The Aggressors encountered the first trap pretty quickly. It was an electrified doorway, much as their scenarios had predicted and the Defenders had feared. Fortunately, the SOR were wearing their newly-integrated sensor suites, which enabled the enormous Watson cluster on the Caledonia to notice the unusual field pattern and alert the team on their in-helmet heads-up displays. The Aggressors saw the warning reticle almost as soon as they entered the room and were suitably cautious. Even with the suit’s natural insulation, one could never be too careful.
A quick examination of the situation by Highland (by now caught up with the Aggressor’s advancing front) made it clear this was a job for the Defenders. Highland tapped the Defenders button on his wrist panel, opening a radio channel.
“Laddies, I think we need your toys up here.”
Watson and the support staff monitored all team radio and telemetry feeds. Seeing a change in mission, they quickly processed and displayed the relevant location and situational information to everyone’s HUDs. The entire team was therefore up to speed before the Defenders even arrived at the door. Everyone instinctively knew their roles and the correct tactics due to the SOR’s continuous and brutal training, and all three Defenders snapped to the job. The mission? Bypass the trap or cut through the wall to the hallway on the other side.
Titan and Snapfire examined the door very quickly, waving a multifunction field probe near the handle and glancing with a practiced eye at the nearby wall. “That’s over a half-million volt charge on that handle,” said Titan, “If you’d been unsuited it’d have zapped you from a meter away.”
“Through the wall?” Snapfire was already unpacking his demo gear.
As the team NCOIC and overall mission commander, Rebar did his best to embody the team’s combat mantra: Keep Moving, Never Give Up. They could ill afford to be still, for stationary targets are easy targets.
“Do it.” Rebar prepped his plasma cutter. “Aggressors, advance the front.” Over the radio, “Protectors, this is our new staging point. Set up as quick as possible.” Acknowledgements from everyone either present or over radio quickly followed. The Aggressors immediately charged off to probe the boundaries of their cleared area, both searching for missed paths and crushing any hidden resistance. This was partly to ensure a safe rear area, but mostly to confuse their adversaries who were undoubtedly watching remotely.
Rebar and Snapfire did their usual double-team act; Snapfire deployed an incredibly thin bead of explosive compound into a door-shaped rectangle onto the wall and rigged it for detonation, working it quickly and precisely with his strong, dexterous fingers. Rebar didn’t have such a fine touch; his hands were thick and rough and favored brute power. He instead warmed his cutter and fished out his collapsable sledgehammers while Snapfire worked. The trio had done this many times in training and grown very, very good at this. The explosive was rigged in less than ten seconds, just as Rebar ignited his cutter and handed a hammer to Titan. Everyone stepped quickly and safely out of the way.
Creative destruction was what the Defenders lived for.
Snapfire triggered the explosive. There was a sharp pop as the wall was mostly cut through. As expected, it triggered alarms, dimmed lights, and generally induced localized bedlam in their immediate vicinity. In all the cacophony the returning Protectors went nearly unheard, heavily laden with all their personal gear and the portable “field hospital” in a set of four massive satchels, one to each hand.
Alas, not even modern technological advancements had done much to reduce the mass or bulk of common medical materiel. The satchels were both awkward and extremely heavy, and would be difficult for a normal man to even lift, let alone run with at full tilt. And with the huge pile of ammo they were also shouldering? They were moving so much mass that each slamming footstep left permanent, gigantic impressions on the relatively thin metallic flooring.
Later, they would joke that a Protector left his footprints everywhere.
They slammed down their gear loudly just as Rebar went to work and Titan and Snapfire began hammering away. In less than thirty seconds they had cut through the wall and closed all conduits, crimped off any wires or power cables, and cleaned up the edges enough to permit safe movement. A textbook forcible entry, completed just as the Aggressors returned from their blitzkrieg patrol of their cleared zone.
Long corridors were a genuine hazard for the SOR. It was only here where a sideways gravity trap could be rigged, since a series of parallel grav plates was required to generate such an odd field configuration. That point was forcefully driven home as Righteous charged through on point, plowed forward for about five steps—and found himself tumbling sideways at incredible speed. His lightning-quick reflexes enabled him to twist around just in time to look down a very long hallway.
