Work Text:
The gym is quiet at this time of Citadel’s night cycle. It’s one of the reasons why Quirrel likes to go once the evening hits and the metaphorical moon begins to take shape in the sky— no one’s there to bother him while he hits the treadmill for an hour as he catches up on his reading. He hates to admit it, but it kind of makes him look like a loser as he jogs and flips pages at the same time. He’d rather not hear it from the recruits if he can help it.
The door to the gym hisses and releases. Machines line the mirrored walls, clean and sparkling under the fluorescent lights. Quirrel immediately beelines it to the furthest treadmill in the far corner, but a sound makes him stop dead in his tracks. A pealing laugh. Bell-like.
He turns a corner to where the bench presses are, hidden in a separate room meant for weight training. While he expects there to be a few slacking recruits, he instead discovers Hornet laid back on one of the benches. Her arms are bent into perfectly folded angles, face elegantly neutral as she holds the position for a few waning moments. Lieutenants Tiso and Lace stand above her. They should probably be spotting the commander, but the two are too busy oohing and aahing at the feat in front of them.
Hornet’s arms extend upwards. Neither Tiso or Lace go to grab the bar from her. Rather, she clanks it onto the hold that hangs over her head and sits back up. There’s not a single bead of sweat on her pale head— just a cheeky grin when she spots Quirrel watching in obvious awe from the open door frame.
“That a PR, Commander?” Tiso asks, looking at the weights. Quirrel narrows his eyes and tries to spy the number on the side but he’s not sure if his prescription is still up-to-date, and it’s kind of hard to read from this far away—
Then he sees it.
“150?” Quirrel guffaws. “Seriously?”
Tiso and Lace’s necks nearly crack at the speed they turn toward Quirrel. The commander feels quite suddenly like some sort of lurker, peering into a moment that he wasn’t invited to. The lieutenants blink at him, owlish.
“What, Quirrel?” Tiso jabs. “Don’t think a woman can do it?”
“That’s terrible, Commander!” Lace exclaims. “I didn’t know sexism still existed in the year 2186. God, what has the Alliance come to?”
Wait. Backpedal, backpedal, backpedal. Quirrel raises his hands and waves them frenetically, mouth gaping as his mind tries to catch up to what he really wants to say. It takes more than he’d like for his brain to conjure the words that sufficiently describe how highly he thinks of Hornet and her raw strength, the muscle and grit that she has compared to his own. And she has a lot of it— he can attest to that.
But before he can dispense any kind of explanation, Hornet laughs. It’s the same one he heard before, the one that summoned him like a coaxing, come-hither finger. She smiles, beatific and shimmery, and Quirrel completely forgets what he was going to say.
“Leave the commander alone, lieutenants,” she says. “I’m sure he can bench just as much as me.”
“No.”
“Wrong.”
Quirrel throws his arms up. He’s already tired and his workout hasn’t even started. “What are you all doing here, anyway? It’s the middle of the night.”
As far as the commander knows, Hornet and Tiso are both morning people. They like their early routines, a workout once the dawn rises and a protein shake following suit. Quirrel can’t count all the times he’s had the blankets thrown off of him as Hornet rolls out of bed to stretch and yawn and kickstart the day the moment her feet hit the floor. She doesn’t linger, doesn’t wait. And she especially doesn’t pull the covers back over her cold and sleepy boyfriend, who she tells should get up and get started with his to-do list.
Thus, neither of them should be in the gym right now.
He’s not so sure about Lace, though.
“We’re getting ready for tomorrow,” Hornet says as she rises from the bench. She rummages around the weights and picks out another, slotting it onto the bar. The thing settles with a sonorous clunk. “I don’t intend to lose, Commander.”
Quirrel realizes belatedly that she’s referring to their joint training session the next day. To be completely honest, he had forgotten about the entire thing this past week. Amidst all the missions, the cargo hold almost exploding, and the pilot nearly slicing his arm off while gambling with the sergeants (which was definitely not regulation appropriate, by the way), the commander of the SSV Warsaw has been a bit busy. Too busy to think about a training session suggested by his CO— a comment that should have been offhand before Hornet had piped in and said that would be a great idea, which all but cemented it into their already-packed schedules.
