couldn’t afford to stand around and wait for them to fire the rockbreaker three more times to get my opportunities to kill them. Another volley of bullets came down from above, and I watched the Geshtoch’s movements, trying to get a feel for when my team would shoot, and when they wouldn’t. Another Geshtoch stood up momentarily, before hastily ducking down again… and that was when I realised that my team weren’t shooting at the Geshtoch. Rather, they were spraying the rocks around them with bullets, far enough away that they wouldn’t actually hit any of their enemy… or their teammate who was sneaking up behind them.

Stars, I loved working with such a thoroughly competent team. The front two Geshtoch were debating what to do next – and fuck, I loved the fact that my translator had been programmed with the Geshtoch language, along with the hundreds of others from across the local sector of the galaxy. The one at the rear was fidgeting impatiently… so I slid up behind him and dispatched him next, silent as a ghost, before retreating again. Even if the other two turned around and noticed the bodies, they wouldn’t immediately know where I was. Which might just give me the edge, if I had to fight two of them at once.

With two of them down, I debated whether to just shoot the remaining two. They were standing right next to each other, and taking another one out with stealth was going to be hard. The thing was, according to the documents my master had given me, the Geshtoch were both strong and quick, like the Culrads had been, back in the jungle, and if I ended up fighting one hand to hand, I wasn’t guaranteed to win.

Hm. Bullets it was, then. I drew my pistol, still keeping absolutely silent, and-

“Behind us!” one of them yelled, having glanced back and seen his fallen comrades. I’d put a bullet in his head before the second one had even turned around, but number two moved like lightning, darting sideways, rockbreaker abandoned as it crashed to the ground. But instead of ducking for cover, as I expected him to, he came straight for me, a long, curving blade in his hand. I vaulted backwards, getting two shots off before he leapt straight on top of me, the knife embedding itself in my arm as I fought to fend him off. Recklessly, I pulled the trigger again, not even knowing where the gun was pointing… and the Geshtoch slumped, dragging me to the ground as it went limp.

Breathing hard, I shoved it off me, then shot it again in the head, just to be certain it was dead. And then I looked down at my arm. Yep, that was going to hurt. The long blade was embedded firmly in my flesh, the tip poking out the back of my left bicep. It was tempting to pull it out, but I knew that wasn’t the recommended option. I forced myself to take a slow breath, and then a second one.

“All clear,” I yelled up to the top of the pillar.

“On our way down,” my master replied. I climbed to my feet, heading around the rocks to get back to where we’d dumped our supplies.

“Oh my god!” Associate Nors yelped, as she saw me coming. For a moment, I thought she was startled by my colour change; I was still jet black, and plenty of people had been caught off guard by that in the past. But her stare was fixed on the knife in my arm, and I supposed that to a civilian, it must look pretty terrible.

“Any problems with the… Oh, fuck,” my master cut himself off, as he came around the corner. “God damn it.”

“Someone’s going to have to pull it out,” I said, knowing it would most likely be my master. “And then put pressure on it. I don’t think it’s hit anything important.” For one thing, it didn’t hurt enough, and secondly, it wasn’t bleeding profusely. A steady drip of blood flowed from the wound, but not enough that the knife could have hit an artery.

“I’ll get a first aid kit,” Vosh volunteered immediately, going to rummage in her pack.

“Any other injuries?” Bryce asked, as my master pulled a glow stick out of his own pack. It wouldn’t provide a whole lot of light, but it would at least let him see the wound a little better. Anything that used electricity to generate light would have been fried by the EMP.

“No,” I told Bryce. “There are four dead Geshtoch. They’ve still got the rockbreaker and a few rounds of ammo, but I don’t know if you want to try carting that all the way to the outpost.”

Bryce thought about it, but then shook his head. “Not with you and Bidge both injured. If we had more people to carry things, I might consider it-”

“I can still carry my pack and my gun,” I tried to interrupt him, but he wouldn’t have it.