But even this had been planned for. His suit, recognizing the danger, used his kinetic thrusters to slam him into the wall as hard and as quickly as possible. He was able to slow, and then stop, and then anchor himself firmly to the wall. That done, Righteous had a moment to moan in pain; something was definitely broken.
“Uh, fuck. Rebar, I’m down for the moment!”
The gravity immediately reversed direction.
“Arrgh! And now I’m upside down. Ow.” Righteous sighed internally. Of all the members of the team he was the worst off in this situation. He was by far the biggest and heaviest of the men outside the Protectors and had boots and gauntlets ill-suited to the task, but worst of all he was simply not a great climber. His Protector-like strength was of little use where he could neither gain any purchase nor do much useful with it anyway. It was all he could do to hang on for dear life, fumbling for his emergency piton gun while maintaining a death grip on the wall.
The gravity suddenly switched direction towards the proper floor, hard. Much harder than they had ever trained for. The gravity was so strong it almost pried him loose from the wall. And then almost immediately thereafter it switched directions and repulsed with equal force. Their distant adversary had clearly thought this scenario through.
For good measure, the Qinis also cranked up the gravity in the staging area as well. Snarls of annoyance were heard from the Aggressors and Defenders. The Protectors just grunted, as if the tripling of their load was hardly an inconvenience.
Rebar growled, “A’ight, you clamp onto that fuckin’ wall. ‘Base! ‘Horse!” They were already preparing their rescue. “You know what to do. Get that fuckin’ pilot line run. We’ve got a little bitch to punch.”
It was at that moment the drones appeared.
The thumping noises in the adjacent hallway made Regaari wince. He knew that was the SOR being tossed around in gravity that would crush him to goo, and that they were enduring this all so he and his Brothers could sneak in and cripple the ship. It was a long path they traveled, being denied the central hallway, but they were making excellent progress even despite the highly annoying and exhausting gravity shifts they were indirectly experiencing. Resistance was minimal. And they were almost there, just a short run from Engineering.
A locked door. Faarek and his second made quick work of it using their engineer’s mindset and the collection of tricks and techniques drilled into them on and off over the last two years. They blew the door open and entered aggressively, and set to work.
It was a systems support room off the secondary hallways running along the outer spine of the ship. The pirates within were caught completely flat-footed. Regaari charged in and his Brothers followed, and they tore through the pirates like they were but cubs challenging a fully-grown male.
It was…quick. Their close-quarters training incorporated two- and four-legged movement flowing freely between stances as the situation warranted, and with a weapon strap that held the M-4 close to his chest at all times, he was hardly encumbered. He dodged and weaved and slid right past any fire. He was so effective, in fact, he didn’t need lethal force. He merely sapped the pirates unconscious.
In less than a minute the room was neutralized. And very little blood was shed; two pirates had wicked clawmarks on their face, and another suffered broken ribs. None died, so fast and skilled were the Brothers. Inwardly Regaari was beaming with pride at their skill. But they weren’t done. They need to “tag and bag” quickly to avoid detection. And so far, their strategy seemed to be working. But they needed to be faster. Every second they dawdled net the SOR more pain, more injury, and more risk of a serious casualty.
The Gaoians pressed onward. They would not let their Human Brothers down.
Artificial gravity fields—and the necessary plating layout and design—have interesting interactions. These complex interactions had the consequence of standardizing certain elements of ship design. Most ships had a single or paired set of major corridors running down their “keel,” with a series of work bays and rooms stationed alongside. Minor hallways branched off the corridors, but for gravity design purposes, they were the same as rooms. Why this configuration? Mechanical stress from conflicting gravity loads.
To minimize this stress, it was generally necessary to minimize the number of field interaction nodes. Most designs achieved this by configuring each deck as a pair of very large gravity plates, or at least limited field nodes to room-sized areas. The practical effect of this was that gravity control throughout most of a ship was usually coarse-grained. Given this, and with the aforementioned mechanical considerations and the obviously necessary survival of the crew, the highest gravity load a ship could generally produce was around 2¼G, or triple Galactic Standard. Impressive to be sure, but hardly a concern for SOR, who routinely train hard and play aggressively in even deeper wells. And on multi-deck ships, the stacked nature of the fields prevents antigravity effects, because those fields would destructively interfere with other intersecting fields alongside, above, and below.
