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// Location Classified.

// 2554 [UNSC Calendar].

Mark-G313 had seen snipers zero their instruments before, but never with the same love and care Linda always reserved for her gear.

Linda-058 approached the task like an older, more experienced lover taking a young toy-boy into her carnal care. She cleared a patch of dirt and laid out a camo mat so the SRS99C-S2 AM rifle would be more comfortable, putting it more at ease. Next she opened a kit bag that contained her tools, bottles of lubricant, several magazines, a box of ammunition and a tiny datapad. She selected one of the magazines and inspected it from all angles; satisfied she opened the box of ammo and removed the match-grade rounds one at a time and fed them gently, caringly into the magazines. With each click of a round eased into the mags she glanced at the rifle, as if to check she wasn’t scaring it away.

With several magazines loaded with quads of the specialised rounds each she tenderly slid the mag into the rifle until it clicked softly.

Next she checked her tablet and made necessary calibrations to her scope. Her fingers moved with practiced ease, caressing the dials into position with subtle motions. All the while her free hand didn’t neglect the cuddle the other parts of the weapon. She brushed the muzzle brake, then ran her slender armoured fingers down the shaft of the barrel before giving the foregrip a light squeeze.

She finally set the sniper rifle in its bipod, then crawled seductively towards it like a cougar closing over her prey. Laying with it with loving tenderness she held the rifle close before she played a little rough for her own pleasure. Her hand yanked back the bolt with a satisfying “cha-chik” and she rested cheek of her helmet onto the stock, peering through the scope.

Mark gave the strangely erotic scene a subtle sideways glance before looking through his own battle scope again.

Unlike the Spartan-II laying prone beside him, Mark was clad in his SPI armour. The semi-powered infiltration armour was unique as in it didn’t mess with the Spartan-III commando’s strength and speed, but rather relied on a wide array of gadgetry and electronic wizardly to making him a phantom on the battlefield. Most impressively, the surface of the olive green armour fitted over the black fatigues underneath was reactive to his surroundings, adjusting in colour constantly to camouflage him no matter the environment. No need for a change of clothes or a spray can.

And all that with a few new surprises between his bayonet and the few MJOLNIR GEN2 upgrades.

Linda on the other hand wore a complete set of Argus variant MJOLNIR GEN2. None of the battle scars the vixen had endured in her long life as a supersoldier were visible under the black suit fitted tight over her fur, moulding to the contours of her lithe body with sections of shadowy grey armour plating fitted over the top. Her helmet sported a tell-tale vulpine shape to fit around her anthro canine head with what looked like a set of additional optics stuck over her narrow visor.

Both Spartans lay prone under the undergrowth on the ridge of a valley. Below them the ground dropped away sharply, levelling out on the valley floor upon which a Covenant facility stood.

Right smack-dab in the middle of a bowl shaped valley their base stood, surrounded by the steep natural walls of forest and rock so thick it had taken the Spartans hours to simply reach their overwatch position. And littered throughout the space at least a kilometre in diameter were numerous bulbous Covenant structures.

From hovering spotter’s towers housing jackal sniper sentries, to low motor pools home to grunts and engineers working on the vehicles housed in the base. There were methane tents simulating the grunts’ natural habitat in one corner of the camp, while at the heart was the main purpose of the operation.

Intel wasn’t solid, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out the rough idea judging by the sights and sounds. The largest of the structures sank into the ground with the entrance hollowed into the earth with a declining ramp leading to a bulkhead. There was a secondary entrance into the sunken structure, a wider and taller door into which supply dollies ran in stacked with boxes, then emerged empty. This was some sort of storage facility, probably caching Covenant weapons in anticipation of some kind of attack on UNSC space.

The war had officially ended years ago, with the Covenant running scattered into the stars. But that didn’t mean they were completely beat. There were small Covenant cells all over the space beyond the UNSC borders. Some struck UNSC outposts. Others merely lay in wait for some sort of sign that it was time to return.

And when they returned in force, they would need ships and guns. The latter seemed to be stored in bulk just below Mark and Linda. The mission parameters were simple. Find the cache. Determine its size and the source of production, then destroy it. The UNSC couldn’t just nuke the site from orbit, a sure way of interfering with Covenant plans. Today NavSpecWar high command needed information, not a body count.

Mark and Linda were here to identify the source of the Covenant’s remaining weapons production. So for now, despite the activity below, grunts moving cargo onto dollies and rolling them into the storage facility, the Spartan operators lay in wait, watching through their scopes.

Instead of toting the same long barrelled sniper rifle as Linda, Mark was outfitted with a battle rifle. The front of his weapon was sited firmly across the back of his hand gripping the dirt and forming a V on the back of his wrist, stabilising the weapon as he scanned the facility.

Mark’s specialisation was technically marksman, which was why he was so often paired up with Linda – even though the Spartan-II often didn’t need a spotter. His friends called him “The Mark” for his accuracy, but he wasn’t given his speciality because of his exceptional shooting skills. Put next to a shooter like Linda, Mark was made to look like a fool who couldn’t hit the side of a barn twenty feet away.

Mark held his speciality because of his uncanny ability to hit his targets even under extreme stress. Put him slap-dab in the middle of a target-rich shooting gallery with an assault rifle and orders to rack up the body count, “The Mark” was unmatched. The more stress, the higher the stakes, the better.

Linda had seen him bust into a room full of hostages held as human shields with little more than a pair of pistols and his wits. No explosive breach, no flashbangs. Just two laser-sights zipping around the room and a dozen pistol shots.

He came out with every hostage intact. Linda had been impressed. Not that she’d let him know it of course. It’d go straight to his head.

The third generation of Spartans were a little more impressionable than the twos. Whereas Linda was a precise instrument of destruction who could deflower a target from miles away, a silent professional; Mark was better described as a high functioning sociopathic puppy with the tendency to chatter ears off when he got excited about a task to come.

It was Linda’s professional opinion that her buddy was getting excited.

“So I’m posted on Infinity, minding my own business when this blacker than black ops chick walks right up to me,” the human said, picking up some old conversation out of nowhere. There had been no pretence, no warning; he just started talking, picking this story out of the silence between them. “A lieutenant I think she was. Definitely ODST. Spliced, an anthro panthress. Kinda hot I suppose; if you’re into that sort of thing. Which you kinda are, Red, considering.

“Anyway, she started trapping, asking about my recent activity, wondering if I ever got shore leave, maybe we could grab a drink sometime. I’m pretty sure she was picking me up, because when I finally told her I was a Spartan-three, not a four, she kinda slowed it down a notch. I dunno how anthro biology works, but I’m pretty sure the fur on her face went a little paler when I revealed the details of my age.

“She backed it up and snubbed me for the next Spartan-four that swaggered past. Her loss I suppose.” Mark finished on a grin and a chuckle.

Linda didn’t say a word.

“How about you, Red?” Mark suddenly asked. “Any of the fours get curious? Oh, what am I saying? Pretty pixie like you, I bet you’re beating off fourth-gen Spartans with your sniper rifle.”

No reply.

“Or maybe not. You letting them all have a turn?”

