Chains of Command

If there was ever a master of the unintended ambush, it was Fea.

One of the doors she passed by on her way through the pirate frigate's corridors slid open. Someone had forgotten to lock it. Fea stopped short in front of the doorway.

It opened up to a cargo hold. A gang of pirates looked out at her.

"Oh. Hello, boys."

The pirates roared and raised their guns. Fea leaped into motion, diving under the first wave of laser rifle fire. Her pistol snapped up and fired twice, both rounds caving in the faceplates of two pirates. She sprang off the floor into cover of a crate as gunfire tore up the deck around her. She had a few disk grenades left, and palmed one into her hand off her belt. Her thumb brushed the primer switch, giving her ten seconds to toss the explosive. She underhanded it with force, and the grenade bounced off the deck like a flat rock off a pond and cracked another pirate in the neck. He staggered for a moment, then threw himself flat as the grenade went off.

Fea reacted as a vibroblade skittered off her hard light armor. She pivoted and kicked out, hitting her attacker in the knee. He staggered, and Fea cut him down with a burst from her weapon. She ran out from cover, only to eat a dozen rounds to her shield in moments, sending it skittering into the red on her HUD. She retreated, ducking behind a container. She'd gotten a look at her attacker.

She was in a predicament. She was separated from her squad, almost out of ammo, almost out of shields, and squaring off with the biggest damn brujak she'd ever seen, armed with the biggest plasma cannon she'd ever seen.

All things considered, she liked her odds.

The brujak's amplified voice boomed through his helmet filters. "Give it up, Legion trash! You can't win!"

Fea glowered at him inside her hard light helmet. That was the best jibe he had? Really?

"Thirty seconds, Fea," Rasha said in her ear. Her allies were coming. She appreciated it. But she didn't think she'd need it.

The plasma cannon spun up, and would begin to fire in two seconds. Fea moved, her augmented body springing off the floor. She sighted her machine pistol and emptied the clip into the brujak's shields. He cackled as the rounds bounced off. But it wasn't Fea's intent to shatter the shield with her sidearm.

She defied conventional logic and ran towards the brujak just as his plasma cannon reached firing speed. With a flicker of thought, she directed the matrix of hard light energy running through her body to form her weapons. In a flash, she held glowing yellow knives between her fingers, each a few inches long and looking like nothing too threatening.

Just as the brujak started shooting, Fea jumped. Her newer implants augmented her agility. Being an enn'cief, she had strong legs, an evolutionary advantage entrenched in her species genes from evolving on a planet that was mostly forest. However, with the new adrenaline boosters sheathed in her leg muscles, she could now easily pop up fifteen feet with effort.

So she did, springing into the air with her knives held ready. Strong as the brujak was, it was hard to adjust the line of fire of a plasma cannon actively shooting. You had to commit. And the brujak had made a bad commitment.

Fea dropped like a rock as gravity took hold of her, angling her arm back as she did. The brujak struggled to get the plasma cannons barrel up and pointed at her. She was falling too fast for him to draw a bead.

She landed on his shoulders, her weight making him stagger backwards. With a cry of fury Feam jammed her hard light knives into the brujak's faceplate, then kicked off his shoulders and somersaulted over his head behind him.

"That the best you got?" the brujak cackled. "The tips of these things are nowhere near my-"

Fea shut him up with a snap of her fingers. She could've simply willed the knives to explode, as the hard light matrix was wired into her cerebellum and responded to her thoughts. But she liked using a snap of her fingers. It was a somatic component of sorts, a way of making absolutely sure her mental command was exactly what the matrix would respond to. It also had a finality to it. Snap. Boom. You're dead.

And the brujak was very dead, a smoking crater where his head had been a moment before. Fea didn't feel bad. These pirates had been doing a lot of damage to settlements and colonies within the range of their attack shuttles, both in terms of property and lives. The Federation had requested the Legion do something, and that's what they were doing. And it was nice to fighting pirates rather than her last major adversaries. There was less moral quandry to it.

Fea's large ear flicked as she heard several someones hurry into the cargo hold. After almost a month of working with them, she knew the cadences of Proto Squad's footsteps.

Rasha, an affrin who was a Legion veteran but was a couple years older than her, whistled as he slowed up coming into the room. His eyes scanned the fallen pirates. "Guess you didn't need backup after all," he said.

