We were a few klicks out from the front, running quiet and cold when we caught the radar ping from our drone. It was big, whatever it was, and just a few seconds after we got visual on the walker cresting the hill and clambering down into the valley. I’ll give the Deltas one thing - the walkers sure did look intimidating. This was a WA-3 “Welkin”. It had a footprint a little larger than a main battle tank, bristling with sensors that picked up on our drone fairly quickly. Its main gun, a staged 95mm coilgun, would be useless for such a small target. Instead, it kept moving on six articulated legs, and its coaxial machine gun emerged from a casing, firing on the drone.

If you ask me, it was a monument to stupidity.

Don’t get me wrong, the WA-3 was a nasty little beast. We lost a good few people to them before we knew how they operated. The main gun could punch right through any armor we threw at it if it had time to spool up. Besides the machine gun, most of the Welkins had what we started affectionately calling the beehive - an array of 20mm micromissiles with some guidance components that let it tear through infantry even in cover. It was even pretty well armored around its chassis. But all that needed power, and if you wanted power you needed a power-plant. The miniaturized fusion reactor was more than enough for that, but power bleeds heat, and the servo-motors needed to move those massive six legs gave off even more heat when they were booking it. And even with all that, they still moved a good bit slower than an MBT on a straightaway, only having the advantage on rocky terrain. 

The guys in the labs called them a potential revolution in warfare. After all, unlike an MBT, it could get over rough terrain and into urban areas with ease. I didn’t agree with that assessment. I’ve never been all that well-educated, but I know a little history. As far as I’m concerned, there’ve been two kinds of advances in warfare: the ones that let you kill people more quickly, and the ones that convinced people to kill for you more quickly. This was the former, and it had the same sorts of weaknesses as every armored vehicle before it.

I sighed and got out of the transport as the feed from the drone went dead, swapping to feed two, this one being hidden low in the valley. Me and Keller nodded to Gonzalez and hopped out of the transport. Keller was the gunner, and she was a pretty damn good one at that. Not that it took much when you were shooting a missile that basically aimed itself, but still. The labs had come up with a solution to our walker problem pretty simply. All that heat going into the air had a cost - you couldn’t hide the thing from thermals if you put it on Venus. In infrared, it was the brightest thing in the entire valley. Keller pushed out the tripod and mounted the launcher. Two bulky tubes and some equipment for targeting, as simple as dirt. 

“Alright Keller,” I said, “You’re going to want… three degrees south, elevation of ten degrees. Just enough to clear the ridge.”

“Aww, I wanna hit em’ up top,” she said as she loaded the launcher.

“We’re above them, dumbass,” I said, “You’re gonna hit them from the top anyways.”

“Yeah, but with the angle we won’t see the reactor pop,” she said, adjusting the launcher to my suggestions, “Oh, nevermind. You’re right. Safety off. Permission to fire, Gonzalez?”

“Permission granted,” yelled Gonzalez, still in the driver’s seat of the transport. 

“Gunner, you’re on target, fire when ready,” I said, retreating to avoid the backblast. 

“Firing.”

The first rocket motor burst to life in a sudden gout of flame, taking a ballistic trajectory over the ridge and into the valley. Its twin followed a second later. Immediately, the cockroach-like vehicle began to scuttle and try to take evasive maneuvers, but it was already too late. The thermal smoke was paltry compared to the heat of an overclocked fusion reactor, desperately trying to avoid the guided missiles, which gave a distinctive crack as their second stage activated during terminal guidance. The two explosions echoed through the valley with the crash of metal tearing apart like sheet-paper and a fusion reactor melting down and sending a hot stream of plasma skyward for a second before it went quiet forever. The dust and smoke settled a little to reveal the ruined Welkin, two of its six legs thrown asunder. 

Keller cackled and hurried over to the still-smoking launcher, putting her seventh notch into it. 

“Good work ladies,” yelled Gonzalez, noting the destroyed on her tablet before putting it away, “Let’s get out of here before-”

“Hold up, we’ve got movement,” I said, noting a sudden change in the thermals. There was a popping noise, and the crew compartment flew from the Welkin, crashing right into the ridge, about fifty meters away. This wasn’t unusual. There seemed to be an automatic eject system, but the pilots didn’t exactly seem to have a good sense of self-preservation. All of them were issued a false tooth filled with cyanide, and they all seemed to have a real hair-trigger with using them. By the time we got to the pilot, they’d probably already be dead. Even if we left them here and they didn’t kill themselves, the desert would do it for us. 

Then, the hatch opened. Out of it emerged a person, thin and limber, who moved jerkily and then started to wander towards us. Then they started to run. 

“Hey Gonzalez,” I said, “Should we worry about that?”

I judged the distance, and how fast the person was moving. They were definitely going at a pretty good pace but they were limping a little, stumbling and nearly bowling over themselves as they ran. They were close enough to see that they had a buzzcut, and they were wearing a form-fitting flightsuit. They were definitely yelling something too, but it was hard to hear over the wind and how wild and uncontrolled they were. Keller took out her pistol and drew a bead on the rapidly-approaching figure. 

“She isn’t killing herself,” said Gonzalez, putting out her cigarette on the window of the transport, “She doesn’t have a gun from the looks of it. Huh. That’s new. Put away the gun, Keller. Jones, catch, you’re up.”

She rifled through one of the compartments and threw a pair of handcuffs to me. I chuckled and stretched a bit. It had been a while since I had a chance to do something besides spotting with a drone. Luckily, my days playing street hockey had prepared me for this. 

“Aww,” said Keller, “I wanted to get to do something.”

I ignored her and lowered my stance. I was now close enough to see that at the very least she was probably a woman - looks can be deceiving and all that, but she definitely had the tits for it. I could hear what she was yelling, too.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck, fuck - you didn’t let me fucking finish!”