The only thing Quirrel knows about it is that it’s going to be some kind of competition-style, to-the-death, crew-against-crew bout. It should be his thing— in fact, it is his thing. If there’s anything Quirrel has a hard time saying no to (besides Hornet), it’s a friendly match. Only, these are fraught times, and tensions are running high; that means the leadership has even more on its plate, and the Alliance’s commanders, captains, and what have you are endlessly swamped with wartime work.
Then again, this could be a good opportunity for everyone to let some steam loose.
“Get ready to have your ass handed to you, Commander Quirrel,” Lace snickers. “The Alamo doesn’t accept failure.”
That gets a scoff from Tiso. He adds another weight to the other side of the bench press’ bar, and Quirrel has to stop and wonder for a moment as to why Tiso is even here alongside Hornet and Lace, when he should probably be throwing barbs at them in anticipation for the session. Not actively helping Hornet work out.
“I think you forgot that the Warsaw’s success rate is higher than the Alamo’s,” Tiso shoots back. Hornet lays down on the bench, rolls her shoulders, and then sets her gloved hands onto the bar. She raises the thing in a single held breath.
God, where do they even make women like this? Quirrel could watch her all day.
“By, like, 0.5 percent.”
“It’s still higher.”
“It’s a negligible value.”
“But it’s a value.”
“I don’t think you know what negligible means.”
“What I don’t know can’t hurt me.”
Sweat forms along Hornet’s forehead. It seems like 170 on each side gets her to finally falter, the weight pressing down on her harder and harder. Her arms begin to waver as she tries to push the bar back up. Though they tremble in the interim between her body and the rack, her spotters are too busy arguing above her.
Hornet grits her teeth, and then the bar slips. It happens in a split second, but that’s enough time for Quirrel to rush over and grab the metal before it has the chance to crush Hornet’s windpipe. The two of them struggle to get the immense weight back onto the rack, and Quirrel has to take a moment to be shocked at how heavy it is. He can barely hold it up with Hornet’s help.
“God,” she breathes out. Leaning over, she grabs her towel and wipes the droplets of sweat from her face. Quirrel tries not to stare as she runs the cloth over her neck, her chest, the bare skin peeking out of her sports bra. He’s pretty sure he’s staring anyways.
He shakes himself out of his trance only once he hears Tiso and Lace’s argument continuing. The two of them are still rallying, jabs flying back-and-forth like a fistfight. Quirrel has no idea what the lieutenants problems are with one another. Is it mistrust? Dislike? Or is it simple competition? To be fair, the Alliance naturally breeds those types of temperaments in its soldiers, and it coaxes those already with it to join them.
It’s easy to forget that, as kids, Tiso was a bit of a hothead. Quirrel was, too. They were always getting into fights, kicking sand at bullies, regardless if it got them in trouble. And it did— a lot. It was only after puberty hit and Quirrel’s brain started to form a little more that he figured that violence probably wasn’t the right answer to everything, and he shifted slowly from a boy to a man once his teenage years wore off. And then there was Dr. Monomon, and…
And yeah. He grew up.
But not everyone outgrows that anger. The Navy stokes it into a fine flame, controllable like a dog with an infected bite, collared and readied to pounce when directed. Quirrel, like most other commanders, isn’t against putting such emotions to use on the battlefield when it serves a cause. Seeing it happen off-duty is a separate issue, though.
Still, it’s better to let them duke it out rather than get in between whatever those two have going on. Quirrel instead scoops up Hornet’s water bottle and hands it to her once she’s done towelling off. She takes it without a word and chugs half the bottle. Water spills out the sides of her mouth in her eagerness.
Great. Now he’ll have that stuck in his head for the rest of his night.