Silence.

“What, even the girls?” Mark smirked sheepishly. “I honestly didn’t figure you for the type…”

“Get moving.”

“Hmmmm?”

Linda didn’t repeat herself. She never repeated herself. Luckily enough Mark had heard her the first time, he simply didn’t understand the request… scratch that, order. Words out of Linda’s mouth directed at him were always orders.

“Movement downrange has stopped,” Linda suddenly clarified in an icy voice. “I don’t want you on this ridge.”

“What? Am I fucking with your precious Zen?”

Linda was deathly silent. She didn’t have to say anything; she didn’t even have to look his way for

Mark to feel the chill of her wrath.

He visibly winced like he was expecting to be struck. “Sorry. Please don’t strike me.”

“I don’t want you on this ridge because I don’t want your skills wasted. I don’t need a spotter, I got this locked down. I need someone I can rely on to run interference down below should my position get compromised. And good sniping positions around here are slim pickings.”

They had quite literally had a moment right there. Unless it wasn’t already painfully obvious, Linda didn’t talk much. In fact, Mark had never heard her string together anything longer than a sentence before. Hearing her spout out four sentences in a single breath was like the white whale of conversation Mark hunted with an obsession whenever he was paired with the Spartan-II.

Unfortunately the younger Spartan was so excited, all he could say was: “I’m reliable? Sweet.”

Linda didn’t look in his direction as the younger commando pulled back his rifle and ditched it next to her kit. Crawling off the ridge he ducked low and retrieved an MA5D assault rifle with a silencer threaded in place of the muzzle shroud that he had set up against a nearby tree. Setting the spare mags for the weapon in the pouches on his rig, Mark kept low and ran to the wide left flank of Linda’s position.

Only when he was satisfied he wouldn’t accidentally draw attention to the sniper did Mark jump over the edge of the valley and slide down the steep decline leading into the natural bowl. Catching on some rocks he dove forward, rolled smoothly on impact then landed lightly behind a boulder on the valley floor. He didn’t wait to see if he was spotted, breaking cover with the MA5D shouldered and sweeping for immediate contacts.

There were none, and the sentries hadn’t noticed the tiny avalanche of rocks cascading down the valley wall. As he was moving the colours of his SPI armour shifted to a new pattern that would best blend with dirt. He was like ghost, skipping over the ground underneath one of the floating sniper towers, right under a jackal’s nose.

High above them Linda’s icy demeanour melted just a little, her otherwise disciplined finger touching her rifle trigger as she saw the jackal turn in Mark’ direction. But the commando clearly knew what he was doing, because he froze just under the lip of the hovering sniper’s nest, looking up. When the jackal turned away, none the wiser, Mark quickly moved out again.

He was past the perimeter in a flash and Linda let out the breath she realised she had been holding, turning her aim away from the sentries. By the time she zeroed in to watch what Mark was doing he’d melted into the shadows beside one of the grunt methane tents. His armour colours had shifted again making him hard to spot until she switched to thermal. He was moving quickly and efficiently, and like the previous times they had worked together, Linda couldn’t help but be a little impressed.

A trio of grunts waddled past him and she watched him track them with his rifle. If any of them looked hard enough to spot him they’d be dropped in a hail of bullets before they could raise the alarm.

Backing away from the aliens, Mark turned and dashed for a more secluded cluster of tents, vanishing between them before he popped up again in a gap between the structures closest to the main building in the centre of the valley.

“What do you think, Ell?” Mark asked into his narrow beam transmitter. “Do I look sexy while operating or what?”

Linda didn’t reply. She merely beamed a red acknowledgement light to his HUD.

“Oh, ha-ha. Very funny.”

Mark brought up his rifle and was about to make another break for it when he spotted a large red blip on his motion tracker. Backing up, he looked up and saw the contact before he heard it.

The beetle like phantom drop ship came down steep, spiralling over the encampment before settling down in the clearing between Mark and the main structure. Hovering a few meters from the deck, a shaft of light descended from the belly and a pile of crates on an anti-gravity dolly were lowered to the dirt. Landing alongside the cargo were three jackals and a grunt in white armour, a permutation Mark hadn’t seen before.

He watched patiently as the phantom dusted off. Lighter now it pulled a tight, steep turn and rushed for the overcast sky with a fading banshee-like wail of the engines. Meanwhile the dolly, it’s cargo and its guards started moving. Under the grunt’s leadership the aliens and their cargo trudged towards the main building. At the same time there was a groan of alien alloy, and as they were passing over the downward sloping threshold of the structure a large blast door began lowering down to close off the passage.

“Damn, that’s bound to be a weapons shipment,” Mark cursed. “We’re gonna lose ‘em. I’m going in.”

“Negative,” Linda hissed back on the short beam. “That’s a lot of open ground to cover. I’ll find you an alternate.”

She didn’t see, but Mark shook his head. Or perhaps he was just looking both ways, because he broke cover, sliding his rifle into the holster on his back as he moved. “No time for caution.”

There was nothing Linda could do to stop the younger Spartan. He was off in a flash, grains of dirt sprinkling the tents behind him. He was a blur of olive green, his armour’s camo systems unable to keep up with his pace and shutting off. He was in full view, sprinting across flat terrain without any cover and Linda was shocked none of the aliens were screaming out with alarm yet.

He had picked his time to move just right, just as the sentries were all turned to look another way. But it didn’t seem to matter as the blast doors were coming down faster now, and Linda’s quick calculations told her he’d just end up running face first into a closed door.

“You’re not going to make it.”

“Wanna bet?” Mark asked, barely out of breath.

Everything he was told he couldn’t do was a challenge. Linda had noticed this sort of reckless behaviour with the other Spartan-III operators, but Mark was by far the most stubborn she’d had the pleasure to work with. He was a high risk, high reward kind of operator. But whereas that had its downsides, it had its upsides too.

Mark lowered his head and pulled a burst of speed out of nowhere. Kicking his feet out from under himself he dropped to the deck and slid clean under the blast doors, just moments before they clicked into place and blocked the cargo and the Spartan-III from view.

Inside, Mark nearly slide tackled the nearest jackal. Even with his armour scraping and sparking off the smooth purple alloy of the ramp leading down into the earth the aliens were caught unaware.

Mark rose to his feet even as he grabbed the nearest jackal from behind. Locking one hand around its beak, he reached back for his rifle as he pulled the alien’s head sharply to one side and turned it into a shield between him and the other aliens.

He whipped his assault rifle over his shoulder and fired two short bursts from his one handed grip. Each puff of the suppressor preluded a kill. Explosions of blood rippled across the other jackals’ chests, throwing them to the deck.

Throwing his jackal shield to the ground he stomped on the alien’s head before snapping his rifle in the grunt’s direction. But the squat alien was just a little too quick, squealing as it jumped behind the dolly and broke line of sight.

Mark quickly keeled sideways and dropped to the floor on his side. Aiming under the dolly he put a shot through the grunt’s leg, toppling the creature before putting a final round through its head as soon as the kill-shot presented itself.

Rolling onto his knees, Mark did one more sweep to make sure he was clear before reloading his rifle.