In other words, ship gravity can be very annoying, and even strenuous. But in an EV-MASS and with bleeding-edge training, none of that was beyond the ability of the SOR to handle. Where things got dicey was the central corridors, for those had much more gravitational flexibility. Their field plating was generally laid out as a series of narrow plates running end-to-end, much like a sidewalk is divided into squares. This enabled the hallway to provide antigravity assist for equipment movement or inertial protection for crew during very high-G maneuver.
Or, if one was a creative and sadistic individual, one could use field interference to simulate a sideways gravity well, one with strength proportional to the length of the corridor. Such an immensely powerful field currently tormented our Protectors as they attended to different tasks. Warhorse was the stronger and steadier climber, so he hauled Snapfire, both of their combat loads, and a massive pile of engineering and medical equipment up to the next room, punching through the wall paneling and anchoring safety and ferry ropes as he went.
But Baseball was the faster, bolder climber, and they needed to rescue Righteous before his grip gave out. And it was not easy going. The gravity field was strong, definitely on the high end of their training experience. And it kept switching directions, either towards or away from the plating, or sideways down the longest part of the corridor. In the former two configurations, the gravity was bad enough. But down the corridor it was so much worse than his strength was prepared for, he felt a bit light-headed the first time he felt it.
Warhorse hardly seemed to notice the difference.
I guess I’ll need to thank ‘Horse for those grip trainers, thought Baseball ironically. And here I thought my forearms were big enough already. As he climbed he looked up and noticed just how little trouble ‘Horse was having in the insane gravity, even as heavily burdened as he was. Baseball inwardly sighed. That was probably more weight than he could handle at all in gravity that deep, let alone comfortably. He couldn’t help but feel his competitive urges hit him, even now, even while climbing in a genuine rescue scenario. ’Horse is pulling too far ahead. Can’t let the midget win that easily.
But he was not distracted from his mission. He quickly slithered down and around the hallway surfaces, affixing safety lines as he went. Unlike the Aggressors, the Protectors were equipped for climbing. Their suit gloves had thin, durable, silver-impregnated rubber outer linings with a carbon-titanium-aramid inner weave, and heavier armoring on the back of the palms and digits. This gave both the necessary compressive pressure against vacuum and preserved a sensitive and sanitary touch for medical work. The grippy gloves, when combined with a Protector’s immense strength, gave their enormous paws the surest and most powerful grips on the team.
Likewise, their shoes were made of similar material and built with much the same construction. These fit over their armored undersuits but allowed full flexibility in their ankles and through the soles of the foot. This preserved full function and mobility for the Protector’s huge, wide feet, since like any good climber they were apt to use them almost as a second pair of hands. The shoes were as close to barefoot as any powerlifter or rock climber could ever want, effectively wrestling, climbing, and lifting shoes all rolled into one, designed with vacuum exposure and maneuver in mind. And using similar material to the undersuits’ compressive load-bearing fabric stripes, the shoes also had anti-roll protection built into the ankles, thus eliminating a Protector’s need for boots. With such tools and physical ability, and with the training and experience every PJ possessed? The Protectors were practically made to climb.
But this was no easy face to tackle. A misstep from the outset immediately taught Baseball that the wall and floor panels were far too weak to bear any weight at all, let alone the epic mass of himself, his suit, his gear, Righteous, his suit and his gear, especially in gravity that would crush most ETs to death. So, like Warhorse, he’d taken to punching his fist into each panel and simply ripping it off its supporting surface so he could identify the structural beams. He wasn’t quite strong enough to crush the panels up one-handed and wedge them back into the wall like Warhorse was doing, so Baseball instead drove his pitons directly into the underlying structural beams, right through the destroyed panels. Both men secured the panels so they would not become a material hazard the Qinis Asshole could exploit.
Baseball crept along, and the gravity kept shifting, and a few minutes later, he reached an exhausted and desperate Righteous. A quick check with the in-suit medical scanner revealed Righteous was in extreme lactic pain and suffering a fractured rib but was otherwise fine.
One of the prime differences between the SOR specialties is the mode and manner of their endurance training. For a Protector, their emphasis is the ability to relentlessly wield their superhuman strength under crushingly heavy loads, over countless miles of terrain and for endless hours of exertion, until the mission was complete and the patient saved.