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
Quirrel’s head snaps up. Lace is looking at him expectantly, a lazy hand on her hip.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re at the gym,” she drones. “To work out. For tomorrow.”
Yes, it would seem like that upon first glance. He’s in his workout gear, it’s the eve before their training session, and he clearly was expecting to get some kind of exercise done. But honestly, this was all more of an excuse to catch up on his reading while getting away from the noise of his ship. He loves his crew— he really does— but a man needs peace and quiet sometimes. And his cabin doesn’t always provide that.
“Yes,” he says slowly, adjusting the bag on his shoulder for emphasis. “I am.”
“What are you hitting today?” Hornet asks. “Legs, arms?”
“Cardio.”
“Oh, same as Lace. I’m pretty sure she only ever does cardio, though.”
At her name, Lace turns to her commander. She smiles and folds her arms in one haughty move. “I’m not some meathead like you and Lieutenant Sidepiece.”
And then the fight begins again. Tiso says something that he probably shouldn’t be saying to women, and Lace bites back something that she probably shouldn’t be saying to gay people. Then again, she leans to the feminine preference, so does that make this friendly-fire? Or is Quirrel just overthinking this?
Probably the latter.
Hornet rolls her eyes. Rising from the bench, she rounds to where Quirrel stands and snakes an arm around his waist. It’s not often she does such things, public displays of affection and whatnot, but the commander welcomes it as she leans over and plants a kiss on his cheek. He returns the favour just in time to hear the lieutenants feigning gags like children.
“Grow up, you two,” Hornet tells them. Then, she turns to Quirrel. “I’ve got a few sets left. Spot me?”
“Of course, dear.”
Later, after they’re cleaned of sweat and laid up in Hornet’s Citadel apartment, Hornet leans over Quirrel with a strange smile on her face. He’s half asleep when he spots her white teeth shine through the lamplight, and the sudden sharpness in her eyes.
“I hope,” she says, “you’re prepared to lose tomorrow.”
Quirrel smiles back.
“As if, Commander.”
They call it The Knoll.
The name doesn’t exist for any poetic reasons. There’s nothing special about this hill. And yet it’s gained somewhat of a reputation amongst the recruits and privates for being the best spot in the training site to set up, usually assuring a safe win from a height advantage. The grasses are long enough to lay prone in, angle your rifle, and take out your targets without ever being spotted. Add some camouflaged armour on top of that and your kills are practically guaranteed. The Knoll is where to be if you want to bring home the gold.
Tiso stretches. It’s too fucking early for this. The training site is located on some backwater planet— the only one that has enough oxygen and field space to let soldiers run free without any major consequence to civilian life— that’s covered in lush, forested lands. The forest’s treeline extends far out into the distance and circles around The Knoll, trunks bending toward the incline like nuns in prayer. Over the horizon, the sun has just barely risen. An orange sky hangs overhead with nary a cloud in its hazy glow. It’s maybe about 0530, maybe 0600; but whatever time it is, it reminds Tiso far too much of boot camp and having to roll himself out of bed at the asscrack of dawn.
Congregated around the base of The Knoll are the crews of the SSV Warsaw and SSV Alamo. Quirrel and Hornet’s soldiers, respectively. The centre of The Knoll splits the two groups, an invisible line keeping the crews from mingling any more than they need or want to. They aren’t here to be buddy-buddy with each other.
Captains Vespa and Iselda stand on The Knoll. Their perfectly-steamed uniforms shine under the soft sunlight, arms folded and gazes lazily trailing over the crews below them. It’s almost like the CoC’s been made physical, the two higher-ups standing literally above the Warsaw’s and Alamo’s soldiers. Tiso tries not to make eye contact with his captain.
“Let’s make this quick since I know you’re all eager to get started,” Iselda announces. Her voice rolls over the crowd as the gaggles of men stand at attention. None dare to look away. “These are tough times. We need to know if you’re able to keep up with continuously changing conditions, so you’re being assessed on flexibility today. I know you’ve all worked under your commanders for some time now, but we’re going to switch that up.”