“Linda I’m in. Cargo secure.”

There was no reply and Mark broke stealth comms protocol, switching to his conventional radio. “Red. You there?” He was tapping his helmet with one finger out of sheer habit, and still nothing.

A quick check revealed he was on the correct channel, his signal just wasn’t getting out. The structure must have been shielded. That complicated things. Didn’t necessarily make things more difficult, just complicated.

Engaging a partitioned mission recording, Mark labelled the file ‘cargo contents’ and set his helmet-cam to record. Sliding his rifle over his shoulder he locked it on the mag-holster on his back before picking through the various crates on the dolly.

What struck him was how human the crates looked. In fact, they were army green, made of terran alloys and adorned with UNSC markings and insignias. He frowned as he undid the clasps on one case and flipped open the lid.

Sitting inside in a recess of foam were fore vertically aligned assault rifles. Pulling one out he tore off the plastic wrapping like a kid trying to get a look at his presents on Christmas morning. The weapon was an MA5D, an identical rifle to the one he just used to drop a quad of aliens.

He checked the other crates. Magazine and ammo. More MA5D assault rifles and a few M395 marksman rifles. He also found armoured plates, medical kits and complete surgical furnishings. One box held all the components of an automated surgical arm, when combined with all the other parts he found in the cargo would make for a completely automated operating theatre.

All of it was human design. Even the various bags of IV fluid, syringes and other medications were mixed and manufactured by UNSC conglomerates. Not all of the chemicals were immediately recognisable nor seemed designed for human consumption, but they definitely came from UNSC manufacturing plants.

Dropping an IV bag back in place, Mark make sure his camera recorded the lot before he drew his rifle again and set deeper into the facility. He wasn’t sure what was going on just yet, but one thing was for sure. He had to get his mission recording back to his commanders so they could try and figure it out.

The short and sweet of it seemed to point to a traitor within the UNSC selling Covenant leftovers all sorts of supplies. The guns made sense. The Covenant loyalists were desperate and fighting with whatever they could get their slimy claws on. But why the surgical equipment?

Reaching the entrance to what looked like a warehouse at the bottom of the ramp, Mark saw many more human designed boxes. More of the same stuff, stacks of guns, ammo, explosive and even more medical equipment. Only these sported a few brands he recognised, particularly after that celebrity he fancied had her latest nose-job. He was catching familiar logos and insignias of companies that made chemicals and equipment in the cosmetic surgery industry. There were packs of silicon, botox, flash-cloning gear… the list went on and the mystery boggled Mark even further.

Lowering his rifle, he quickly sidestepped a passing grunt patrol. Hidden in the shadow of a box containing racks of shaped rocket propelled explosives, Mark watched more of the white armoured little aliens waddle around a set of shelves.

Making sure his mission recording captured their unusual armour permutation and markings, he looked the way they went. They seemed to be heading deeper into the facility, and looking the way they had come Mark spotted his exit. A gravity lift sat recessed into a wall just around the stack of boxes he hid behind.

Satisfied he was clear, Mark followed the barrel of his gun around the crates and moved towards the grav-lift. His first objective was to get back in contact with Linda and get what he found so far back to high command. But not before he did one more thing.

Kneeling by a rifle box, he flicked open the lid and pulled a small card the size of a passport photo from his gauntlet. Pressing the top, a stripe of blue light engaged along the side and he hid it underneath the row of assault rifles before replacing the lid.

The sub-space tracker would give ONI the ability to track down the weapons no matter where they moved to.

Picking up his rifle Mark set off again to link with Linda. Everything had been calm and quiet up until that point.

Just feet from the gravity lift a six pulsed tone rang out and swivelling right, Mark squared off to an adjacent doorway sliding open. Standing framed in the door were three brutes. All three of the towering aliens stopped mid-march and stared at the demon standing before them.

“Oh, hi fellas.”

He unloaded half a magazine into them, the rounds pinging off the alien armour making more noise than the actual gun. The brutes flinched despite their bulk and they recoiled from the hail of invisible bees stinging them.

Mark leapt sideways at the same time, throwing himself into the gravity lift. The upturned gravity well plucked him out of the air and immediately carried him upwards. But not before he casually dropped a ball-shaped device from his belt, skipping it across the smooth floor and into the brutes’ midst.

The grenade’s explosion was a mere muffled thump to Mark by the time it went up. He was being pulled upward through a tunnel of white light to the surface structure, the aliens probably hell-shocked far below. If there were any survivors he’d be on the surface making his escape by the time they raised the alarm.

As he was rising up, the radio in his helmet crackled and he heard Linda’s cold voice pierce trough the static.

“… -rk! Mark! Respond, that’s an order!” She was starting to sound desperate. It was a tone that didn’t suit her.

“Red, I’m here,” Mark responded. “I’m coming in hot through a grav-lift on the main structure. Watch your fire.”

She let out a sigh and Mark heard evident relief in her voice. “Affirmative. What happened?”

“Same old. Found some intel. Made some new friends… killed them.”

“Alarms?”

“Expect this to be a hot-extract.”

“Roger.” Her voice faded and Mark knew that would be the last he heard from her for a while. She was descending into a state of Zen.

Reaching the top of the lift, Mark settled to the deck and held his rifle ready. A trio of banshees were circling the sky, a standard patrol at the looks of it. But there didn’t seem to be a major mess of activity just yet. Though Mark was exposed, he needed to figure out what the next step for getting the hell out of dodge was going to be.

“Red, what are we doing? Sneak or shoot?”

Before he heard the answer he heard the retort of Linda’s sniper rifle. A tracer slashed past his helmet and smacked into something wet and fleshy behind him. By the time Mark turned, the brute that had been moving around behind him was a heap on the ground.

Linda’s voice sent chills of joy down his spine. “Shooter’s discretion.”

A predatory smile worked its way across Mark’s face as he shouldered his rifle. “Oh-ho… yeah.”

It was her equivalent of Mark’s favourite order. Fire at will. In seconds he was prancing about a blood and body littered battlefield, his rifle letting out puffs and killing aliens by the bushel. Alarms were suddenly blaring on full volume. Fire so thick he could walk on it to the extraction point. Enemies were flowing out of every orifice.

Mark had entered a target rich paradise. He was completely in his element.

It wasn’t meant to be a lasting ecstasy though. The noise of Linda’s rifle and Mark’s whoops for joy as he downed Covenant Loyalist after Covenant Loyalist drew all sorts of attention. Base alarms started blaring, likely because they had found his mess downstairs. Infantry were scrambling and the banshee air patrols hovering above turned sharply, trying to track the Spartan-III blitzing about in their midst.

Leaning into his turn, Mark sprinted around the corner and righted his MA5D in time to pepper a duo of jackals with their backs turned. Blood painted the inside of their energy shields before they toppled, and were further stamped into the dirt as the Spartan ran right over them. Right on his heels a burst of plasma raining from a banshee’s twin-linked cannons glassed the earth.

He cleared the open ground about two seconds faster than when he was infiltrating and disappeared from the banshee’s scopes; into the mess of containers and crates stored to one side of the camp. Mark realised Linda wouldn’t be able to provide cover while he was milling about like a rat in a maze, but the trade-off was cover.