“Uh-oh,” I said, “I think we made her mad.”

She clearly had no idea what she was doing. I rushed in and tackled her onto the dusty desert floor without much issue - she was pretty light and small and I’m fairly sure I had at least a foot of height on her. As our bodies collided head-on I managed to deflect her downwards, driving her chest into the dirt as gently as I could. I then knuckled my arm around her neck and forced one hand behind her back. She continued swearing a bit, and then spasmed and went half-limp. For a second I thought she had gotten through to her poison tooth, but she was still kicking my thigh like it was a faulty vending machine and eventually was able to muscle my way into getting both of her hands into the cuffs. I got off her and she rolled over, oddly grinning and rocking back and forth in the dirt. 

I could get a good look at her now. Her hair was buzzcut down into a tight reddish fuzz, and her face was dotted with little brown freckles. She grimaced and stopped swearing, looking up at me with some disdain. There was a small gap in her two front teeth, and I could see vomit on her sleeve where she had wiped it away from her mouth. She kicked me a little more as I dragged her towards the transport. I smiled up at Gonzalez and Keller, who’d packed themselves back up into the transport. Gonzalez picked up the radio which popped and crackled a little as she spoke.

“Come in, B5, this is Lieutenant Gonzalez under the code 54-67-8288-9, do you copy?”

“Read you loud and clear. Go ahead, over,” said a nasally voice over the line.

“You’re not going to believe this, but we’ve caught a live Delta. We’re headed back early, prisoner in tow, over.”

“Sorry, say all after ‘this,’ over?”

“Repeating, a live Delta! She’s in the back of the transport right now. Have a bed ready downstairs, over.” 

“Wilco, anything else, over?”

“None, over and out.”

I pulled the pilot into the back, kicking and grunting all the way. She fumed and visibly huffed as the engine turned over and the transport roared to life, kicking up dust as the off-road wheels rolled over the desert floor. Gonzalez was clearly in high spirits about all of this. She didn’t say anything, but a few minutes later she turned on the sound system and started playing some old songs, guitars and crooning voices spilling out from the tinny speakers. The pilot, for her part, was very quiet, and all of her attention seemed centered on me as we kept rolling along and it started getting late into the afternoon. She alternated between angry grimaces as we passed over the constant bumps and jolts of offroading and a strange, placid look but she never took her eyes off of me. Occasionally she’d kick the seat in front of her in frustration, making Keller chuckle. 

“You better stop that,” said Keller eventually, “Or we’ll show you how we do it down in San Diego.”

Her gaze turned from me to Keller and for a woman who was that small and petite she sure did have a set of fighting eyes. She sneered at Keller for a good long while.

“Don’t worry about her,” I said, “She’s a big softie down at heart.”

“Aw, come on,” she said, “She was trying to kill us! We can at least scare her a little!”

“She never got a chance to try. Plus - are you scared, bud?”

The pilot looked at me in a moment of confusion, then nodded.

“Ya see?”

“Are you scared of Keller?”

The pilot shook her head vigorously.

“She’s bluffing,” said the pilot raspily, “I don’t even know where San Diego is, but I know she’s bluffing.”

I snorted. Keller looked a little outraged at the insult to the dangerous reputation of her city, and that alone probably paid for the resources spent on the missiles we had to use to get the pilot. I tried to give her a smile and go on a charm offensive; there was a bounty out for information on the Deltas and the idea of getting promoted just for talking appealed to me quite well. 

“So, you got a name?”

“Eve,” she said, “People call me Evie.”

“That’s a nice name. I’m Private Lily Jones. Where are you from?”

“I don’t talk to opfor.”

I shrugged and sighed.

“Have it your way,” I said. I felt like I had gotten over the first hurdle with her, just a little. She kept up the silent act as we drove further northwest. Eventually we were far enough from Salt Lake that we could safely bivouac in a small, low channel in the rocky desert. By the time all the tents were set up and I was given the ignominious duty of having her in my tent to keep her under watch during the night. Gonzalez cracked open the field rations: spicy chicken, rice and beans heated on the portable stove, with the night-time mix of lemon tea and cookies for dessert. The sky grew darker and darker and the desert was set into a golden pall as the sun started to disappear from view. I sipped on my lemon tea - free from the bitter taste of stimulants - and looked over again to Evie, who was just as moody-looking as before. 

“You should eat,” I said, offering her some of the cookie, “Even if it’s just a little. Vomiting like that can’t be good for you and you’ll need the calories. It’ll be a long day tomorrow.”

The pilot seemed to consider this for a moment, then sneered at me, the gap in her two front teeth showing for a moment. In a move that she must have practiced in the mirror, she closed her eyes, turned her freckled face up at me, and pouted, declaring:

“I only take snacks from Daddy, faggot.”

I looked at her dumbfounded. Keller immediately started laughing her ass off. Gonzalez, the very model of an officer, stifled a giggle and grinned. I hadn’t heard an insult like that since grade school. I sighed - but then, like a bolt of lightning, something clicked for me. I felt like if I asserted myself correctly I could get a proper handle on her. After all, I was her de facto warden now, and if she was going to talk tough I would talk tough right back to her.

“Alright,” I said, “Whoever the fuck your father was - forget him.”

“What?”

“Forget him,” I said, “In all odds, you’re never, ever going to see him again. Ever. You understand that? And I’ll make sure of it.”

She paused, as if she was considering this for the first time in her life.

“Ever…?”

“Ever,” I echoed, “We’re headed back to base, further out than the Deltas have ever been seen. Once you’re there, they might even evac you to Victoria or Anchorage. You will never see the Salt Lake Arcoplex again, you will never see this desert again, you will never see your dad again, understand?”