Vespa nods. “This morning, Commanders Hornet and Quirrel have agreed to trade crews for this training exercise. All of those under Hornet’s command, please head over to Quirrel’s side, and vice-versa.”
If the soldiers were a bunch of recruits, little privates still stumbling in their boots and flailing with their guns, there’d probably be an uproar of confusion. Huh, what? You mean I— I have to work under a different boss? Someone I hardly know? How can I trust them, they’d ask. How can I understand what they say when they tell me to shoot this person or take down that man?
It’s a lesson all soldiers should learn early in the Alliance. Every commander is your commander. You either salute them or get tossed out the airlock— there’s no other option. Thank God that Tiso is working with people who’ve been in the Navy for long enough to know that all they’re required to do is nod and say, “Yes, ma’am!”
Still, Tiso didn’t anticipate this being the training exercise today. He glances over at Quirrel, whose eyes are locked on his CO.
A chorus of stomping boots rings out through the field. Heavy soles tamp down the earth as the crews warily eye one another up. They’re clearly confused as to how to feel about the swap. For one, they’re fighting for the opposing team, with an entirely different commander who they don’t know anything about. And two, they’re playing against their own leadership, the person they trust wholeheartedly with their life. The most obvious thought must bubble into each of their minds: are we, the crew, supposed to win? Or do we let our commander win while they work with our rivals?
The training session is more of a double-edged sword than anything else. If the crew loses, then their commander wins on the other side. But if the crew wins, then their commander loses instead. It’s a battle between loyalty and pride. Yippee.
Tiso is honestly more concerned about the fact that these men (and few women) have been so inseparably moulded by their respective leaders— who honestly cannot be more different in their commanding styles if they had a gun to their heads— that they might not be as flexible as they should be.
Commander Quirrel is the nice guy, to put it plainly. He’s happy to help or take a bullet, so as long as everyone else remains safe in his crew. Some might call him a doormat— which Tiso has been known to name him occasionally— but most would say that his leadership is simply different from that hardened military norm. He’s kind, and that goes a long way in keeping people extremely loyal.
On the other hand, Commander Hornet is chilly. Cold. A woman made from steel. She’s pure business, and is willing to make the hard choices that defines her as the head of a ship. That’s not to say she won’t protect her soldiers, but Tiso is willing to make a bet that if pressed between saving one crew member as opposed to the majority, she’d leave their ass behind without a single regret.
Do you follow out of loyalty? Or respect?
What a golden fucking question. One that Tiso is neither smart nor qualified enough to answer.
The trade isn’t quite complete yet, though. There’s two key people who have yet to cross the field. Both Tiso and Lace stand staring at one another from across the field, their crews mixed and jumbled. Tiso can see the exasperation taking over Commander Hornet’s expression and the moment she nudges her lieutenant with a foot to head over to the other side. Lace grumbles but complies.
“Tiso,” Quirrel whispers. “Go.”
Tiso goes.
Once the swap is finished, Iselda’s hand goes to her holster. She pulls out her pistol, cocks it, and fires at a tree. A dull shot goes off as a ball of red paint splatters behind Tiso’s head. Fuck— of course, she fired at the trunk near him. She’s probably still mad about that whole email debacle. Goddamn IT guys.
“Your goal is to take out all opposing targets. Hits only count if you shoot someone with a full paintball— no splashes. This isn’t target practice: headshots won’t get you any more brownie points than a bodyshot. Play smart, listen to your commander, and win. Everyone but the commanders and lieutenants have been outfitted with pistols, so keep that in mind if you’re attempting to take out any of the bigger players.”
At that, the sound of a rifle cocking comes from Quirrel’s side of the field. It takes less than a second for Tiso and Lace’s eyes to meet once again as she grins right back at him. She gives her rifle a little wave.
Tiso’s grip tightens around his own weapon. Two can play that game, girly.