On the up-side; Linda’s rifle didn’t stop firing. Mark noted a distinct pause as she must have been reloading, then the first pop from the fresh magazine sent one of the orbiting banshees tumbling from the sky, blood and brain-matter spilling from the cockpit. The others turned to track, but with the second and third successive shot, they too dropped out of the sky.

As Linda was doing her thing, Mark did his. He cheated.

His rifle picked and dropped easy prey. Drones skittering over the container walls were turned inside out. Jackals and grunts were riddled and destroyed. But the brutes in the camp were straight up ignored.

One of the towering aliens stepped out from behind a corner and Mark simply body-checked it. The sight must have been ridiculous to behold, this comparatively tiny armoured cannon-ball planting an enormous alien on its ass.

Mark put a round through its leg to slow it down, but didn’t stop to finish the job. He just kept running. If he couldn’t kill it in a second it wasn’t worth killing right now.

His ammo counter dropped from ‘22’ to ‘12’ as two shield-less jackal marksmen were thrown backwards into a wall with a hollow clang. The Spartan turned and spotted a large silhouette step into his path. The brute hefted a massive grenade launcher with a frightening curved blade attached to the hilt before roaring a challenge.

Mark wasn’t sure if the thing wanted to fillet him or blow him to smithereens. He never found out.

In the brute’s pause as it considered how to destroy this demon; Mark slid his rifle over his shoulder, locked it on his back and bypassed the problem at hand. With a powerful leap he ran up the side of a container to his left, then leapt sideways to mantle the top of the container on his right. Without missing a stride, the boy found his feet and was sprinting across higher ground, leaping over the gaps between the containers with ease.

“Linda, I’m banging out!” Mark called between breaths as he mantled onto double stacked containers and leapt down again as plasma seared through the air above his head. “You ready?”

“Born ready.” She paused a beat. An alien sniper perched ahead of Mark flew sideways, head turned into a canoe. “Move up.”

The walls of the valley were steep. Climbing out, especially in a rush would be a slow and dangerous affair. Mark would be entirely exposed. The Covenant on the ground wouldn’t even have to aim, just point and shoot and blanket the valley wall with plasma. Mark would be vaporised.

So the Spartan duo had set up a contingency plan in case one of them was on the deck and needed a fast extract.

Dropping onto his hip, Mark slid off the edge of a container and landed in the dirt below with a roll. At the foot of the valley wall he brushed away some dirt and foliage to reveal a steel cable ending in a carabiner. The steel cable ran all the way to the top of the valley where Mark knew it was threaded through several pulleys and was attached to some boulders – a natural overhanging rock formation. Mark knew, because he had been responsible for installing the cable.

Clipping the carabiner to his armour, Mark keyed his comms. “I’m on the pulley! Kick it!”

Linda gave no verbal response. There was just a rumbling boom as a flower of flame and smoke blossomed into the sky high to Mark’s left. The massive overhanging rocks dislodged and began tumbling down the valley wall. The larger rock slide divided into several smaller ones as the cable attaching Mark pulled taught with a ‘twang!’

It was a simple elevator principal, using a dead-fall weight to pull a passenger straight up. Running up the valley wall like gravity had shifted horizontally, Mark was dragged directly upward at reckless speed. He could barely run fast enough to keep up.

To his far left the falling boulders cratered into the valley floor, ploughing through Covenant supplies and personnel. Plumed of dust settled over the camp, choking everything that wasn’t immediately crushed in a grubby haze.

Mark was flung up over the valley’s summit as he pulled the emergency release chord, detaching him from the cable. The last of the larger rocks slammed home below with an explosive crunch as the Spartan-III made a short flight into a young tree. It snapped like a toothpick and Mark ploughed through. The next tree failed to yield and Mark bounced off, his shields flaring violently before he smacked face-down into a clump of ferns.

Groaning, the young Spartan pushed his hands into the dirt and knelt, counting at least twenty fingers wavering on the ground in front of him. His organs felt like paste and there was a volcano raging in the back of his head.

All in all, a good day, made even better when Mark reached back only to find his rifle had been torn away. “Well that sucks.”

What sucked even harder was a rustling in the foliage nearby. Squaring off to it, Mark rested one hand on the handle of his sidearm, the other was curled into a fist. But instead of a howling alien gorilla monster tearing out of the bushes, there came a low multi-toned whistle.

Olly-olly-oxen-free.

“All free, all clear; or whatever and all that crap,” Mark called back. It wasn’t exactly the counter sign, but Mark’s tone wasn’t exactly something the Covenant were able to replicate.

Linda materialised from the ferns. How the armoured giantess could have hidden so still and stealthy without the same stealth gear Mark wore, he would never know. Spartan-IIs were pretty cool like that.

Carried in one hand was the vixen’s sniper rifle. She tossed Mark his battle rifle and handed off a few spare magazines.

“Why am I always taking care of you?” Linda asked as he stowed the mags in his gear and offered her a nod of thanks.

Before Mark could give a witty retort about her secretly loving him like she was some kind of pervy babysitter, the scream of Covenant air re-enforcements filled the air. The duo silently agreed it was time to leave. Mark had discovered what the alien cargo was all about and had tagged the containers so the UNSC could track them through slip-space. The Spartan mission was over. It was all up to the navy now.

“Cloud Nine, this is Chaos! We have secured a partial manifest of Covenant supplies on the ground! Crates have been marked for tracking! Chaos is bugging out now,” Linda reported on the radio as they ran.

The crashing of their armoured bodies through the foliage was oddly muted as the reply came in. “Cloud Nine copies all. We are scrambling pelican for extraction. Five minutes, Chaos.”

“We’ll be there in two!”

Linda’s estimation of their arrival was no joke. Barely two minutes into their mad dash the Spartans broke out of the tree line and into an open area. Spread out before them were rolling hills and grassy plains, plenty of space for a pelican to get low for a fast extract.

Unfortunately, no pelican was going to be fast enough.

The scream of anti-gravity engines nearly deafened the duo and they ducked as a fast mover flew fast and low right over their heads. Mark looked up to spot the teardrop shape of the seraph bomber, one of the heavier armoured, faster moving Covenant aircraft. It rolled sharply to one side then pulled into a tight turn in order to loop back on them.

“That bomber buzzed us. Back into the trees!” Linda ordered, tracking the craft with her rifle.

If she had a shot she didn’t take it. Instead she lowered the weapon as the seraph nosed towards them, then dove after Mark as they delved back into the woods. They barely had a second to spare as plasma dropped from the belly of the bomber.

Explosions ripped across the treeline, burning trees and bushes where they stood. Fire clawed at the Spartans’ backs before a shockwave picked them up and flung them into the dirt.

Mark slid on his knees and managed to push himself back into a run. Linda tucked and rolled where she landed without missing a stride.

The scream of the seraph’s engines faded as the craft fought for altitude after the bombing run, replaced by the tell-tale hum of phantom drop ships. As he was running, Mark pulled up the rear-facing camera on his helmet, essentially looking back without turning his head. A glow of ghostly light filtered through the canopy before heavy figures in armour rained from above, thudding into the dirt on their heels.