To his left was Bras, an ervicen with black fur and a scarred throat who didn't speak unless absolutely necessary because it was painful for him. He nodded approval at Fea's handiwork.

"She still shouldn't have wandered off like that!" said Aleen, a female multesi with yellow and green streaks dyed through her brown fur. She was also older than Fea, but had only been with the Legion for a year rather than Fea's several. "It's dangerous and unnecessary!"

"Relax, Aleen," Fea said as she walked up to them. Without a word Bras handed her a fresh power cell for her machine pistol, and Fea took it gratefully. "What's our status?"

Aleen looked like she wanted to continue grilling Fea about her recklessness, but she bit her tongue. "We're almost done. The leadership and about a third of the mercs have surrendered, but a few aren't letting up?"

"Casualties?" Fea asked as she started to walk down the hallway the others had arrived through.

"None on our side," Rasha said, his tail flicking in satisfaction. "As it should be."

"Good," Fea said, slapping the fresh power cell into her sidearm. "Let's wrap this up and go home."

By the time she and her squad joined up with the main Legion force, however, the work was almost already done. The pirates that had surrendered sat with their backs to the wall in the main hangar, arms cuffed and heads bowed as they were minded by several heavily armed Legionnaires. Fea's sensitive ears picked out gunfire deeper in the ship, but it was sporadic small arms fire rather than big guns. Things were almost done, then.

Directing the proceedings was Valain, commander of the Legion's Ninth Chapter and Fea's immediate superior. A strongly built multesi, he commanded an air of respect from his troops. Fea knew Aleen had a huge thing for him, despite the fact that he was at least ten years her senior, if not more. Fea wasn't one to judge.

She saluted as they came close. "Commander."

Valain nodded. "Good hunting, Fea?"

She nodded. "A few stragglers. Nothing I couldn't handle."

"You still shouldn't have," Aleen scolded. "You could've gotten hurt!"

"We all could've gotten hurt today," Fea countered. "It's kind of in the job description."

"That doesn't mean it's warranted to take unnecessary risks," Aleen said.

"Enough," Valain said. He didn't phrase it abrasively as a command, but his neutral tone took on just a slight enough edge that Fea and Aleen knew it was time to stop bickering.

"Anything remaining for us to do, Commander?" Fea asked. She needed something to do. She had to keep her adrenaline high going. Otherwise she got... distracted.

Valain inclined his head for a moment, his eyes focusing on the far wall. "Acknowledged. Good work." He shook his head. "Nothing more, Fea. First squad reports a surrender of the remaining pirates. We're about done here."

Fea nodded, feeling a knot tighten a little inside her. "Yes, sir."

A few minutes later, First Squad, their hard light armor decorated with distinctive white stripes on the chest and shoulder pauldrons, marched a dozen prisoners into the main hangar, their arms bound in acupressure cuffs. They were a mixture of species, mostly orak and multesi. At the end of the line, however, was another enn'cief with russet red fur.

Fea's eyes widened. She hurried over to the prisoner line. "Tarn?" she asked.

The enn'cief turned his head. Fea gasped a little. Last time she'd seen Tarn, he'd had two vibrant blue eyes almost the same color as her own. Now, one of them was cloudy, a jagged scar puckering the skin above and below his eye socket, likely from a serrated vibroblade. "Who are you?" he grunted.

Fea realized she still had her helmet on, and her voice was likely muffled and distorted. It was easy to forget, given that the Legion comm channels made everyone else's voices clear as day. Fea reached up and tapped the side of her head. Her hard light matrix responded, immediately altering the atomic structure of the armor piece so it vanished with a small flash. Her cloth hood brushed against her fur. "It's me, Tarn," she said.

Tarn blinked. "Well, well. There's a surprise."

"Move it," said the First Squad behind Tarn, giving him a shove forward.

Fea's ear flicked. "Go easy on him!"

"Mind your own business," the First Squad said, shoving Tarn again.

"Fea, don't do what you always do and make this more complicated," Tarn said, keeping his stride even as he stumbled slightly.

Fea glowered at him, the fur on the back of her neck standing up. "Excuse me for caring," she snapped.

"Yeah?" Tarn fired back as he was marched into the back of a transport. "And where was that care five years ago!"