That enduring, mind-bending strength served Baseball well, as he simply latched onto the wall and positioned himself over Righteous, flipped him around, attached him to the safety harness and began the climb back. It was an arduous effort at the limits of Baseball’s strength but he would not fail the job. He wrestled their combined mass back to safety and denied Asshole the victory he desperately sought. Baseball even administered a combat-grade Crue shot through the outer thigh safety port, so by the time they had struggled their way back to the relative safety of the landing, Righteous had a mended rib, loosened muscles, and a rage-born readiness to finish the job, no doubt fueled by the pain of his fall and of such rapid healing.
But the Defenders were hunkered down under the incessant, annoying fire of Asshole’s drones.
“How much more time?” Rebar was getting tired of this shit. It was all he could do to keep his tools and their gear secured to the floor while playing inside Asshole’s gravity funhouse.
“Couple of minutes,” grumbled Titan. “If these FUCKING DRONES would get off my nuts—!”
It was at that moment that Baseball and Righteous appeared in the ‘doorway,’ ready to kill.
“Righteous! Kill those fucking drones! The others are busy elsewhere!”
And that was where the Aggressor’s endurance shined. The drones were little more than a harassing annoyance at the moment—the EV-MASS protected the men completely from the drone’s puny weapons—but the little fuckers proved devilishly difficult to engage and greatly harassed the Defender’s work. Normally, that would be a problem the Defenders would self-solve, but the constantly shifting and inverting gravity had them effectively pinned in place, unable to move at combat speed until they had the gravity plating under their control.
Speed is the keyword. It means different things depending on context. On raw power and ability? Both the Protectors and the Aggressors were so blindingly fast it was effectively superhuman. But while the Protectors had their speed through sheer muscular strength and the realities of athletic performance at their level, they did not have the endurance to keep it up indefinitely. Their strength was geared towards work, after all. At full speed a Protector very quickly tires, even if he could, say, comfortably outsprint nearly anyone. While wearing a combat load.
But an Aggressor? He can maintain his blinding speed for as long as he has calories to sustain himself. And with their in-suit booster juice, their limiting factor was how many bottles they carried. And he had another quality the other members lacked: superhuman agility. It wasn’t enough to be merely fast. if it were down to, say, a one hundred meter dash between Aggressors and Protectors, the Protectors would almost always win. It’s very difficult to overcome strength that overwhelming. But that same dash through a twisting obstacle course? With no end in sight?
Well.
Righteous grinned savagely and growled an acknowledgement of his orders, bounced a bit to loosen up, and exploded toward the first drone. He leaped up and grabbed it, jinking to the right to dodge its fire. He snatched it out of the air, spun it around, and threw it so hard into the wall that both exploded open, exposing their inner workings. He did not see this as he was already in motion towards the second drone.
At that moment the gravity decided to invert. The Defenders grunted in annoyance but this was of no concern to Righteous. His reflexes and perception were so highly keyed-up that he was able to sense the field shifts taking place and adjust before the full force of the change was upon him. He was the biggest, fastest, and most physical of the Aggressors, truly Legsy’s protege in the realm of close-quarters combat. Against him the drones stood absolutely no chance. Righteous sensed the field inversion, leaped up into the drone, carried through the powerful antigravity and smashed the drone into the ceiling with the full weight of his substantial mass and momentum. It too exploded into useless bits.
Another field shift approached. Still bouncing along the ceiling, he leaped up to the wall and ran along it, his mass carried through by his momentum and the field shift. He thudded back to the floor and spin-kicked a third drone, smashing it to bits with his armored combat boots. Every part of him was a weapon, and his shit-kicker combat boots were designed with smashing, fighting aggressiveness in mind. They kept him sure-footed and able to land at the most awkward angles and on the worst surfaces without fear of injury.
Before he even landed he kicked off with his other foot and tackled the fourth and largest of the drones to appear, all while dodging its fire. This one was too big to simply smash so instead he punched and stabbed and kicked and ripped it to bits. His gloves, too, were engineered as weapons. They were perhaps best described as a pair of armored maces, and were solid and weighted to maximize the force of his strikes.