The brutes roared as they rose up from crouched positions, and like gorillas with their mind set on prey bounded forward on all fours.

“Not gonna lose these guys!” Mark reported as the brutes closed in, appearing as red blips on his motion tracker.

They were within fifty metres when Linda shouldered past a tree, slid to a halt and whipped around, her sniper rifle held for a fight. “Then bust ‘em!”

Music to his ears. Mark slid over a low rock and fired from cover, his battle rifle loosing three round bursts one after the other.

Linda twisted her rifle as the brutes moved into extreme range, peering through the canted smart-scope beside her sniper scope. Four mighty cracks rose from the rifle and five brutes dropped to the dirt, sliding to a halt.

She reloaded in less than a second, flicking the spent magazine aside and seating the replacement before the empty even hit the deck.

But in that pause a sixth brute got the better of her. It careened into the Spartan, knocking her flat on her back and pounded out her shields. Crying out the vixen planted a foot in the creature’s mouth, pushed it off her and put two anti-materiel rounds through its heart in quick succession.

In the meantime, Mark put a burst through a brute’s head as it leapt at him and the dead alien face-planted into the rock he used for cover with a crunch, just for good measure. Dropping to a crouch he ejected the spent magazine and was tucking the next in place when he heard the sizzle of laser fire. Peering around cover his VISR enhancement outlined jackal silhouettes in red. Their pulse carbines were up and they were shooting in the direction of the Spartans.

Specifically, in the direction of Linda.

He saw her as she scrambled to her feet, but she was just a split second too slow. As she was getting up a single lance of light slammed into her side, scything through armour and flesh. She cried out as a cloud of blood sprayed a nearby tree and she dropped to the deck again.

A lesser soldier would have dropped her rifle to plug the wound, but Linda didn’t let go of that weapon. In fact, she kept it shouldered and mustered the strength to keep firing from her seated position.

Pushing off, Mark threw himself forward and tugged a grenade from his gear. The spoon flicked clear as he wound up a toss and pegged the device at the jackals. It exploded a moment later throwing their bloodied bodies through the air.

The jackals that still stood fell a second later, battle rifle rounds ventilating their skulls.

Mark kept firing as he was moving across to Linda. She hadn’t asked for help, but then she didn’t need to. The Spartan-IIIs had been trained by a gen-two Spartan. Mark knew how to work as part of a team, even though it didn’t show all the time. And the team-player part of his brain clicked on when he saw his partner go down.

Linda was ruthlessly self-sufficient though. It was clear to see, one hand operating her rifle while the other hand pulled a can of biofoam from her gear. She had the nozzle in place and filled her wound while aiming and taking down a brute ducking between the trees on their flank.

Mark knelt by her when she dropped the empty can of biofoam and gave her a sweep with his VISR. The automated sensors and link to her bio-monitor gave him an idea of the damage. Nothing too serious, the shot had just gone through meat. She’d be fine, the wind was just torn from her.

“You good?” Mark offered a hand, but Linda pushed it away, using her rifle like a cane to help her stand.

“I’m fine. Cloud Nine, Chaos. Extraction point is compromised. We’re moving towards secondary extract.”

“Solid copy, Chaos.” The reply was almost washed out by Mark’s rifle as he shot a brute in the gut.

His rounds found the alien’s utility belt and struck one of the incendiary grenades lashed to its gear. A ball of fire exploded around the alien, clinging to everything in the surrounding area. More incendiary grenades on other brutes popped as they were doused with fire and fell screaming and flailing to the deck. More fire lanced through the forest and soon an arching inferno was closing off the way the Spartans had come, covering their escape.

Behind his visor Mark was smirking, and just somehow Linda could tell.

Shaking her head, the Spartan-II turned and ran ahead. “Don’t get cocky. We still have to…”

The rushing ‘t-choom’ of energy was familiar enough to make Linda’s blood run cold and despite the pain in her side, she threw herself sideways behind the roots of an uprooted tree. She looked back to see Mark hadn’t heard the noise in time.

Green light lanced between them and hit a boulder. The explosion was closer to mark than it was Linda and the force threw the boy sideways.

“Mark!” Linda screamed, on her feet and running closer before he’d even hit the deck.

Mark landed awkwardly with an audible crunch of armour and bounced. When he did roll to a halt Linda caught up and saw the Spartan-III was smoking. Smoking and groaning.

“Urgh… that felt pretty awesome.”

The sniper knelt by him and checked him over. What she found didn’t look particularly awesome, as Mark had so nonchalantly put it. He’d taken some plasma to the leg. Frankly it was a miracle he hadn’t been dismembered. His shields had taken the brunt of the fire. The heat had warped and boiled away his thigh armour, crinkling up his sidearm like tinfoil and fusing it in place. Layers of paint and protection had boiled away and he’d probably sustained burns. Linda wouldn’t be able to see until he undressed. But he was moving at least, looking down at himself.

Mark patted his useless pistol and chuckled. “Ouchie. I got a boo-boo.”

“I promise to kiss it better later.” Grabbing him by the wrist, Linda forced him onto his feet. He stood unevenly, but he was going to have to suck it up. “We have to move.”

She had barely uttered the statement when the rumble of a thousand voices rose through the noise of battle. Turning the Spartans saw looming shadows through the flames and rushing through the fire came four behemoths.

The fire barely affected the hunters as the walking tanks lumbered forward, roaring their challenge. Their shields swung from side to side, cutting down foliage and trees that stood in their path as their gun arms glowed with sickly green energy.

At the sight of their heavily armoured pursuers Mark rolled his head into his neck with frustration. “Aw, c’mon!”

“We definitely have to move!” Linda screamed, pulling Mark away.

He fought her, clearly wanting to fight, but it didn’t take too much to dissuade him. The hunters let out another volley of shots that seared past the Spartans, kicking Mark into gear. Turning he ran after her, and despite their injuries they were sprinting at nearly thirty-kp/h.

News just seemed to go from bad to worse though. Ducking southerly towards the secondary extraction point, more ghostly light filtered through the canopy and more aliens dropped from the phantoms swarming above. Brutes, grunts and jackals, all heavily armed blocked their path. Just a standard patrol at first. Then a full squad. Then there were too many to count.

Skidding to a halt, the Spartans faced off against an army on one side, army killers on the other. They were being boxed in.

“I don’t have enough ammo for all of these fuckers!” Mark shouted, popping smoke from cover.

As the blanket of smoke was laid down and Mark popped up to give some covering fire, the corner of his eye caught Linda shuffling into position to make a run.

“I have a plan!” she called, bopping her fist on her helmet, the signal for getting ready for a mad dash.

“Why do I have a sudden sense of impending doom?”

Ignoring him, Linda broke cover and ran. Despite his comment, Mark followed.

Dodging lances of laserlight and bolts of plasma stitching the foliage and bark around them, the Spartans ducked through the woods and broke through a treeline. Only unlike before they didn’t come to an open grassland. Instead they splashed up to their knees in a shallow river cutting across their path.