Fea's jaw clenched, but before she could mister up a response Tarn was lost to view inside the transport. She turned and stomped back over to Valain and her squad.

Valain gave her a sidelong glance. "Friend of yours?"

Fea found a patch of the hangar wall to study intently. "It's complicated. Sir."

Valain said nothing else to her, instead turning his attention to the other prisoners being loaded into the transports which would take them back to the Ninth Chapter's frigate, the Orphaeon. From there they'd be transferred to Federation custody, and the Legion would move on.

As she watched the proceedings - she and Proto Squad were combat only for a myriad of reasons - Fea kept glancing out the shielded aperture to open space, at the First Squad transport that was now a small dot approaching the

Orphaeon

. What was Tarn doing running with pirates? Of all of the people she used to know, he'd had the most reason to hate outlaws. It didn't make sense.

Not that outlaws are all bad, though,

she chided herself.

Avery isn't bad.

A flash of memory -- the human's hands on her breasts, his cock gently sliding in and out of her.

He isn't bad in

many

ways.

Valain interrupted her train of thought. "Fea, I'd like to speak with you on the way back. Rasha, Bras, Aleen, head back on whatever transport you can."

Fea's comrades nodded and headed out, finding spots on the other transports back to the

Orphaeon

. As she walked up the gangplank into the command transport, Fea saw the engineers headed for the mercenary ship's cockpit, boxes of tech in their hands. Their job was to rig an remote piloting system so the captured ship could be steered into Federation custody behind the

Orphaeon

.

Valain piloted his own shuttle, so Fea sat down in the copilot's seat as Valain gave a short speech to the Elites that were under him personally. Even though she was mostly used to them now, the Elites of the Ninth still brought back bad memories. The Elites of the Eighth had been fanatically loyal to Nyral, all the way through to her going rogue. Fea had been forced to kill quite a few during the Starlight Engine incident.

It would be a lie to say she was over the whole thing. While she didn't have nightmares nor feelings of regret, the whole thing had changed the Legion. Their code was supposed to be infallible, but what Nyral had done was the equivalent of walking into the Library on the First Fleet's frigate

Dantius

and ripping apart the Codex Astatell with her bare hands. Fea wasn't privy to the same information that Valain was, but she'd heard the rumors - the Federation wasn't happy with them, not in the slightest.

Valain strode into the cockpit. Fea didn't rise for him. Her relationship with Valain was an odd one, coming from how she'd conducted herself around Nyral. Valain placed less stress on the commander/subordinate relationship in private than Nyral had. Fea thought the older multesi.might even have a soft spot for her.

Valain sat down in the pilot's seat, and didn't say a word until they were out of the hangar and in open space, headed for the

Orphaeon

. "A good day," he said. "No casualties. A successful operation. Thirty prisoners, twice as many confiscated weapons, and a whole frigate to turn over to the authorities." He smiled slightly. "Our most successful day in months. Maybe now they'll ease up on us."

Fea said nothing, looking out the viewport at the stars.

Valain sighed. "Nyral screwed us. She really did. An entire Legion either dead or incarcerated, save for you and Kalak."

The mention of her mentors name sent a pang through Fea, amplified by the growing ache in her nethers. She nodded mutely, not trusting her tongue.

Valain sighed. "We cannot remain without an Eighth for long. There needs to be a second founding. A new Legion under a.new command." He looked at her pointedly.

Fea's ear flicked. She'd long suspected that the Commander was grooming her for a leadership position, likely within his own Ninth Legion. But her as the Commander of a new Eighth Legion? "Me, sir?"

Valain nodded slowly. "The Legion needs people like you, Fea. People who put the Codex we swear an oath to above all else. We operate on a military structure for just that reason - structure. But our duty is much greater than that. You recognized that."

Because of Avery!

Fea wanted to yell.

If he hadn't planted the seed of doubt, I probably would've gone with everything!

That fact, not Nyral, was what kept her awake at night. Plus her...condition.

"I'm not saying it's guaranteed," Valain said, turning his attention back to flying. "But you're one of the people I think are best suited for the mantle. There's no one else left from the Eighth that has proved their worth more than you."

Fea nodded mutely, still not trusting herself to speak. It was high praise coming from Valain, but a part of her wondered if she really deserved it. The two of them lapsed into silence as the transport flew towards the

Orpheaon

.