He paused. The drones were dead. The fields weren’t shifting any longer; Titan, freed from harassment, made quick work of his override with Snapfire assisting from the ‘upstairs’ room. Righteous trembled in anticipation, keyed up and raring to go. He needed to break things.
Not bad for a few seconds of work, he thought. “What’s next, boss?”
Rebar keyed his rally button. “Gravity is locked down shipwide, boys. Get back here and ride ‘yer Horse up to the next room.”
There were chuckles over the intercom and a deep, amused grumble from Warhorse. “Defenders, let’s get staged up and ready. The room ‘upstairs’ should take us pretty much straight to the bridge, according to the ISG.” An updated map appeared in their HUDs, unobtrusively positioned in their preferred location. “Aggressors? Get your ride upstairs and go fuck shit up. System gravity is stuck where it is so we ain’t fixing the corridor anytime soon.”
There was a pair of smug chuckles over the intercom and brief groans from everyone else. But fun cannot get in the way of the mission. Even as they indulged in a bit of banter, the men were already moving, already positioned defensively as they prepared their next maneuver. Warhorse had his ferry lines run and cinched off, so he descended back to the ‘downstairs’ landing, having muled Snapfire and all his gear up in the minutes before. With the lines in place, Rebar and Snapfire began hauling everything upstairs, one heavy toolchest at a time.
Warhorse and Baseball conversed briefly and looked at the assembled men. “So. Who’s first?”
The Gaoian Brothers moved between rooms and avoided the major hallways, quickly subduing each knot of crew they encountered. Many of the pirates took one look at the fierce and very strong-looking Brothers, charging towards them on all fours with enormous speed and practiced skill, and surrendered on the spot. A set of nylon quick-cuffs kept them disabled and ready for the Defenders to heft back to the shuttle. Others resisted, and their end was quick and violent, be it by their silenced M-4 or by knife and claw. Fortunately, very few needed such encouragement.
One pirate escaped undetected. Which was fortunate for him; he had a signal to send.
“I believe this is the room, Regaari.” Faarek said it with a wry tone and gesture.
“What was your first clue?” He gestured to the standard-issue engineering works.
“My mechanic’s intuition, of course.” Faarek and his team were already moving to disable the ship’s propulsive systems. And in very short order, they achieved their mission.
It was a bit anticlimactic, it must be said. Regaari sighed and checked in with the SOR.
“Status?”
There was a bit of a pause. Rebar replied, “Fighting through the last of their defenses before the bridge. They’re not—NERVEJAM!!”
An agonizing radio silence followed.
“—FUCK! Errrrgh, we’re all fine. My head…”
Akiyama chimed in. “It’d be useful if you could disable power shipwide, guys.”
Faarek’s crew was already on it. Suddenly, power and gravity everywhere was cut. There was a loud whump in the distance, and—
“Target is secured. Let’s attend to the mop-up.”
In the end, it took less than twenty minutes to secure the ship after initial boarding. The crew proved little challenge and the obstacles were, thankfully, mostly failures. Once the SOR had secured Nisi Val (severely injured from the takedown) and the cooperation of the bridge crew, the humans wanted nothing more than to get out of their suits, shower, and sleep. Even brief missions were exhausting.
They take their toll in more ways than one, sometimes. Warhorse was the worst of all. His suit was absolutely drenched in blood and the bridge crew stared in undisguised terror. Regaari attempted to converse but the look in ‘Horse’s eye was…unsettling.
Regaari waited until ‘Horse left, carting the last of his gear. To Rebar, “What happened?”
“Someone tried to shoot Snapfire when ‘Horse was treating him. He was just a bit too close to the Nervejam and got knocked out, but we got to him in time.”
“Is he fine? Will he—?”
“Yes, full recovery. Crue-D is remarkably effective. He’ll probably be fixed up before we get back to Cimbrean. It’s ‘Horse I’m worried about.”
Regaari could tell he didn’t like where this was going. “Explain, please.”
“Well, ‘Horse didn’t take kindly to his patient being shot at. Not one little bit. So he had just finished with the emergency Crue injection, right? Just as he was cleaning up this pirate guy popped up outta nowhere and shot at Snapfire. I think he missed, maybe? Going for someone else? Well, ‘Horse just exploded towards the little Gaoian, and…” He gestured at the red, chunky mess spread all over the floor, up the walls, and across the console. Once Regaari looked at it…
“Oh, Father Fyu.” He made a gesture of respect.