Fighting their way downstream, the Spartans splashed over rocks and under low hanging branches until the world seemed to suddenly drop away. Milling his arms for balance, Mark looked at the raging waterfall dropping away into a hazy mist below. It must have been at least a hundred feet straight down. Hell, he couldn’t even see the bottom, so it could have been more than that.

“Please tell me this isn’t part of the plan,” Mark cried, turning to Linda.

It might not have been as she half turned to the way they had come. But as she did streaks of burning plasma lanced past her. The pot shots came from where their Covenant pursuers were floundering around the delta a hundred metres upstream. No sign of the hunters yet, but there were enough standard enemy troops to make short work of the Spartans.

Linda had formulated the next plan in the blink of an eye. “Jump on three!” she ordered, holstering her rifle.

Mark scoffed. “What is it with Spartan-twos and jumping off shit!? One of these day’s you’re going to land on something as stubborn as you are!”

Enemy fire lanced by and any trepidation Mark had evaporated like the very plasma skimming his shields. He wasted no time in throwing his rifle into its holster and yelling, “Screw it! Three!”

At the same time both Spartans turned and leapt forward. As they fell instinct and training took over. They kept their legs straight and folded their limbs over their chests, just in case the water below wasn’t deep enough, or if there were any rocky outcroppings in their path. Linda pumped up the pressure of the hydrostatic gel that cushioned her body against the outer armour, while Mark overrode all electronic systems in his SPI and routed every ounce of juice the power supply had into the shields.

They plummeted into the clouds of mist and vanished from sight entirely. The roar of the falls were so loud, the alien pursuers didn’t even hear a splash…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mark unclasped his boot and removed it. Considering for a moment, he turned the gear over and emptied the water that had been pooling inside with a sigh.

The Spartan-III’s signature SPI armour wasn’t rated for hard vacuum, so it wasn’t much rated for aquatic operations either. It was essentially a set of fatigues with armoured war gear on top.

Linda on the other hand was dry as a bone.

“I hate you,” he reminded her, removing and emptying out his other boot, then discarding it with the rest of his gear.

“Noted.” Linda was only half paying attention to her buddy as she busied herself with un-bolting and un-clasping her vastly more complicated suit of MJOLNIR armour.

The MJOLNIR was sort of kinky that way. A skin tight suit – or in Linda’s case, a suit that was like a second layer of fur – covered the Spartan from the neck down to the fingers and toes. That base layer was lined with crystalline gel that regulated body temperature, masked natural thermal output and acted as a cushion so Linda’s body wouldn’t liquefy against the inside of the armour just by moving.

The raw power of the armour was quite frightening in that respect. Mark couldn’t imagine wearing anything like it, being so isolated from the outside world you were practically alien. Even the workings of the MJOLNIR meant that Linda was nothing like her fellow earthlings. She had undergone crazy-dangerous augmentation therapy that had been phased out for the Spartan-III programme, essentially turning her bones into titanium alloy so they wouldn’t snap like twigs in the MJOLNIR servo mobility assist.

But then the Spartan-III had his very own set of maddeningly illegal augmentations, however nothing as dangerous as the Spartan-IIs. Mark had heard stories of Spartan-II washouts, disabled and mutilated by the augmentations. The lucky ones had died.

Even out of her armour and just clad in that gel base layer, Linda was an intimidating sight. Nearly seven feet tall, she had several feet on Mark even who looked like an adult athlete despite being only eighteen years old. But Linda hadn’t lost her slender figure. She honestly could have grown up into anything. She was smart and sharp enough to be a doctor or a lawyer. Pretty enough she could have been a model. Mark wasn’t sure what kind of model, but lingerie seemed to come to mind.

Looking up, Linda frowned. “Is something wrong?”

Mark quickly looked away, undoing his gauntlets and putting them in the pile on his side of the cave. “Nothing,” he lied.

With the primary extraction point a bust and their route to the secondary cut off, the Spartans were hunkering down at a pre-ordained safe-zone, waiting the Covenant out until it was safe to get a pelican in to rescue them. The cave mouth was covered over with trees and foliage, hiding the duo from view. In the distance they could hear the thunder of guns as the UNSC Cloud Nine was putting the fear of God in the Covenant. They were being bombed from orbit; just to be sure.

Last report stated they had allowed the crates Mark tagged to escape with the initial evacuation. Then as the rest of the Covenant tried to scramble after the Cloud Nine dropped into low orbit and started taking pot shots with their MAC.

The thunder had been going on for half an hour now, and as the sunlight was fading to give way to night the bombing showed no signs of slowing. Mark wondered if he was going to be able to get any sleep with this noise.

Casting a furtive glance back to Linda as she finished removing her armour and unzipped her suit, Mark wondered if any other distractions would keep him from sleep.

With his armour off, Mark undid his pants and checked his leg. A patch of the trousers where he’d been hit had smouldered away and the skin suffered severe burns. Angry lances of bloody, raw flesh with crinkled, charred edges were slashed down his thigh, but the wound had cauterised as well so he wouldn’t bleed out. Producing a kit from his medical supplies, Mark jammed on the local anaesthetic then applied a generous helping of salve, then finally taped on a field dressing nice and tight.

As he was holding the dressing to his skin until the salve and glue set, the boy looked up to see what Linda was doing. He instantly regretted it.

The vixen had pulled her arms from the sleeves of the suit and stripped down to the waist in order to get a look at the laser burn in her side. She was tough and barely winced as she probed the entry and exit wounds with her fingers, so Mark wasn’t concerned about the blood.

His eyes were fixated on her bare chest, the rosy pink nipples standing alert through the arctic white fur covering her body. Somehow seeing her in bare fur was even better than in armour. Mark had always considered her beautiful, like a loaded weapon. Clean, locked tight and evidently lethal.

But underneath she really was something else.

Linda’s age was beginning to show. A few streaks of grey were evident in her blood red hair, some more silver forming on the fur to the sides of her muzzle and beside her eyes. She looked so damn good though, not a shred of fat to be spotted everywhere, and while being athletic she wasn’t repulsively muscular. She was built light, lithe and slender with long graceful limbs and wide hips tapering to a narrow waist that begged for his hands to move across.

Even though she had plenty of scars forming long linear and curved breaks in her fur, they didn’t detract from her appearance in the slightest. In fact, they made her seem more unique to the anthro fox bombshells Mark had spied in that magazine his friend Ash had snuck into the barracks that one time. Almost like she were covered in tribal tattoos.

There was more to her than that, but he couldn’t quite describe everything he liked about how she looked. All he could do was stare until a bulge in his shorts made itself very apparent.

Swallowing, Mark quickly checked his bandage, then pulled up his trousers again. He was going to re-key his armour when Linda’s voice distracted him.

“Mark, give me a hand here.”

Looking up again he saw she had pressed a dressing over the front end of her wound, but Linda couldn’t reach the back properly. And Mark’s hesitation to crawl over and help scared the life out of him. if there were bullets flying, or if Linda were one of the other S-III commandoes he’d trained with he wouldn’t have paused a beat.