“He’s not actually my dad,” she protested, “He’s my commanding officer. And Daddy is everyone’s dad. That’s why he gets to order us around. But-”

“But he isn’t here now. So, now you’ve got a choice,” I said, “You can wait and wait and try to starve yourself and when you do, they’re going to force feed you. Trust me when I say you won’t like it. Or… you can have some of this delicious rice and beans and half a cookie and some lemonade if you want it. How does that sound?”

She huffed, then looked back at the food. Eventually she relented.

“Ugh,” she said, “I - do I have to?”

“You don’t have to,” I said, “I’m not like those guys in Anchorage or Victoria, I’m not going to force you to eat anything or do anything, I just think you should eat.”

She seemed to think about this for a long time as well, as if it were some deeply intractable problem. I wasn’t precisely sure what was going on, but something was off.

“You’re saying… I can choose what I eat?”

“Of course. I mean, there aren’t really many options, I think we have some MRE sandwiches-”

“I’d like that,” she blurted out, “I mean. I’d like to have the sandwich, please. I’m sorry. I just don’t like rice and I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

I looked to Gonzalez for approval, and she nodded. She and Keller began to pack up and head to their own tents alone. I then went over to the storage compartment, produced the little silvery heat-safe packaging and set it to heat up on the stove. She went silent again as I prepared the meal for her and handed her the piping-hot package of bread, faux-meatballs and tomato sauce. Evie took it gently and waited for it to cool down a good amount before she utterly decimated the whole meal in under thirty seconds, followed immediately by the cookie. She polished off my lemonade as well, and I took her back to the little tent that we had in silence. She seemed disturbed by what I had said about what they might do to her when we got back to base. I lit up the electric lamp so that I could still see as I prepared myself to get into my bedroll.

“I might have been exaggerating a little about the force-feeding thing,” I said, “I don’t think they actually would do that to you.” 

No response, still.

“Are you alright?” 

Evie continued to stare into space. She seemed very deep in thought, almost entirely tuning out the world around her.

“Yeah,” she eventually said, “But - you’re in charge now. Not Daddy. And I’m not sure - it feels weird. If Daddy was in charge he would’ve done all sorts of stuff. He’s always busy but he likes to make time for me. He said it himself.”

This piqued my interest. Even if she had that same bizarre vocabulary as before, she was opening up a little now. If there was some military knowledge to be gained from it, then it might be useful. For all we were kicking the Delta’s asses, we didn’t know much about them besides the fact that they were probably hiding out in the remains of the old Salt Lake Arcoplex. 

“Evie, what does Daddy do? He’s your commanding officer, right?”

“Well, yeah. If you mean he’s the one who tells me what to do, who to kill, who to fuck-”

“Excuse me?” 

“He tells me what to do-”

“No, I got that. He decides who you fuck?”

“Yep,” she said, suddenly chipper, “Mostly he fucks me. Sometimes the maintenance crew get to fuck me too if we’ve all been really good.”

“He… rapes you,” I said, “I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know.”

“No, rape is what other people do,” she said quite insistently, “When Daddy does it, it’s all… it’s right. He makes me feel good. He told me that people in charge have a right to fuck me, and decide when and where and how I fuck. Same with killing. They’re really the same thing, he says, and he must be right, because it feels good when he fucks me and it feels good when I hit the target in just the same way.”

I paused, trying to think about this, trying to comprehend what she had just said to me. On instinct, I probed a little more.

“So… what would Daddy do after a mission? When you come back?”

“Well, we’d count up all the targets I hit, whether I was successful or not, and if I did really good he’d fuck me like I’d want. Sometimes if I do bad he punishes me, doesn’t fuck me or even turns off some stuff. Makes me blind, turns off my skin, locks me up alone… but I’m one of his best pilots, and I haven’t been punished in a long, long time. If he’s really mad sometimes he’ll wait until I’m sleeping and then fuck me, and I don’t like that.”

There was a sudden panic that took over her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I shouldn’t have said that. Daddy would get really mad if I said that to his face, that I don’t like it when he fucks me. I love it, really. I love it when I wake up and I see his face and know that what he’s doing is right but I don’t- please don’t tell him that. He’d be really mad. And he’d rewire me.”

“I promise I won’t,” I said, trying to soothe her, “Remember, I’m in charge now. And I’m here to bring you back to base, not to hurt you.” 

She calmed a bit when I said that I was in charge and that alone made me feel disgusted. 

“Right,” she said blankly, “You’re in charge. You’re my Daddy now.”

“Please don’t call me that,” I said. The word made my skin crawl after what she had said. Even if it wasn’t really her dad, the sheer casualness of how she’d described what happened was disturbing. I thought back to when I first got out from under my own Dad’s thumb finally and talked with my friends about the way he liked to break and bruise things when he got drunk; how I thought I was telling a funny story until I saw all their horrified faces. 

“Sorry,” she said, “Sorry. But you’re right. You’re in charge now.”

“Good,” I said, “And if I’m in charge you can say whatever you need to. I want to know how you’re feeling, really. The truth, I guess.”

Evie smiled at this widely. Her teeth were a bit messy in a way that felt almost cutesy if it didn’t make her look like some sort of weird animal in the low light of the electric lamp.

“That’s super! I’ve had all sorts of things on my mind about you since I met you and I wanted to say them but Daddy said not to talk to faggots or opfor. But you’re in charge so I can say whatever I want!”

I tried to ignore her persistent use of a slur several centuries out of date. We could work on that later. For now, I just wanted to treat her gently. She’d clearly been through a lot, and was more than a little touched in the head. I’d heard all sorts of stories of people with heavily-modded nervous systems coming out the other side with a few quirks and oddities but nothing quite matched up to this. 

“Well, what’s on your mind, then?”

“Honestly, today wasn’t super great until I met you and you told me that I wasn’t going to be seeing Daddy again. I mean, I want to see Daddy again, I do, but… before that I was just making another incursion and I hadn’t seen anyone all day . It was so boring I was thinking about shooting off a few rounds just to see who would come along. But then I saw the drone and I got soooo excited because I thought maybe there’d be a tank or some squishies to crush! And it was so hard to hit too, and then when I finally got it I came so hard because I had been so pent up.”