“Yeah.” An awkward pause. “I ain’t never seen anyone move so fast or act so violently. Neither have any of us. ‘Base said it was even worse than the fight in Egypt, which…anyway. ‘Horse obliterated that pirate and did it so fast it was done before I even realized what was happening. Then ‘Horse just sort of…stood there.” He cleared his throat. “We, uh, had to nudge him outta it. Then he was back to business but…quiet.”
There was an uncomfortable pause as they contemplated the horrific scene. Baseball sidled up alongside as he packed his medical kits, also about to return. “He’ll be fine but he’ll want some alone time away from everyone. Except probably you and me, Regaari.”
“Wh—why me?”
“Because he loves you, Regaari.” Baseball gave him a rueful grin, “And he’s afraid of what you may think of him right now.”
Regaari chose his words carefully. “…I think he’s incredibly dangerous, If I am to be honest.”
Baseball smiled sadly, “You’re not wrong. And sometimes, he’s afraid of what he’s become these days. Believe me, I get it. ‘Horse…” He paused and gathered his thoughts, “He’s got a lotta anger, man. More than he ever lets on. And if there is anything at all that is absofuckinglutely guaranteed to set him off it’s hurting the helpless.”
“But that, I mean,” Regaari gestured helplessly—almost frightened—at the remains, “How?”
“We’re stronger than we’ve ever really shown you or almost anyone, man. There’s a reason for that.” Baseball turned to leave, the last of the pirates gone and his gear packed. But before he left, he looked sadly back at Regaari. “We’re monsters, he and I. Real, honest-to-God monsters. And we can’t ever go back.”
Daar—our intrepid Stoneback—sat patiently in the room. Or, at least, as patiently as he could manage. He was very much a being of action and sitting still was testing his self-control. It was a smallish room, barely three by four meters with a table and chairs in the middle and what he suspected was a large semi-transparent mirror on the wall. It was a room he found slightly cramped. While he was certainly not as massive a giant as human males could apparently be, he was nonetheless an impressively large and strong being by either Gaoian or Human standard, and the room had a low ceiling as well. Standing at his full height, his ears were unpleasantly close to the hanging light fixture. He sat, mostly to suppress his growing feeling of claustrophobia.
Fortunately, the humans provided a pleasantly enormous bag of “teriyaki beef jerky” and a sizable container of cool water, so he really had little to complain about. He waited for the “being of interest” to arrive and happily munched his way through most of the rich meat.
He wondered, Who might this individual be? He closed the jerky. I should save some, in case they’re hungry.
He waited a while more. Soon he was bouncing his legs and drumming his tail against the legs of his chair. He cast about futilely for paper or anything to amuse himself with. Nothing.
Fed up, he decided on a bit of exercise, just simple one-legged squats. He found the exercise pleasingly challenging in the high gravity and began an interval routine while he waited.
I hope this mission concludes quickly.
“He’s right this way, Sergeant Regaari. He wolfed down most of his food and then got twitchy. He’s been doing calisthenics now for quite a while,” she noted with amusement. “He’s been practically bouncing off the walls since he arrived. I get the impression he’s easily bored.”
“Yes, that would describe him well. How long has he been waiting?”
“About thirty minutes,” she replied. A pause, “He certainly is high energy, isn’t he?”
“The males of his Clan are known for that and he embodies his Clan traits more than any other Stoneback I’ve ever met. Now, if I may have at least the veneer of privacy…?”
“Of course. We will be in the observation room.”
“Thank you.”
Regaari calmed himself and entered. This was a tricky greeting. While he had no deep secrets to keep from his human allies, he felt strongly that all such things should be revealed in their own appropriate time. He only hoped Daar would maintain some decorum, or at least not discuss anything in public.
On the latter, he needn’t have worried.
He opened the door and Daar was doing the Gaoian version of push-ups at an impressively rapid pace. And in Earth gravity, too. Regaari was impressed, but not just by Daar’s strength. His awareness was commendable as well. The instant the door opened he stopped, sprang to his feet and stood motionless and huffing, ears erect and facing forward, and his tail locked straight-out. His entire manner was one of deep surprise and practiced caution.