But in the calm glow of the chem-lights they’d set on the cave floor, Mark couldn’t move as he kept his eyes fixed on her naked body.

Looking up she saw him rooted to the spot. “What?”

Swallowing, Mark quickly shook his head and crawled over.

Accepting the other half of the dressing Mark checked the exit wound. It was a clean puncture, in and out while avoiding all major organs. The flesh was mostly cauterised, preventing major bleeding and the bio-foam was doing its work well. Pressing the pad in place, Mark unrolled a spool of dressing and started wrapping it around Linda’s waist.

He passed it to her to wrap around the front and she passed it back to him to wrap it around her back again. Like a team they worked the spool back and forth before finally the roll ran out and Mark tied it off. Running his hands up over her hips he checked the dressing was on tight. As he did though he realised he was being redundant for no damn reason other than to just touch her sleek curves.

Quickly pulling away, Mark went to crawl back to his gear when Linda grabbed his wrist to stop him. The motion wasn’t accidental; Linda was too immaculate in all her movements for it to be by fluke. She wanted him to wait.

“Stay put,” she said in such a simple way only she could.

“W-why?” Mark stammered trying to keep his eyes above her collar.

Linda looked at him, then held up the table she’d been reading from while he patched her up. “I want to go over this recording with you.”

Wordlessly, Mark nodded and stayed put. Looking over her slender shoulder he watched her rewind through the recording she had pulled from his armour and looked over the manifest of equipment he had tagged. She grabbed some notes on the weapons and their models and serial numbers before she took a particular interest in the chemicals and medical equipment.

In her long career fighting the Covenant she’d never seen them have any kind of need for anything from the UNSC, not weapons, especially not surgery equipment.

Noting the type of equipment she connected to the UNSC slip-net and accessed knowledge archives. She got several hits on her search straight away, mostly articles explaining what the equipment was used for and a few reference pictures. Mostly, the gear was used in the cosmetic surgery industry.

Linda settled on one particular example, a picture of a model in her underwear to reveal fatty curves, a small chest and a number of skin imperfections. In the second picture the human was shown to be, for lack of better word, perfect. Her bust size had increased, she sported a sultry hourglass figure and sleek, velvet-like skin.

Linda still wasn’t sure what the Covenant loyalists wanted with cosmetic technology like that, but she found herself hard pressed looking away from the reference picture with amazement.

“Look at her,” the Spartan said with a little awe. “She’s so beautiful.”

Mark shrugged. He’d seen models like that before, in magazines, on TV and even in real life once or twice. They were a dime a dozen. And they had all been enhanced one way or another. “She had to change everything about herself to look that good though. It’s fake beauty. But for you it comes naturally.”

As he realised what he had just said, Linda brushed a few strands of her red hair out of her face. “You think I’m beautiful?”

“What? No! You’re not… no… not that you’re not beautiful, it’s just… uh… Oh, God. Abort. Undo.” He was on the verge of launching his E&E plan and going for the FUBAR survival pack stashed near the secondary extraction point.

“You know I’m old enough to be your mother, right?” He knew Linda was on the wrong side of forty, but he wasn’t sure why she said it in the tone she did.

The vixen was sitting on her left hip, body propped up on one arm and laying at an angle that seemed to attenuate her athletic, female curves. She still hadn’t pulled up her base layer, sitting before the Spartan-III bare chested and unashamed. Her expression was merciless as ever but there was something in her eyes; she was looking at him half lidded in a way that had Mark’s hormones raging harder than ever before.

He gulped.

“No one has ever called me beautiful before. Not to my face anyway. Not even…” She seemed to be about to name names, but stopped, her expression flickering for just a moment.

Looking up, the woman rolled her shoulders then with cat-like grace crawled to where Mark had subtly been retreating. Catching up to him she had him at a disadvantage, like every other time she floored him on the sparring mat. Only this time, instead of politely letting him tap out and helping him up, she forced him onto his back and held him down.

“I think I promised to kiss you better.” She straddled him, one hand set on his firm chest. “We should keep our promises, shouldn’t we?”

Mark didn’t, couldn’t, say anything as the anthro fox came down on him. Bending forward she slowly inched her face closer to his. And then finally, after agonising seconds that felt like hours for them both her lips gently touched his.

She savoured the warmth and softness for a moment before pushing deeper. Something ignited in them both. While Linda grabbed his face with both hands, pressing her tongue into his mouth she could feel Mark’s arms wrap around them. In moments they were breathing heavy through their unpractised, sloppy kisses.

Neither of them cared how little experience the had in doing this. All that mattered was the adrenaline like surge of electricity racking their bodies as their lips met and their tongues sparred like it was a fight to the death.

Minutes ticked by before they breathlessly broke the kiss. Here were augmented supersoldiers who could run three marathons in a row with barely breaking a sweat, and a few minutes of kissing drove the wind out of them.

“I always wanted to try that,” Linda whispered, then bit her lip. “But there’s something I want to try even more.

Rolling onto her back, she wriggled out of the legging section of her base-layer. She didn’t have the same grace as when handling a sniper rifle, nor did she have the experience of a stripper, but she somehow made the view incredibly sexy. It was the way her long legs seemed to flawlessly mould into her hips, then meet the elegant curve of her back before…

To be entirely honest, Mark wasn’t sure what he liked about her most anymore. Every part of her looked good, even her scars.

Staring the entire time, Mark suddenly came to the realisation he was losing the race and went to unbuckle his pants. The belt was barely off when Linda grabbed a hand full of his shit and dragged him between her legs.

Like patching her up, their efforts became teamwork. Linda tore off his shirt while Mark fumbled with the button and fly of his trousers.

Sitting up, Linda had to curl her back to keep her head at his height, then pressed her lips against his. Engaging him in another kissing session, she blindly pulled down his shorts as if she’d done this a hundred times before, then as she lay back pulled him on top of her. One hand dug into his back while the other clasped firmly around his rock hard arousal.

Her own lust pooled between her thighs and with the same care she used when loading match-grade ammunition into a magazine, she lined his head up with her slit.

Mark in the meantime was trembling like Chief Mendez had run him for a week solid of the most hellish PT imaginable. He couldn’t be nervous could he? Mark never got nervous. The was ‘The Mark’ after all, graceful under pressure, fully in his element in a high stress, target rich environment.

All thoughts on the matter died as he felt Linda’s hot warmth squeeze around him. He let out his breath with a shudder and instinct took over, driving him forward.

Linda at the same time rested her head back as her insides opened to reveal him. The slick tunnel had lubricated him in a single thrust, and he wasted no time pulling back until he nearly fell out, then trust his length all the way into her again.

Her eyes were shut and mouth open just a little. Her breathing was slow and steady, like she was lining up for a shot, reading to pull a trigger between the slow beats of her heart. But as Mark’s ministrations grew in pace Linda found it harder and harder to keep control of herself. A fire was building, tingling in her loins, speaking to that primal part of her brain, driving her need for more. If he stopped now she would go insane.

But he didn’t stop, much to her relief, and within just a few moments the pressure, the pleasure, built to tipping point.