I was going to ask her more, but the words kept spilling out of her mouth so fast that I couldn’t find an opening.

“And then when your ATGM hit me - OH BABY! Like getting choked and spanked at the same time but better. And the second?! So good. I was so mad when I got ejected because I was totally about to cum for a third time.” 

“The walker makes you cum?”

“Yeah,” she said, “Duh? Doesn’t the missile make you cum?”

“No. Why would it do that?”

She seemed genuinely disconcerted by this question. From her tone and the way she was carrying herself I was starting to think that she may have genuinely not ever considered the possibility of military hardware that didn’t make its user cream their jeans. She racked her brain for a little while longer before speaking again.

“I think it’s supposed to encourage us.”

“Wouldn’t that make it hard to focus, though?”

“A little,” she said, “But Daddy said we just had to push through it and meet our objectives and stuff. I mean, it made me really good at hunting tanks so it couldn’t be that bad.” 

“I… guess? I’ll be real with you, girl, I have never heard of anything like this before in my life.”

“It’s pretty normal where I’m from,” she said, “Why wouldn’t you want more ways to cum?”

“Well, it… it hurts people, shooting them, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but hurting feels good,” she said curiously, “Doesn’t it?”

“Okay, since we’re just talking - does all pain feel good to you?”

“Well, it’s painful and bad, sure, but then you also orgasm from it and it’s good,” she said, “Daddy didn’t tell me much about why we’re at war but I assumed that was why we were doing it, because it’s really fun for all of us. Is that not… true for everyone?”

The enormity of her ignorance was beginning to dawn on me now. I was very afraid of hurting her feelings if I told her that no, in fact, not everyone is such a masochist that gunshots and shrapnel bring them to orgasm. It was like she was totally disconnected from the actuality of violence, of causing pain to other people being a bad thing. I tried to put it to her gently. 

“Evie, that isn’t true for our side. We don’t like that.”

“Oh,” she said quietly, “I’m sorry. You look mad. Are you gonna punish me?”

“No,” I said, trying to reassure her, “I’m not mad, just thinking. And obviously didn’t know about any of that, it’s not like it’s your fault. We were… talking about your day, weren’t we?”

“Oh yeah!” She perked up. “You guys are so cool, you know that? And when you tackled me and handcuffed me…”

She smiled blissfully.

“Did you… cum when I tackled you? Oh my God. You did. That’s why you fell over and your legs were shaking.”

“You were super good,” she said, “Your arms are so big and strong like Daddy’s… but you’re also so soft! You were like… um…”

“What?”

“I don’t want to talk bad about Daddy, he gets really mad when I do. But…  you’re very nice, and after you gave me a treat even though I’d been bad, and…”

She huffed.

“I know I’m not supposed to like anyone but Daddy at the end of the day, but - it’s the end of the day, and I like you . You’re hot. You’re cool. You’re as nice as him - you- I can really say whatever I want?”

“Sure,” I said. She was clearly getting hot and bothered. Her cheeks were flushed and a thin trickle of sweat beaded down her face. Occasionally, she shifted her foot over her own crotch, as if she was trying to scratch an itch without her hands. And, though I hate to admit it, I was getting a little horny myself. Deployment out in the desert is hard and long and awfully boring and she was lithe and flexible and so obviously into me . It was wrong of course, but at the same time - God, was she hot. She wasn’t exactly a supermodel but neither was I. She had those screwed-up teeth and the freckles, and her close-cropped hair was nice, and her bodysuit didn’t exactly leave much to the imagination. She was a bit petite down below for my tastes but she more than made up for it with her tits. They almost looked too big for her build, to be frank.

“You’re nicer than him,” she whispered, “And he- he never said to me, told me to choose something really besides sex or targets and- I like choosing what food I get. Can I fuck you please?”

“I- listen- I don’t want to let you down, Eve,” I said, “But I really can’t - I mean. I could but I might be in trouble with Captain Gonzalez.”

“Oooooh,” she said, “I get it now! She’s like, your Daddy, and she’d fuck you while you’re sleeping if you did something wrong!”

“No, I would get court-martialed and that would be bad.”

“I don’t know what that word means,” she said, “But if you’re worried about it I’m worried about it.” 

Eve shifted a little, clearly stumped by this, and for a second I thought I got her to calm down a little. Her breathing slowed and stopped hitching, and then she gritted her teeth for a moment.

“Soooo…” She said, giving me an adorable puppy-dog look, “What if… it was a secret? Please?”

The look was what burst the dam for me. She was persistent and she was cute and she seemed to be mostly put together besides the obvious oddities. She wanted me so bad and I doubted I would be getting sleep whatsoever if I didn’t give her some way to calm down. I thought for a moment more, tried to fight the urge, and eventually I caved. We both wanted this, needed this, and she was too cute to say no to. But I needed to do this right. Make sure that it didn’t blow back on me.

“If it’s a secret,” I said, “You won’t tell anyone, right? ”

“Right,” she said.

“And you can be quiet, right?”

“Yep,” said Evie, “So… is that a yes?”

“Yes, if you’re quiet and if you keep it a secret, we can have sex. But it’s a one time-thing since… this is obviously… a… problem for you, if I don’t do it. You’d agree with that right?”

“Yes,” she said, reaching back and pulling on the zipper of her suit, “But you’ll fuck me again. Daddy says I have a natural charm like that.” 

“Wait a minute, when’d you get out of your cuffs?”

Evie grinned mischievously and stuck out her tongue, demonstrating that one of her hands was totally free of the cuffs once more. She then made a move that should have been immensely painful, dislocating her own wrist and probably some more of her hand bones to free her left hand from the cuff. She then quietly popped them back into place, grinning all the while.