“There are two win conditions: either your side eliminates the entirety of the opposing crew, or the opposing commander is taken down. Commanders, you’ve got five minutes to come up with a gameplan. After that, you’ll have another ten minutes to disperse and get into the action,” Vespa says. “Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The plan is simple. Effective. Efficient.
“This doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
“Come on, Commander— you trust me, don’t you?”
Commander Quirrel gives Lace a wayward glance from his position. Laying prone, he has to adjust his arms to account for his extra height to stay under the grasses and keep his head hidden. He manages to deliver quite the withering stare, though, in spite of all the limb finagling and jumbling he has to do.
“I think you’ve spent too much time with Hornet.”
“Sounds like jealousy, Commander,” Lace sing-songs.
Quirrel just sighs and looks through his scope. Lace huffs when he refuses to respond to her comment, rather focusing on the task at hand. If Hornet were here, she’d be more than happy to reply to the jab and keep their little game of back-and-forth going— even if she’d complain all the way through it about how they need to get back to work.
Lace takes a glance through her scope, as well. The new Warsaw crew had made a straight shot for The Knoll’s section of the forest, under the direction of Quirrel’s command and Lace’s not-so-subtle advising of, “Oh, yeah. We need to get that spot before Hornet does.” Atop the large hill, they have the perfect vantage to see anyone approaching on the horizon. A good chunk of the crew is stationed behind The Knoll, so the commander and lieutenant’s sixes are covered, as well.
Everyone else is out in the forest to play the role of bait, or getting kills. Lace doesn’t care as long as she and Quirrel are the last ones standing— so says her genius plan, which Quirrel undoubtedly isn’t a fan of.
“I just don’t think it’s fair to use the crew as a human shield,” the commander mutters. He adjusts his sunglasses, the sun’s glare glinting off them. “Doesn’t seem sportsmanlike.”
Obviously. It’s wickedly unsportsmanlike, sacrificing your entire crew this way in order to keep yourself and your other most important asset alive. But the battlefield is more a game of chess than hardened grit, and you’ve got to play with your brain rather than your brawn to stay alive. A good lieutenant knows when to advise their commander to push forward or fall back— and a good commander will take that into account when deciding their orders.
Camping on The Knoll is their best shot at winning. Both she and Quirrel are snipers, for God’s sake. What the hell are they going to do running around the forest, lugging giant guns that are clearly not meant for close combat?
Lose, that’s what.
“Commander, do you want to win? Or do you want everyone to be friends?”
“Can those two factors not coexist?”
“No. They cannot.”
The grumble to Lace’s left tells her that her reply was the incorrect one. Whatever— he’s the one accepting her advice. If he didn’t think it was a good idea, or one worth pursuing, he wouldn’t have affirmed it during their gameplan meeting an hour ago.
Right?
It’s a dirty, dirty habit. One that Tiso practices a little too often, he’ll be honest. But he never thought he’d see Hornet do it, and especially during a training exercise.
“Smoking kills, Commander.”
Commander Hornet doesn’t respond. She just pulls a cigarette out of a smushed carton slipped from one of her many pockets, and then strikes a match on the bottom of her boot. The stick lights, a flickering flame drifting westward, back toward The Knoll. She brings the cigarette to the match and then takes a deep inhale when it simmers a deep red. Smoke sings from her mouth.
“It’s a tactical smoke,” she says as she flicks the edge of the cigarette with her thumb. Flakes of ash fall into the wind. “For the greater good, you know.”
“I’m sure that’s what the cigarette companies said back then, too.”
Hornet snickers, though it’s closer to a snort. She turns toward the west, taking another drag so long that it makes Tiso terribly jealous, practically foaming at the mouth to ask her for a cigarette himself. He’s not even sure why she’s smoking. They’ve just been camping out in the far eastern section of the forest, ordering the crew to disperse as far as they can in pairs in order to cover as much ground as possible, when she suddenly whipped the carton out in the absence of the other soldiers.
