Guard duty bored Jayla to tears, despite the picturesque location.
In the desert, she’d had free time which she had spent learning Malakshian and teaching English. She had learned the ways of her new people, her captain, and it had been fun compared to her current situation.
Now her captain, she still thought of him that way even though his superiors had demoted him to lieutenant, growled at her every morning and assigned her a post where she essentially had to sit and watch for things.
Dark gray drones flew overhead all the time and she wondered why they couldn’t simply watch, but Hrwang soldiers ringed the magical castle at all hours of the day, electronic and biological eyes guarding all the approaches.
Every time her captain growled at her, she resented him and thought about running away. But at night he was gentle when he retrieved her from her post and seemed to be his old self. However in the morning again, after his early staff meetings where watch duty was assigned, he would bark and growl and make all of his squad unhappy.
Jayla took a little comfort in the fact that he didn’t single her out in his grouchiness. She also tried to remember that she had been the cause of his demotion and needed to cut him some slack. So she did her duty like a good little soldier.
Late one night he broke into tears in their sleeping bag, confessing that he and his squad were the only Malakshians in the Grenadiers. She had never seen him so depressed before.
She awoke to excitement the next morning. One of the tiny gray drones had picked up movement on a mountain road, and three squads assembled at their combat craft to investigate. Clearly overkill, but Jayla understood the men’s boredom and the desire to see any kind of action.
They returned four hours later having found nothing.
Climbing the muddy slopes turned out to be harder than climbing ice, and when Leah faceplanted and came up covered in mud, the goo sticking to strands of her hair, filling her nose and decorating her cheeks and forehead, Wolfgang could only laugh.
He laughed so hard he slipped and lost his balance, falling in the mud also.
They both giggled uncontrollably, gently smearing mud with their fingers on each other’s faces. The laughing diminished as they both felt the sensualness of the touch. Wolfgang would have kissed her, but muddy cheeks and muddy chins got in the way. As soon as they cleaned up...
“Quiet,” Goetze hissed and everyone froze. “Cover. The trees.”
They moved slowly behind trees. Wolfgang braced his legs on roots and Leah did the same, snuggling tightly next to him. He could just see the alien vehicles five hundred meters below them on the muddy road. They hovered, tiny gray drones releasing from the hulls and traveling up the road in the direction Goetze’s sniper team had come from.
Fear gripped Wolfgang in a manner it hadn’t done since a nuclear bomb landed on his hometown.
His injuries and his loss, all that he had experienced since the alien attack began, had made him mostly immune to fear. Or so he’d thought. Now, seeing the enemy, Wolfgang didn’t want to lose anything else. He didn’t want to lose Leah. He couldn’t lose her. The fear of losing her was too much.
Soldiers should be unattached.
He almost began crying, but fear of alerting the aliens below helped him stay in control. He had an arm around Leah and wanted to pull her closer to himself, but didn’t dare move.
The aliens moved out of sight, the tiny drones flitting around the sky following the main vehicles.
None of them moved or spoke for over an hour. Wolfgang’s legs grew stiff and he had to relieve himself, but he endured.
“We don’t move until nightfall,” Goetze hissed. Everyone nodded.
Lying all day on the muddy slope, tree roots keeping Wolfgang and his fiancée from sliding back down the mountainside, needing to eat, needing to relieve himself, needing to get up and move, was excruciating. They ran out of water around two in the afternoon and didn’t dare ask for more from anyone else. They never saw the aliens again, but they still didn’t move.
Despite the extreme discomfort, Wolfgang knew not moving protected Leah, so he didn’t move.
Around five, long before sunset, but already dusk because of the ever-present heavy cloud cover, Goetze grinned.
“Well done, team. Good practice for lying in wait. We move into position tonight.”
Wolfgang couldn’t hardly stand, although as soon as he did, he unzipped his pants and took care of business.
“Men are so lucky,” Leah grumbled, unbuckling her pants. She had to lean her back against the tree.
Despite the mix of male and female, they’d all seen each other change, or relieve themselves, and no one paid any attention to anyone else, all focused instead on ending their own misery.
As soon as they were ready, Goetze told them all they were filthy, muddy messes and they might as well finish the job, covering up any free skin on their faces with the muck. Leah and Wolfgang smeared mud on each other until their skin was as dark as the night would be, and they set off.
Tree root by tree root, rocks and fallen branches used as footholds, toeholds, and kneeholds, they pulled themselves up the muddy slope.
They moved quietly, conscious of every snapped twig, every muffled curse as someone slipped and fell, every noise the heavily laden team made.
Goetze whispered that they should stop at the base of a large tree, the ground in front of it as level as any ground on the mountainside was going to be, and the six squad members took their packs off, placing them carefully and quietly against the trunk. Goetze pointed at Wolfgang and Leah and at the ground. Wolfgang nodded understanding.
The other four left and Wolfgang sat next to the packs, leaning against them. He didn’t even remember falling asleep.
Leah woke him up as the others returned and Sergeant Goetze gathered his team.
“We found two vantage points. One sniper team in each, one resting here with the packs. Rotate when we can but only at night. Clean your rifles and get ready. You two have the first watch. I’ll show you were to go,” he said, pointing at Wolfgang and Leah.
“What about water?” Wolfgang whispered. His canteen was empty.
“Pray it rains,” Goetze replied.
The corporal made a crude remark about drinking urine, but no one laughed. The possibility of that necessity loomed real.
98