“I’m very flexible. I slipped out of them a few minutes ago when you were staring at my tits,” she said, “You really like them, don’t you?” 

“Clever bitch,” I said as she pulled the zipper down.

She slid out of her suit with a practiced smoothness and grace, revealing bare skin beneath. A fine surgical scar was at the nape of her neck and when she turned around, there were two more barely-visible scars beneath her breasts. As I’d suspected, her tits weren’t all-natural, but her - Daddy’s? - cosmetician had done a pretty damn good job if I said so myself. They were perky, soft-looking, and if I hadn’t seen the scars I’d think they were home grown. The rest of the clinging suit slipped off her lower half. There was another scar above her pubis, but I was more focused on her cunt. She was wet for me. She smiled slyly.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “Daddy said that I can have my womb back when I retire. You can cum inside all you want.” 

I was too horny at this point to think about how fucked up that was. I slid off my pants and then my boxers. When I looked up, Evie’s jaw had dropped. 

“What, never seen a dick before?”

“Daddy- Daddy said that- you’re- you’re big .”

“What, are you chicken?”

“N-no.”

I leaned over to her, and took her forearm. Somehow, her shock and near-fright at the size of my dick only made me harder. 

“Backing down from a challenge?”

“No! It’s just-”

“Oh, I get it,” I said as she shook her head, “He told you he had the best dick in the world, didn’t he? Biggest too, probably. I bet he even told you that someone like me couldn’t even get hard.”

She nodded, visibly drooling from her mouth, her eyes not moving a single degree away from my erection.

“Well, it turns out I’m in charge now, and turns out your Daddy was wrong.”

I slapped my cockhead up against her engorged clit, and she squeaked. She then covered her own mouth, trying to be quiet as I asked. I was smiling too now. I knew I was big at ten inches, but I’d never had a girl react quite this way to it. It was wrong, but it was so gratifying how she looked so shocked and so excited at once. I exhaled and ground myself up against her cunt, feeling how slick she was. I took a palmful of her breast and tweaked her nipples, putting my other hand over her mouth to muffle her.

“You want it inside?” I asked as she drooled onto my hand, “You can just nod, or say stop if you want me to stop.”

She nodded so hard she bumped her head against the mat. I took that as a yes. I had to finagle a little more to properly align us and then slid in a few inches. She was tight, but wet enough that it wasn’t too hard for me to push in further. She twitched and then went limp, her head rolling down as I got to the halfway point. I felt her try to pronounce “cumming” around my palm. Her inner walls clenched down around me tightly and I nearly lost my cool myself. I let my hand off of her mouth.

“Are you alright?” 

“I’m gooooooood,” she slurred, “Come on, Daddy, keep moving.”

“Fine,” I said, sliding further in, “Don’t call me Daddy, remember.”

“Sorrrrr-y-y-y!” 

Eve stuttered and grabbed at me frantically as I went in as deep as I could. Eventually she smothered her face into my breasts, which I quite appreciated having put in the legwork to grow them myself. The walls of her cunt were very tight, but not so much that I was worried about hurting her. I rocked back and then thrust into her again, and then picked up the pace as soon as I was sure that she was still alright with all this. Judging by her expression when I fully hilted myself into her, she was probably enjoying it. More clenching around my dick was a good confirmation of that, and she put her spread legs around my hips to draw me in. She whimpered around my hand as it returned to her mouth and I mauled at her breast, unable to control my grip on the mix of fat and top-grade silicone. 

In spite of my efforts to not make noise, the whole matter of me wildly thrusting into her was quickly making a lot of quite wet slapping sounds as we continued to rut up against the small, rough mat that was supposed to be where Eve was going to sleep. Time started to feel a bit blurry as we went on and I tried to keep her satisfied for as long as possible. I just prayed that Keller, who was closest to us, wouldn’t hear. Maybe if she did she’d think I was just pacifying her or something. I reassured myself with that as I felt her somehow cum again - how was she not getting sore?! - squeezing my cock like it was a stress-ball. Somehow I managed to not cum from the sheer stimulation from her cunt and Eve nuzzling up against my nipples. She then began to softly suckle on them, sending electric jolts down my spine. I tried to resist it, tried to pull out on instinct even though I knew there wasn’t any risk, but her legs tightened around me as my balls clenched up and I came harder than I had in maybe a few years. I felt really glad I had got all that practice in orgasming silently, because otherwise I would’ve probably ended up waking every person and animal a mile around me. I rolled off of her and onto my own mat, the both of us panting and breathing heavily. 

“Thank- thank- thank you,” stuttered Eve. I reached out to her and she recoiled suddenly.

“You alright?” 

“Did I do something wrong? Are you going to punish me?”

“No,” I said, “You were great. I just wanted to warm you.” 

“Warm me?”

“You know,” I said, “Hug. Cuddle up against each other. It gets real cold out here at night and I just thought that you’d… like it. It’s fine if you don’t. “

Eve stared at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. Then, eventually, she reached back out to me. In turn I put an arm around her and drew her head in close to my chest, and she sighed and seemed to relax a little. I stroked her bristly red-brown hair.

“Y’see? Is this alright?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “Feels strange. Daddy never touched me after we fucked. It was just… that and then he’d leave or he’d punish me. Sorry, I’m feeling a little - sleepy, I guess. I did good right?”

“Yes,” I said, “You did great. And I’m feeling pretty tired myself.”

“Your chest is so soft,” Eve said as she reached up and stroked my chin in turn, “And you’re so… hairy and stuff.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. It isn’t easy to get a clean shave out here.” 