Linda let out a moan like she had been holding it in. Decades of training in keeping calm and maintaining noise discipline went right out the window. Her voice broke like she was hitting puberty all over again and she practically squealed with ecstasy until her lungs collapsed.

At the same time she lost control of her limbs. Her hips were bucking back and forth on their own. Her back lifted off the deck and she balanced on the back of her head. Her slender legs were locked around Mark’s waist, and his forehead was resting between her breasts like he was in a state of intense focus. One of her hands raked through his medium-reg haircut, the other clawed feebly at the floor, desperately clutching at handholds to hold herself down as the world tumbled like a pelican drop ship falling out of the sky on fire and out of control.

Mark at the same time felt something similar build up in him as he felt Linda cum. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what had happened, never having experience it before. Best he could tell the wetness had suddenly increased and bathed him with a pleasant, sticky heat.

But he worried it was happening too quickly. They had only been doing this a few minutes. Was Linda ready? Was he even read?

“Linda, I’m going to… should I…? Where…?” He could only form half-thoughts with his half-sentences.

The lucid part of his brain still spinning rationally told him ‘sex leads to pregnancy.’ He couldn’t fathom the science behind it there and then, nor could he seem to remember the brief he’d read about the Spartan programme augmentations and its sterilisation side-effects.

Linda came down from her high just long enough to whisper in his ear; “Shooter’s discretion.”

Mark clenched, wondering why those words alone were enough to drive him over the edge. But there was no fighting it. He came no sooner had she told him what to do. He couldn’t have pulled out even if he wanted to. No armada could have made him. And Linda was glad.

He thrust forward, driving in deep as a hazy inferno of pleasure rushed through his loins and streaks of cum painted Linda’s insides. She was gritting her teeth and arching her back off the cave floor as she felt his sticky warmth fill her.

Wave after wave shot into the vixen like he’d been saving up for this. In fact he had, for years, building a cache of ammo he had no idea how to expend until now.

The fourth string of warm cum was followed by a fifth and sixth, losing pressure with each spurt, and finally a drooling little trickle formed their eighth and final wave. Spent, Mark finally collapsed atop Linda who just held him tight.

They were both breathing heavily. Mark could hear Linda’s heart hammer like an assault rifle in her chest before after what felt like an eternity the world began to slow to its normal pace again. Slowly the Spartan-III pulled back, feeling Linda’s cum-slick tunnel close around his head as he withdrew. And finally he slid free with a little wet pop and rolled off his partner.

Linda didn’t seem entirely done. Despite dazed and full in a way no MRE could fill her, the woman rolled onto her side and kept her arms firmly wrapped around the younger Spartan.

For a long time neither of them said anything. They didn’t even make a sound. Mark was staring at the rocky ceiling like his brain was trying to catch up to current events. Linda seemed to snooze, her muzzle resting in his neck, drawing in his comforting scent with each breath.

“I know I never showed it, but I always liked operating with you, Mark,” she said softly, just above a whisper.

Mark quirked his mouth. “Well it was probably obvious I kind of liked you this whole time, right Red?”

“Oh, plainly obvious,” Linda confirmed with a sigh. “I’d always get a little tingle down below whenever you called me ‘Red.’ I didn’t know what it meant until now.”

“Shouldn’t have told me that. I know how to push your buttons now.”

They were quiet for a while.

Finally Linda snuggled closer and said, “I want you to push my buttons again.”

Turning his head, Mark checked her face to see what she meant by that comment. Did she want to pair up again on missions, or did she want to have sex again? When he looked he saw Linda was smiling. For the first time since he met her she was actually forming a full smile. Not a grin, not a sly quirk of the mouth, not a cold stare.

A smile.

And as he had expected it to be, it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**Paradise Flotilla, Interstellar Space.

The Age of Remittance {Covenant Calendar}.**

Furc wasn’t sure what to do, because there was no stringent protocol in place considering this situation. Back in days of the Covenant the young san’shyuum would be forbidden to interrupt the hierarchs when they were in a meeting, not matter how grave the news.

Perhaps that was how the Covenant fell. Furc could see it clearly; the Great Schism upon them, the Covenant tearing apart at the seams and the hierarchs letting it all happen because they were in deep discussion over what shade of purple the drapes had to be and none of their underlings dared to interrupt them to tell them what was happening.

None of that was happening in the new fleet. Furc cross the hall with long, quick strides, his tablet in hand and waved his free digits over the door controls. With a gentle chime his ears were quite fond of, Furc was granted access to the inner sanctum of his commander.

Art Loko, like Furc, abhorred the use of anti-gravity thrones the former hierarchs of the Covenant were so fond of. He believed they made the san’shyuum, once powerful warriors, weak and soft. Art’s philosophy seemed to have turned his physique favourably.

He was taller than Furc, with a graceful figure. Though old, his skin wrinkled like the skin of a dried fruit, Art had a young spirit and an alert glint in his eye.

Before Art, in the centre of his sanctum stood a holographic representation of a jiralhanae chieftain, scaled down so the two were able to speak eye to eye. It would have been offensive for the chieftain to have to look up at Art.

“It is a unique specimen you’re after, to be sure,” Art Loko was saying. “I’m not saying it will be impossible, but it will certainly be a challenge. And you are certain I cannot interest you in a jiralhanae?”

The holographic jiralhanae huffed. “If I wanted a jiralhanae I would have asked for one. Can it be done, Matchmaker?”

Art smirked, clearly liking this nickname his clients were beginning to refer to him by. “My dear, chieftain. I never shy from a challenge. You should know this.” Furc quietly cleared his throat, drawing Art’s gaze. Realising his subordinate needed him, Art quickly addressed the chieftain apologetically. “Pardon me a moment.”

A wave of his hand placed the call on hold and Art turned to face Furc properly. “Yes, captain. What is it?”

From any other superior in the midst of a business call the comment would have sounded impatient. But Art knew his subordinates were aware that his business calls were only to be interrupted with dire reports. He trusted this was important enough to warrant his immediate attention.

“It is the supplier’s depot on Argus,” Furc quickly explained, spinning up the details on his tablet and showing the Matchmaker. “It was struck by humans. Some of the cargo was rescued, but much of it was destroyed.”

Art stroked his chin thoughtfully. “How bothersome. How was the attack orchestrated?”

“Burned from orbit.”

“But there must have been scouts.”

“There were… sporadic reports of demons on the ground.”

Sporadic reports were solid enough for Art. He nodded then calmly pointed out the rescued cargo on the tabled. “Do not bring these crates into the fleet. They have likely been tagged and are being traced by the humans. Distribute the equipment among the snatcher teams. They’ll appreciate the armaments, and should the humans capture them the snatchers would have little to offer in the way of information.”

“Wise council, commander,” Furc praised, before snapping to attention as he was dismissed. “I will see to it immediately.”

Art watched his underling go, then with a sigh considered the frozen chieftain in his sanctum. Walking over he waved a hand over the console and the holographic image sprang to life again.

“You will have to forgive me, chieftain,” he said in honeyed words. “I have a slight technicality to see to before our business can be resumed. However, I have your specifications. I will contact you as soon as I find a suitable female.”