“I need to make sure my team gets home safely,” he said, fixing me with a stern glare. “And if that means we can’t scavenge everything, then so be it. Let’s get this knife out of your arm. Aiden, I’ll pull it out, then you put pressure on it.” There was a risk that pulling it out would make it worse, but we had to walk for two more hours, plus fight any more Geshtoch who came along. Given the circumstances, leaving it where it was would slow me down too much.

“Vosh, come and hold this,” my master snapped, waving the glowstick at Vosh. The younger woman rushed over to help, ignoring my master’s sharp tone. He was worried, I assumed, and I couldn’t blame him. If he’d been the one with the knife in his arm, I’d have been much the same.

“Ready?” Bryce asked, taking a firm grip on the handle. I nodded, tensing my shoulder to hold still, and then he pulled it smoothly out, without giving me any more warning than that. My master was there a moment later, putting firm pressure on both the front and back of the wound, and I couldn’t help a groan. A shooting pain ran down my arm, making my hand spasm. It faded quickly, though, and I was left with a dull ache that was probably going to last for days.

It took a good ten minutes before my master was convinced the bleeding had stopped, and then he wrapped the whole thing, gauze and all, in a wide bandage. There wasn’t much more we could do until we got back to a hospital.

“What do we do now?” Associate Nors asked, as Vosh cleaned up the first aid supplies and my master stowed the still-glowing stick in the depths of his pack, to hide the light.

“We stay here for the rest of the night,” Bryce said. “Get some sleep if you can. We’ll keep watch. Just like before.”

“Won’t all the noise have attracted more attention?” Nors asked.

“Nope,” my master replied. “Geshtoch don’t tend to run towards the sound of gunfire. Maybe they don’t want to mess with trouble. Maybe they assume that whichever Geshtoch were involved in the fight have already dealt with the problem. I don’t know. But apparently, it doesn’t draw anywhere near as much attention as we might expect.”

“These are very strange creatures,” she mused. “I’m going to have to do a lot of reading about all these little details we’ve learned about them.”

“And then figure out a way to get them to stop killing us?” Bryce asked, with exaggerated hopefulness. “That would be awesome.”

???

The six of us limping towards the terraforming outpost the following morning must have been quite a sight. After a brief explanation of our presence, the watchtower guard buzzed us through the gate, and then the outpost’s administrator and their nurse met us in the main courtyard. Not even half an hour later, we were on a transporter heading back to the main base, since Henderson had sent one out at the crack of dawn to find us.

The colonel was waiting for us in the docking bay as the transporter came in, along with a medical team and a handful of aides to see to Associate Nors .

“I am so sorry about all the trouble,” Henderson apologised to her – not because any of this was our fault, but because protocol dictated that he do so. “Our staff will take you to get cleaned up, and we’ve arranged some emergency clothing for you. We can, of course, take you to a few fashion outlets to let you get more suitably attired for your meetings – at your convenience, of course. Do you need any medical attention?”

I was curious as to how Associate Nors was going to respond. “I’m perfectly healthy,” she said, sounding just a touch defiant about it. “And I would like to commend your outstanding team for their heroic actions in keeping me safe.” She turned to us with a beaming smile. “This is the first time I’ve been able to see a military unit in action. And Corporal Kade Hill, in particular, was thoroughly impressive. I believed he saved all of our lives, not just my own. And on that note…” She turned back to Henderson. “If we have time later in the week, I’d be very grateful if I could take him out to dinner. To say thank you.”

I blinked as I realised what she’d said. Not ‘take them to dinner’, but rather, ‘take him .’ I wasn’t entirely sure I knew what was happening.

My master must have noticed my baffled look, because he cleared his throat. “Uh… I’m sorry, Ma’am, but if you’re flirting with him… he’s not available.”

Associate Nors turned a rather imperious look on my master. “And do you always speak for him, Lieutenant Hill?” The words were mischievous, rather than stern. Had she actually missed the relationship between us?

But then again, aside from the same surname, we hadn’t done anything even remotely suggestive during the mission. And my status as my master’s dimari might have been lost in translation, given the military customs of calling one’s superiors ‘sir’ and following orders. “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” I said, politely following my master’s lead. “But I’m not available.”