“I like it,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, ruffling her hair a little. We stayed like that for a good long while after in silence. It was terribly quiet, and bit by bit regret and a serious case of post-nut clarity started to arrive. The whole tent smelled a bit like sex, but that could at least be explained away as a mix of sweat and not being able to have a shower in the past week. What’s more, what I just did could easily be classified as rape of a prisoner of war, and that thought put bile into my throat. I wasn’t a rapist - I swore to myself that I would never treat someone like that - and I wasn’t of course because she had asked me to do it and I’d even checked with her, and she was making all those cute noises around my mouth. I couldn’t be a rapist, I reassured myself as Eve’s breathing slowed down and she shut her eyes. But what other people would think of me - that wasn’t easy to think about. 

My train of thought was interrupted by the call of an owl into the night. I looked down at Eve, and she was sleeping soundly up against my chest. I thought for a long time about what she had said to me about Daddy and how he’d treated her. There was no way that she’d escape in the night without waking me at this point. I carefully maneuvered around her to at least pull up my boxers and get a blanket over us, and thankfully she was a very heavy sleeper. I blearily set my phone’s alarm to the early morning, before Keller or Gonzalez would be up so that I could hide all the evidence that this happened. I turned off the little electric lamp and sighed as I closed my eyes. I could leave my crisis of conscience and contemplate my potentially criminal behavior tomorrow; now, I needed to sleep.

I didn’t dream of much, or at least not much that I remembered. I half-awoke sticky and sweaty from the heat and my own seed leaking out onto my bare thigh from Eve’s cunt. I was in that awful feverish state where you were aware you needed either to wake up entirely or go to sleep but could consciously do neither. Occasionally, every few minutes, Eve would restlessly writhe up against me. Or maybe it was hours, it was terribly hard to say when I couldn’t open my eyes and everything I heard felt like it was being transmitted through a fuzzy radio station. Eventually, though, I heard the distinct sound of Keller’s voice in the distance, singing some song whose lyrics I couldn’t make out. Some part of me was panicking at this, but Eve was so soft and heavy over me that I could hardly move.

Then, I heard the high-pitched sound of the tent zipper and started to panic. I jolted upward and Eve yelped as she rolled off of me. I was nearly blinded by the sudden light as Keller opened to door to us - me, one bedraggled Private Lily Jones with my pants around my ankles and dried cum on my thigh, and Eve still entirely nude and out of the cuffs she was supposed to be in. Keller’s eyes went the widest I’d ever seen them go.

“Wait, I can explain-”

“What the fuck, Jones?” She whispered.

“Just- just listen to me,” I said, “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Please don’t court-martial her,” said Eve unhelpfully, “I was asking for it and she said it was supposed to be a secret.” 

I looked over at her and gritted my teeth. She did the same move she did at dinner last night, sticking up her nose.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s for sure not a secret now.” 

It was then that Keller took off running and I fell into total despair in silence.

“Well, if she isn’t going to fuck you in your sleep or rewire your spine,” offered Eve, as if she had been pondering this for a bit, “Then it’s probably not going to be that bad.”

“Fuck. You know what Eve? I think you might just be right. A court-martial probably isn’t that bad. Thanks.”

I sighed again and a few seconds later, I heard Gonzalez start yelling and storming over, and I knew I was well and truly dead meat.

***

Sergeant Ophelia Gonzalez had a headache. She needed a smoke. Or maybe a drink. Or maybe a bullet between her eyes. Anything would be an improvement from the position she had been in for the past week and change, and now she was going to see Farrier again. That alone would have gotten her a bit tense on her best days, but today, under these circumstances it was nearly unbearable. She had arrived first and so she anxiously knocked her leg up and down in the old, dusty conference room. Farrier was soon after.

Farrier looked much like she did when she did back before she was promoted, but the uniform of an officer had an outsized effect on her. A clean-pressed green-grey shirt displayed her rank and her medals; a Red Star for injury in the line of duty, and the silvery Order of the Cascades for her distinguished actions in Idaho. Ophelia had been with her then and if she knew anything she knew that Farrier probably still pressed and ironed her own clothes. Her face had worn since then. A stray bullet from a partisan had grazed her cheek, leaving a long scar. The other two from the burst had lodged themselves in her shoulder. Her eyes, though, were all the same, cold and icy blue, and her platinum blonde hair was tied back beneath her cap. Gonzalez stood to attention and saluted.

“At ease,” said Farrier, “Phelia.”

“Lisa,” she said back, resenting the pet name, “I take it our experts are coming in soon?”

“Yes, the legal proceedings are over now, I think. They should be here any minute. Besides the obvious, how are you doing?”

“Not the best,” she said, “Not the best. You?”

“I wish I could say that things are going better for me.”

“Well,” said Gonzalez, “There’s always tomorrow.” 

There was a long, awkward silence beforethe doctors and the lawyers walked in, completing a horrible joke where the punchline was that all of them had to take this seriously. Dr. Bauer and Dr. Park looked the part, a white lab coat for Bauer and business casual for Park. The lawyer, on the other hand, was dressed in maybe the shabbiest suit that Gonzalez had ever seen on a woman. She didn’t exactly blame her - it wasn’t like it was easy to dress well in this climate, and just looking at the tan jacket was making her sweat. Her name tag read “Lenora Smith, Attorney.” 

“Sergeant Gonzalez,” said Bauer as they sat, “Lieutenant Farrier. I wish we could meet under… less awkward circumstances.” 

“Agreed,” said the lieutenant.

“Ugh, let’s just get it over with. What’ve you found?”

“Well,” said Bauer, “Let’s start with her medical record. More specifically, her X-rays. I think you’ll all find them quite edifying.”

She produced a datapad and, and connected it to the projector in the meeting room.  Ghost images of a human body appeared in the glowing screen, and the pictures were not exactly pretty. 

“Patient is externally a nearbaseline, weighing about 65 kilograms, approximately 164 centimeters in height. Patient presented as having an energetic mood in spite of her circumstances. Patient happily listed all implants in her body that she knew about and submitted to scans to further detect their function and purpose.”