They docked in the hangar, and Fea filed out of the back behind the Ninth's Elites. She saluted Valain, tapping her clenched fist against her chestplate. He answered the salute. "Dismissed, Fea. Don't worry about the debriefing. Go get some food and some rest -- you earned it today."

"Yes, sir." Fea was relieved that he was allowing her to skip the debriefing. She wasn't sure if her body would behave during it. Instead, she left the hangar, walking through the twisting passages of the

Orpheaon

towards her cabin. Since she was outside of the rank and file of the Ninth, she had been permitted to have her own cabin, which had rubbed some of the Ninth the wrong way. There were still many who didn't trust her. She heard as much, her big, sensitive ears picking up snatches of conversation, other Legionnaires muttering about her special treatment and questioning her relationship with Valain. Some actually through they were sleeping together.

They weren't, for the record. Not that Fea hadn't

thought

about it before. Valain had a rugged quality to him, the same way that Kalak had, and it made Fea's knees slightly weak to think about. Hell, he even had that same multesi musk that Kalak had, a scent that her nose could pick up easily.

It didn't take much to get her going these days. In her transition to the Ninth, Fea had gone under the knife and had received a sleight of new implants, designed to enhance her strength and speed further. The implants worked, and were doing their job nicely. However, there was one rather...odd side effect.

For reasons Fea could figure out, she was always at least slightly horny.

The Chapter doctors had looked her over and determined that nothing was out of the ordinary. There was nothing in her that wasn't supposed to be, nor was there anything wrong with the implants that she had. They were in their proper places and were networked together appropriately. It just seemed like a strange, unintended side effect.

The problem was that that side effect wasn't harmful enough to warrant the removal of the implants, and Fea agreed with the logic. The real problem was how freaking

annoying

it got. She'd just be walking around, going about her day, then catch herself fantasizing about everyone in her immediate surroundings. Which was rather awkward when it was the Chapter commanders. She simply had to wait and take care of it whenever she got a moment. It was why she craved missions and fights -- the rush of combat tended to mute her raging libido and clear her head for a while.

Fea did her best to keep her head low and not draw attention to herself as she walked into her quarters. They were rather spartan, a simple room divided into two halves. The front half of the room was a sitting area, with a couple chairs and a table. The back half, which could be separated from the first by a retractable divider in the walls, had her bed and a spacious walk-in shower. This room had belonged to an officer before she had it, which justified all the little luxuries. Not that she was complaining.

The door closed behind her as she walked in. She tapped her chest, and with a flicker of thought, her armor vanished. The hard light armor was a marvel of technology, the Legion's technological ace in the hole. Through a system of nodes implanted in her body, both under and atop her skin, every Legionnaire could shroud themselves in a dense suit of armor. It was similar technology to shields, but exponentially stronger. Shields were energy barriers that could only take a couple of hits before failing. Legion armor was dense, rivalling top of the line carbon fiber plates and the experimental polymers that were currently being tested by the biggest arms manufacturers in the Federation. Despite the fact that it could eat bullets and absorb explosions, all it took to get rid of was a thought on the Legionnaire's part.

In a moment, Fea's armor simply wasn't. It vanished as if it never was, until she had need of it again. She was left wearing a simple body glove that hugged her fur and always seemed to be rather snug around her crotch. Perhaps she was just more aware of it now.

As she walked towards the back of her quarters, she reached behind her and drew the zipper down the back of the glove. A screen on the wall flickered to life as she passed, indicating that she had messages. She glanced them over as she rolled the meshy material down her shoulders and yanked her arms free. Valain had sent her a copy of the debriefing.

Now that her arms were free, Fea was able to slide the body glove off, the meshy material tugging on her fur gently as it slid off her. She stepped out of it, bundled it up, and tossed it onto her bed. She stretched, rolling her shoulders and hearing something in her back pop. That was better.

Seeing Tarn again had really brought it into perspective how much her body had changed since the last time she'd seen him. She'd gone under the knife three times, being outfitted with technology that was the envy of many Federation militaries. Her skin was lined with nodes that were the projectors for the hard light armor. At the very least she'd gotten newer versions that had quantum based connections, rather than the actual circuitry that some of the older Legionnaire's like Kalak had been saddled with. She rather liked her lustrous yellow fur, and didn't want to see it clash against drab wiring.