Associate Nors looked me up and down, a hint of longing in her aristocratic pout. “Pity,” she said amiably. “I’d best go take a shower,” she said to Henderson. “If your staff would be so kind as to show me the way?” She strode out of the docking bay, head held high, attendants flitting about her like doves.

“Well,” Henderson said, eyeing the rest of us in our bedraggled state. “Seems you made quite an impression. Corporal Hill, Sergeant Bidge, you both need to get to the medical bay.” The terraforming outpost had given him a brief rundown on our condition when they’d contacted the base. “The rest of you, I’m going to need a full report on everything that went down. But,” he added, before anyone could start groaning, “I’m going to order you all to get something to eat, and if you want to, you can grab a couple of hours sleep before I start cracking the whip. I’ll need something on my desk by the end of the day – purely because of Associate Nors’ position – but you’ve been through a big ol’ pile of shit in the last twenty- four hours. And from the brief account of it I’ve heard, you’ve done a bloody good job. Well done. Now get out of here.”

We filed out of the docking bay, and I paused at the entrance to the base, aware that my master was hovering over my shoulder. “Sir?” I asked him, wondering if he needed anything.

“I’m just coming with you to the medical bay,” he said. “Then we can go take a nap.”

“I’m fine,” I assured him. “I can get that report written first, if that would help with-”

“You what?” he asked, sounding almost affronted. “You had a fucking knife sticking out of your arm.”

“And I walked across ten kilometres of desert without keeling over,” I reminded him. “It’s not fatal.”

“You need stitches and antibiotics,” he growled, giving me a light shove to get me moving again. I went – an order was an order, after all – but I was grinning as I did so, thinking his concern to be endearing, but unnecessary.

“Just for the record, I’ve had worse injuries than this,” I told him, as I turned the corner towards the medical bay. Bidge had already disappeared ahead of us, Vosh flitting along behind him to make sure he got there safely. “I had to trek sixty kilometres with a broken collar bone, and then-”

“I don’t care what injuries you’ve tolerated in the past.” My master stopped, tugging me around to face him. “This is an order, Kade. Where time and resources allow, you will get your injuries treated appropriately.”

It was beautiful, how he phrased it. Ordering me to get treated no matter what would have been counter-productive. Ordering me to do it regardless of available resources could potentially have derailed a mission. But making the order subject to ‘available resources’ and ‘appropriateness’ left enough wiggle room that I could follow his intention to care for my health, without conflicting with any other orders I was supposed to be following. I loved the way he was learning to understand me.

We waited for twenty minutes to be seen by the base’s doctor, then I had to sit still while he carefully numbed the wound site. I attempted – just the once – to say that I didn’t need the local anaesthetic, but my master quickly shut that down. “You want to beat your chest and swing from the chandeliers, you can do that later. Right now, you’re going to sit still and be a good little boy.”

I didn’t entirely understand the reference, but it seemed to be something to do with an unnecessary display of toughness, so I shut my mouth and let the doctor get on with his job.

After I was all patched up and the doctor had put a waterproof dressing on my arm, I followed my master back to our rooms, looking forward to a shower and a change of clothes .

But once we got there, he tugged me into his room, turning to face me with a serious frown. “Tell me your thoughts on that mission,” he said.

The vague question made me take a mental step back, trying to assess what he actually wanted to know. In the end, I couldn’t figure it out, so I asked, “Are you asking about the politics, the overall organisation of it, or the Geshtoch attack?”

“I’m asking for your overall feeling about it. This was fairly typical of an Alliance mission, in so far as a lot of them start fairly routine, but shit can hit the fan very rapidly. And when it does, it’s up to us to figure out how we’re going to get through it, while still achieving the mission objectives. So is this something you can see yourself doing for the next ten years? Do you have any serious concerns about the things that went wrong? Or is there anything in particular that you didn’t understand that you’d like clarified?”

Ah. He wanted to know if I had liked it. He’d spent the past week or two trying to find every possible way to ask that same question, without me resorting to my rote response of wanting to please my master. I carefully considered how to answer the question, to create the impression I’d given him my opinion, while avoiding saying anything that might indicate I was merely following his orders.