Dr. Bauer produced a laser pointer and began to explicate, pointing to each interesting part of the scan with a practiced coldness.

“Starting from the top: the patient’s spine has been almost entire replaced with a ruggedized reflex booster - fiber optic connection with a chemoreceptor interface with the rest of her nervous system. This includes a seamless neural interlock in her neck, invisible without internal scans, and consistent with the modifications that we’ve seen on the corpses of other members of the so-called ‘Deltas.’ It then terminates at this structure where it interfaces with the brainstem, though a further scan revealed that the structure extends into her hippocampus.  More on that later.”

She then changed the slides to a close up of the pilot’s hand and her torso in X-ray.

“Her connective tissue has been partially replaced with cloned grafts, with the surgical scars being covered up. This explains in part her hypermobility. Why these scars are covered and not the other surgical scars is uncertain - probably for aesthetic reasons. As for her torso, she has an artificial stomach which is fairly nearbaseline in function, though she’ll never have to worry about heartburn. She has undergone an ovariohysterectomy - that is, both her natural ovaries and womb have been removed. Her hormonal cycles are maintained by a set of cloned ovaries relocated to the area above her kidneys. And she also has… cosmetic breast implants. Similarly, her erogenous zones and in fact her skin in general show an abnormal level of sensitivity to touch, which explains in part her high libido.” 

There was a brief moment of awkward silence at that before Dr. Bauer continued. 

“As in the case of the other Deltas, one of her teeth was made into a hollow tooth filled with a lethal poison. Her tooth was indeed punctured, and yet she is still alive. Further inspection revealed that the patient has a bad habit of gritting her teeth. My theory - confirmed by the hair samples we took - is that she accidentally made a small hole in her tooth which released the poison over the course of a week or two, sickening her but not killing her. Thus, why she is alive. Other than those abnormalities, she is in excellent physical health.” 

“And the implant in her brainstem?” Asked Farrier, “Is that what’s making her such a nutcase?”

“I was getting to that,” she said, “Park?”

“Ahem,” said Park, “I conducted several interviews with Eve over the past week. She happily released all of her records to be used by us. For a prisoner of war, she’s doing relatively well mentally speaking. She shows no signs of suicidal behavior at the present. No signs of combat PTSD but… she has substantial retrograde amnesia. As in, she cannot remember anything other than the last five years. Not only that, she seems to have in fact quite enjoyed combat. Apparently, her walker and her commanding officer, ‘Daddy,’ sexually stimulated her as a reward for her successes. What’s more - she doesn’t seem to fully recognize the difference between regular sexual behavior and violent behavior.”

“Sorry,” said the Lieutenant, “Are you suggesting that she might be a threat?”

“Not particularly at the present. She seems utterly fine with replacing her fixation on violence with… sex. Because, again, she doesn’t see a difference between them, just different modes of doing the same thing. I had some suspicions about this - it’s such an archaic treatment that I had to look back in the archives for it but when combined with her extensive modifications and some investigation of her neural structure it’s clear that she’s been nerve-stapled.”

“It fell out of practice back in the 10s, it’s a risky and expensive procedure,” clarified Bauer, “There’s all sorts of potential side-effects - ranging from nervous tics to permanent brain damage. The parts of her brain that process sexual arousal and death and combat are all… interlinked. And it's combined with some sort of conditioning to make her utterly subservient to her commanding officer - although that seemed to have taken less well than the conceptual polysemy. The implant in her hippocampus serves as a mnemonic filter, preventing her from remembering a life before her time serving… Daddy.” 

“It all makes sense now,” said Gonzalez, “The strange behaviors we’ve seen in the field. The way they chase down armored vehicles and infantry even when it puts them in tactical disadvantageous positions. Their constant overkill, trying to maximize casualties at seemingly any cost. Their morale being so high and so devoted to their cause that they all commit suicide at the first sign of capture. Hitting a target and death and orgasm are all the same sensations for them, so why wouldn’t they want to kill themselves? They don’t even remember a reality where that isn’t true, don’t remember that they have a family besides this… Daddy and their unit, and assume that everyone else is the same way, that this is all just some big game where the prize is killing or death.”

Gonzalez’s headache was only getting worse. Lily Jones was one of her best spotters and now she’d gone and fucked a prisoner of war, and not only that she’d fucked a prisoner of war who was brain damaged. She felt sick to her stomach. She had got drinks with Jones, more than once.

“In its own twisted way, it’s brilliant. It’s a shame that it’s also so fucking stupid. I’ll tell command the good news and the bad news: we’re fighting a bunch of fascist, sex-crazed idiots. Just… not in the usual way, I suppose,” said Farrier.

“You’re telling me that someone under my command raped a woman, aren’t you? She isn’t competent enough to consent.”

The doctors and the lawyer looked from eye to eye and then to the lieutenant and Gonzalez once more.

“Well, you see, that’s sort of the problem,” said Lenora, “I’m to represent my client to the best of my abilities, but according to Dr. Park and Dr. Bauer, she’s competent.”

“Excuse me?

“Besides her lack of memories and compulsions around authority, she’s a fully competent adult,” said Park, “While her libido is abnormal, and she is somewhat distractible - something I would consider at least partially due to this being a major life change for her - she tested extremely well. While the mnemonic filter has blocked out critical life memories, when asked she demonstrated an extensive knowledge of mathematics and geometric reasoning, the functioning and tactics used with her walker, and even had a solid grasp on drawing and art to the point that I have reason to believe that it was a hobby for her before her service. Her only substantially impaired areas were sociocultural and geographic knowledge, which she seems to be coming up to speed with rather quickly. It seems that this ‘Daddy’ limits the knowledge of his soldiers substantially as a method of control. On that topic… next slide, please.” 

The next image flickered onto the screen.

