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This is one of the kind of chapter that I usually dread writing. You get a bunch of relative strangers together in something where there are things going on and you need to find a way to get things said and out of the way.
This time, I just gave in to the notion that things don't happen with any synchronicity between a lot of folks concurrently. There are gaps, different processing speeds between them and like that. That's life among the humans or whatever. Lots of them tend to have short attention spans, that's all, and some of these are worse. Can't even call them human.
So here, we have bipedal wolves, centaurs, two different kinds of fauns from other worlds, some cyborgs and one confused and mildly injured American Navy sailor who was abducted.
Add three Russian killers to the mix and shake gently.
Speaking of them, I wrote them as being educated and able to handle English fairly well, just not perfectly, since their line of work sort of cut down on some study time and all.
I think most of the names are straightforward, but the three ex-cosmonauts are:
Sveta = "Svetta"
Ksana = "Ksanna"
Nika = "Neeka"
Nika's lost daughter is Mila = "Meela"
Hope you like it.
0_o
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Meanwhile, back at the forest clearing not far from a parked space-going vessel ...
While a relieved and cautiously optimistic group of individuals stood in a rough semicircle surrounding H'Yan-Ah and Irianni out in the clearing and as the trio of four-legged people some yards off were coming to slowly figure themselves out, there were two others lying unnoticed in the snow after the larger of the two vessels departed.
Since the events leading to their appearance outside of the vessel occurred some minutes apart from one another ... and since at the moment, neither of them was conscious, they knew nothing of each other.
Dana Rawlins was drifting in some surreal memories which began to slowly coalesce into a rough timeline of recollection as she slowly came to herself. It took a little time, but she came to understand that she was alive.
Once she had that pleasant idea down, she found that she wanted a little time to rest before one or another of the hulking alien whatever-the-fuck-they-were things came to beat the shit out of her again.
Pieces of her own private little Power-On, Self-Test routine came to her notice. She knew who she was, so that was something. Where she was now?
Not a fucking clue, but there were parts of her that hurt a fair bit and she could taste blood.
A brief scan of the memories of her life told her that there had more than likely been an ass-kicking involved somewhere in the very recent past and based on past history combined with the taste of the blood in her mouth; it couldn't necessarily be taken as an indication that she'd won.
Deciding to concentrate on more recent times, she ascertained and confirmed to herself that she'd joined the Navy after high school and worked her way over some years to a Master-at-Arms qualification. It had seemed to be a good path for pay grade increases and she'd thought that the job offered challenges.
Well it had and that was all fine, but she found not long into things at that level that oftentimes, she was more like the cop of the boat, where what she'd really have preferred was to be a little closer to a wet-to-the-thighs river sailor than a blue water sailor. Her lips began to curl into a rueful smile.
But that stopped as soon as she found that the expression would hurt right about now - more proof about her probable role as the recipient of the ass-kicking, really.
She remembered transferring to a brown-water role and liking it a hell of a lot more, though it had been a bitch of a thing to make happen. Attaining her E-7 rating for Chief Petty Officer, along with her weapons qualification had opened doors into the Expeditionary Combat community in a big way and that had led - after a shit-ton of more work - to her Enlisted Expeditionary Warfare Specialist rating.
Then more solid and recent memories came to her and she was in Iraq with Riverine Squadron 1 and loving it. With news of greater mission scope and newer, better boats, she'd been moved to Coastal Riverine Group 2, Delta Company, and life had been pretty much what she'd never known that she'd always wanted.
Then she remembered how it had all gone into the shitter one night.
An after-dark intel gathering mission had seen her quietly backing the Command Boat back out into the waterway after dropping off the team of SEALS. They'd planned to sit there in silence against a low, weed-covered sandbar for the extraction when they were needed.
Out of nowhere - out of the very night air - she and the others were suddenly looking at two freaking strange ... roughly human-shaped figures in the dark.
Only ... they were too damn big to be human. Even if the Superbowl was in town.
Looking back, since she'd had a bit of time to do that, she'd come to the rather shaky notion that whatever they were, they were there looking for something. Well, for someone, more likely. They'd looked to her to be aliens and it wasn't even a stretch to make that assumption - since she doubted that at this point in the conflict, the other side had a bunch of seven and a half-foot tall guys in some sort of armour hidden away for use now.
She knew that it hadn't been the tequila that somebody had smuggled in, since that had been at least a day ago by then and besides, drinking that didn't make her see things, necessarily.
She tended to stay away from that stuff, mostly because of the hangovers the next day if she wasn't careful.
That, and the way that she wanted to take her clothes off if she got hammered enough.
It hadn't happened since high school and other than a little drink alone some nights, Dana was determined that it never happened again.
And it almost hadn't, but that had been a long time ago and Dana couldn't even remember the woman's name anymore.
The two men there with her moved then and began to shoot the things up. There was a light and then ...
Dana flexed her fingers experimentally and placing her palms down on either side of her, she opened her eyes and tried to push herself up out of the snow. The coldness of it had helped her face for a time, she supposed, but it was getting painful in another way now.
Easing her ass backwards to sit up for a moment, she remembered waking up alone in a cell of some sort where nothing happened or made any noise and then ...
She looked down at the spot where her face had been and seeing the blood in the snow there, she reached to touch her face.
It hurt some, but things seemed to be roughly about where they ought to be.
Her fingers came away with a little blood and as far as she could tell, her lips were pretty fat, but all of her teeth were still in the right places in her mouth. She scooped a little snow to wipe her face with as she spit what blood she could out.
She looked around and saw her M11 service pistol there not far away along with her M4 rifle and her shotgun - since she'd had those weapons on her person when the big light had come on that night.
It triggered the very recent memory of earlier today - down inside the ...