“I find it very satisfying to be able to use my skills to help people,” I told him. To help my master in particular, but he didn’t need to know that. “I was rather baffled by the social occasions in Adavi. Dinner with politicians is not something I was ever trained for. But you’ve already said that’s not a normal part of a mission.” I figured it was safe to express concern about something that wasn’t likely to be a recurring problem. “The battle with the Geshtoch was dangerous, but within workable parameters. I’m more concerned about the Alliance’s overall strategy of letting them run rampant across the planet. But from the details I picked up, it seems everyone is concerned about that.” Again, it was a tidy issue to comment on, because it was ultimately neither my responsibility, nor my master’s. I paused, considering if there was anything else I should say. “Do you have any particular comments on my performance?”

My master snorted. “Associate Nors seemed to like you.”

I managed not to smirk. My master was as reticent about critiquing me as I was about giving my opinion. “Apparently, I was thoroughly impressive,” I told him, repeating what Associate Nors had said. “Maybe you should take me to dinner to say thank you?”

I’m not sure what response I was expecting to my sassy reply. But the heat suddenly flooding his expression was as surprising as it was welcome. My master stepped towards me, pressing me back until my ass hit the dresser behind me. He opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind… and then ordered, “Take your pants off.” He plastered his mouth over mine immediately after he’d said it, which made it significantly harder to obey his instructions. Nonetheless, I managed to toe off my boots, undo my belt and pants, and get them shoved down my legs. Getting them off my feet was harder, and I resorted to standing on whichever bits of them I could reach and yanking at my feet until they finally slid free. My master’s hand was on my cock then, and I felt it swell, responding eagerly to his touch.

He procured a tube of lube from goodness knows where, hastily slicking up his cock – which he’d somehow got out of his pants in the midst of our kissing and grinding – and then he lifted me, setting me on top of the dresser. It was fairly low, with only three drawers, which made it the perfect height for me to perch on. I parted my legs without being asked and drew in a breath as he pressed two slick fingers up inside me. “You are so fucking sexy,” he growled, almost as if it was a complaint, then he shoved a third finger inside me. I almost came on the spot, the pressure intense, making all my nerve endings jump.

“Do you like it rough?” he asked, and I got the impression he didn’t quite realise what he was asking.

“Yes,” I panted, because that was what he wanted to hear. He was pressing into me a moment later, and I let my head fall back against the wall, reminding my body to relax against the invasion. He thrust hard into me, his hand stroking my cock with an almost painful firmness. I’d been taught about this, back during my training; the possibility of a master wanting to use their dimari not as a companion, but as an object. I tilted my hips, allowing him greater access, revelling in the sensation of being used, being owned, being so thoroughly under his control and his command. I loved the feel of his body against mine, the slapping sound of his skin against me. I loved being pushed beyond everyday politeness into something wilder and more intense. I loved…

I swallowed down a scream as I came all over my grimy grey t-shirt. Though we were in a private room, if we were too loud, the neighbouring rooms would still hear us. I love my master , I thought helplessly, as I struggled to maintain my balance while my limbs wanted to collapse bonelessly. I loved him. My body continued rocking with his thrusts, my hands grabbing desperately onto the edges of the dresser as he pounded into me. He came a moment later, muffling his strangled groans against my shoulder as his hips spasmed and his hands gripped my thighs hard enough to leave bruises.

He stayed where he was for a long moment, panting hot breaths against my scales. I was blue again, I realised, having once more lost control of my colouring in the midst of his passion.

He pulled out, as careful as always, but he couldn’t quite meet my eyes as he regarded the mess I’d made of myself. In a thoroughly daring move, I reached out and tilted his chin, lifting his eyes to mine. And then I kissed him until I felt him smile against my lips, and his hand came up to cup the back of my neck.

I love you , I wanted to tell him. And I desperately wanted him to love me. But a dimari was not permitted to spout effusive declarations of love to their master. We protected. We served. We obeyed. That was all.

“I…” He cut off whatever he’d been about to say and shook his head. “We need to take a shower,” he said instead.

“Yes, sir,” I said, hopping down off the dresser. My ass ached a little with the sudden move. But it was nothing quite so intense as the ache in my chest.