Already far better than Regaari had feared. You surprise me again, Cousin. Excellent!
“Welcome back, Daar. Consider your mission a success.”
Almost before Regaari could react, Daar rapidly closed the distance, pounced on the much smaller male and swept him up in a tight, friendly hug, their noses so close they almost touched. They stared for a while, ears listening to each other intently, then delicately sniffed in the manner of a very friendly greeting between two favorite Cousins. Daar growled low and happily, words maybe a bit too much for him just now. The sense and scent of joy radiating off of Daar was intense. They touched noses, gently, and closed their eyes.
Regaari could just barely hear the desperately muffled squeal of delight from the observation room. He tried not to hold it against her.
Briefly, Regaari reflected on his recent acquaintances. It would seem most of my friends these days are all large and overly exuberant beings. When did this become routine? Daar suddenly snuggled much harder, tightening the hug considerably and making it slightly difficult for Regaari to breathe. The massive Stoneback had always been an extremely (and perhaps overly) affectionate Cousin.
One might suspect Daar and Adam would be fast friends.
Regaari froze for a moment, smashed up in the powerful hug, and then surrendered to the primal joy of the embrace and the mild breach of decorum. He squeezed back as hard as his strength allowed, which Daar acknowledged with a deeper, happier growl. As always Regaari enjoyed the affection even if it was a bit embarrassing; his human friends also liked to hug fiercely, a social mannerism shared between the species and a very good one in Regaari’s opinion. What was less comforting was how easily humans could sometimes read Gaoians; much of their emotional body language mirrored that of the humans’ canine companions, and as a result they found many of his species’ mannerisms cute. That never failed to irk him.
But he ignored all that for now. He too growled happily, “…I missed you as well, Cousin.” They scritched each other’s ears and held for a very long moment in a friendly embrace of companionship, nuzzling and lightly nipping in pleasant familiarity, scenting each other’s happiness and enjoying what was, sadly, rare social contact in Regaari’s line of work.
But enough indulgence; back to business. “Would you please put me down? I fear the humans may be unable to contain themselves.”
Daar growled in deep pleasure at their hug-greeting and didn’t immediately respond. No surprise there; he was always one to get a bit lost in his animal side. But a few seconds later the words penetrated his awareness and he snapped his head toward the two-way mirror. “Are they well? It sounded like the female was maybe in trouble.” He dropped Regaari somewhat unceremoniously, now concerned for his handlers. “Should we do anything?” He looked, trying to observe anything, ears again pricked forward.
Regaari dusted himself off as he recovered from the sudden drop and listened. He noted the silence from the observation room with a slightly malicious inward mirth.
“They are fine, Daar. You will find their reaction is related to an endearing yet annoying trait humans share regarding our kind. I shall explain later. For now…can you debrief here?”
Inwardly, Regaari feared this part. He wanted to share with the humans but this needed to be managed with great care. In particular, he must keep the newly-developed intelligence network confidential. And this meant he could not give the impression he was keeping secrets, and that further meant Daar must remember his part. Subtlety, sadly, was not something Stonebacks were known for, and Daar was as pure and unapologetic a Stoneback as any alive. Big, strong, and surprisingly intelligent? Oh yes, he was all of that, to such a degree he was the pride of his Clan. But clever or sly? Absolutely not. Daar had all the subtlety of a heavy kinetic pulse weapon aimed at a porcelain cookware shop.
Fortunately Daar understood the situation well. “Not here, Cousin. I do not know this new ally and I do not know the rules. I must hold my silence until I speak with my Grandfather.”
Direct, honest, and phrased in exactly the correct manner. Well done, Cousin. Inwardly Regaari was delighted with how thoroughly he had underestimated Daar. This was one case where he was quite happy to be proven wrong. I will need to buy you some human food when we arrive.
“Very well. Then come, let us see to more suitable arrangements.” He opened the door and led Daar out of the room who bounded happily behind him (jerky and water in hand), immediately joined by the woman from intelligence. Her expression was both utterly professional and slightly mortified.
“Right this way, gentlebeings. Daar, we will need you to vouch for prisoners, provide recommendations for their disposition…”
They left, and set to the details.