“Jesus,” said Gonzalez. It was a set of pencil drawings of the same figure in different poses, wild but not crude or poorly-thought out in their lines and perspective. In one he was wearing a great-coat with what looked like a tactical vest underneath and a pistol on his hip that seemed almost undersized; his face was entirely obscured by a helmet and a gas mask. In another he was almost entirely nude, a thin pale body pock-marked with the signs of extensive cybernetic and biological modification. His size and the perspective suggested that the man was enormously tall, at least two meters.The lack of helmet revealed that the gas-mask was permanently joined to his face by the jaw, with ports for breathing and a feeding tube. There was nothing to preserve his dignity but a shaved head being forced by one of his spidery hands into his crotch, his body hideously hunched over the other nude figure. 

“Meet Daddy,” said Park, “Extensively modified nearbaseline, according to Eve. His origins are broadly unknown to her but her drawings and interviews suggest that he directly controls a large swathe of territory in the SLA, and has been engaged in a long-term struggle with the SOM. According to her, as of recently, they’re winning.” 

“That tracks,” said Farrier. Gonzalez nodded, putting aside the thought of Lily for a second. For the past few months, the long-range ballistic missile attacks from the Sons of Moroni had gone down to a trickle, letting them safely inch closer. At the same time, the number of excursions by walkers had gone up dramatically. Park continued.

“He does show some broad similarities to the SOM, but by Eve’s account they’re better organized and have local material superiority, having commandeered and jail-broken the arcoplex printers and manufacturing facilities for military purposes, something the SOM have struggled with. It’s also unclear where he lands ideologically - but one clear element is paleosexism and paleohomophobia combined with a broad culture of sexual abuse and dominance over one’s lessers and enemies. Which he directly participates in, for the record. That’s the up and down of it - the entirety of the interviews will be on your desk soon.”

“Well, there’s another mystery solved,” said Farrier as she grimaced, “Almost wish it wasn’t. But - back to the pilot. Is there any way to restore her memories? It could give us some valuable insight if we knew where they’re recruiting from or how they’re getting manpower at the very least.” 

“There are procedures but-”

“Eve has declined to undergo them under advice from Dr. Bauer,” interrupted Lenora, “As they would not be in her best interest.”

“Why?”

“It would kill her,” said Bauer, “If not biologically, she would be so different that the current her would be dead. And she seemed to not like the idea of that when we brought it up.”

“Well, what about the ‘her’ from before all of this? Surely she should have a say in that,” said Gonzalez, leaning back and trying to figure out how the hell she was supposed to navigate something this fucking stupid and serious at the same time. She had an awful sinking feeling in her gut about how fucked this all was, the scope of the entire situation. Her mind went to the worst case scenarios - that somehow, the original Eve, if that was even her name, was in there and knew what was happening but was being filtered out until none of her remained. 

“I could do the procedure,” said Bauer coldly, “If you ordered me to, I would have little recourse except to quit. Which I would do. I have an oath to uphold. I will not kill an innocent woman who is right in front of me, protesting the possibility of her own death, just to preserve the potential life of another.”

Farrier clucked her tongue and removed some dirt from under her nails.

“So it’s an option. But if there’s no victim…” led Farrier.

“There’s no case,” said Lenora, almost mournfully, “A shame really, there’s no case law around sexual assault with this procedure and I would have loved to set a precedent. So, I talked with the Oversight about it, and I think we found a compromise that would have everyone happy going forward.” 

“Nothing about this is happy,” said Gonzalez.

“My client is happy,” said Lenora with a grin, “Because she wants to defect and continue to cooperate with the Cascadian military. She will submit to a range of further medical and mental tests now that she’s been found competent. She will surrender information to us about the Deltas, though some of the details seem to be handled by her blocker. She will be bugged, to ensure both that she is not a spy and that she is not mistreated by her significant other, one Private Lily Jones-”

“No,” said Gonzalez hopelessly.

“-who she will be listed as a dependent of-”

“-fuck off, you- this isn’t right-”

“And live with.”

“It’s already done,” said Lenora, dabbing sweat from her face, “The arrangements for their room have already been made. And, in the words of my client, ‘I’m super happy about being able to fuck Lily again, her dick is great, and she’s so fucking nice.’ So that matter is settled.”  

“Really? Is it? Because what happens when we capture another one? Are we going to hand them over from one predator to another? Is the Cascadian military going to be a brothel?”

“Relax,” said Lenora, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“WE’RE ALREADY OVER THE BRIDGE, YOU IDIOT!”

“Sergeant,” said Lieutenant Farrier, standing, “The decision has been made. I’m fine with this arrangement as long as she gives good intel and doesn’t cause any trouble on base. I’ll be expecting a contact with Oversight by tomorrow - I want to be in the loop on this. And send those medical files to my desk as well, see if I can glean anything from them.” 

“This is the wrong choice, Farrier,” said Gonzalez, “Mark my words.”

“Your objection is noted. Your tone is unwarranted. This meeting is adjourned.” 

And with that, Park, Lenora Smith and Lieutenant Farrier all shuffled out of the room, leaving Gonzalez and Bauer alone to stew in their thoughts. Dr. Bauer looked over to Gonzalez, adjusting her glasses carefully before folding away her datapad and standing to leave.

“If it’s any consolation, I advocated against this,” she said.

“It isn’t.”

And then, Gonzalez was well and truly alone, and she thought again of Private Lily Jones. What had she truly done that night? What had they done today? And what would it mean when the next pilot was captured? Unsettled by these questions she silently paced about the empty conference and out into the hall and out into the night. She faced southeast, to the horizon. Her mind flew beyond it to the vast ruins of Salt Lake which scraped the sky and penetrated the belly of the Earth. There, she imagined him, the gas-masked giant, twisted and ill-formed and wondered if in his life the first step towards his monstrosity was a moment like this one.