The plan had been to practice some good, ol’ fashioned subterfuge and take out the entirety of the crew, rather than jumping to kill the opposing commander, so Hornet’s actions are seeming a bit nonsensical. Smoking in a forest is the exact opposite of stealthy.
“Lace might’ve called me a meathead last night, but I think she sometimes forgets why I’m a commander,” Hornet says. Then, she extends the cigarette out to Tiso with a raised brow. If this is a test, then the lieutenant is about to fail it because he reaches out and takes it without a second thought. The inhale is like stepping home, and the exhale is ecstasy.
The cigarette shrinks, centimetre by centimetre.
“Quirrel knows you smoke?”
“No,” the commander replies quickly. “Don’t tell him I do. It’s only a sometimes thing. Even Lace thinks I quit a couple years ago— which I did, to be fair.”
“And that’s why you’re smoking now.”
Hornet sends him a look. “Cheeky,” she deadpans. “Look, being a commander is about more than respect or being able to win a battle. It’s knowing your crew, in and out. Which guns they prefer, what position; how well they handle pain, and how much you can trust them with an evac when things go south. It’s being aware of how they’ll react. A good commander anticipates it before it has the chance to happen.”
The speech dislodges something in Tiso’s brain— an old comment made by Quirrel to the crew, shortly after he got his commanding status. It had been part inspirational, part thankful, and part informative, though the only moments Tiso can recall are the times where the commander had to take a breath, his face flushing pink in bashfulness at the sheer amount of responsibility that had been placed upon his shoulders. Regardless, Hornet’s own words make Tiso remember some of it.
Quirrel had said something to the same effect as her, though with a small difference. A good commander knows his crew so well, it’s as if they were friends from birth. I’m your friend, he had said. You come to me, and I’ll be there for you— don’t expect anything less.
We’re in this together.
On the other hand, Hornet is much more clinical in her delivery. There’s no fluff, no emotion. Just absolute brass tacks; she knows her crew because she has to. That’s not to say she doesn’t care for them, but there’s a marked difference in how she and Quirrel operate. Tiso isn’t sure what to make of it.
Hornet nods her head to the ground. “Drop it, Lieutenant.”
And cause a forest fire? But the commander looks confident in her order, and so Tiso complies. He tosses the stick onto the grass like the planet is his ashtray.
“Glad to see you listen more than Lace does,” Hornet chuckles. She strides over to where the cigarette lays abandoned on the ground, smouldering and smoking. Small embers light the surrounding grasses, and yeah, it’s definitely going to cause some kind of fire if it’s left any longer. The wind and sun provide the perfect conditions to allow the flame to grow into something uncontrollable.
Hornet’s hands glow a sudden blue. A rule had been tossed out shortly before the teams split up and the game began— no biotic shield usage would be allowed. That didn’t negate biotic usage entirely, and so what Hornet is doing is technically within the exercise’s legal bounds. The cigarette momentarily shines blue before flicking back to its regular colours. The surrounding embers die. It still smokes, though; grey lines float idly into the sky like a signal, revealing to everyone their position.
“There. It shouldn’t spread further than this.”
“Which means…”
Hornet grins. It’s all teeth and fang.
“Trust that I know my crew well enough that this will work. Get into a bush and we’ll wait for the magic to happen.”
It’s easy pickings from The Knoll.
Lace inhales, finger on the trigger. She exhales, and pulls.
“Oh, fuck,” she hears from across the field. It’s one of Quirrel’s sergeants, a younger guy in his mid-twenties. His chest is splattered red and his partner is trying his best to scurry off into the forest, but the dappled light gives the commander the perfect view of his target. Though the soldier is fast, the commander is faster.
“Sorry, Smith,” Quirrel squeaks out as he tugs on the trigger. His rifle kicks back and the soldier makes one last Hail Mary to keep himself in the game by throwing himself to the ground in hopes of avoiding the paintball. No luck, it seems. The ball hits him square in the back and his curses are loud enough to hear all throughout the forest.
It’s a textbook kill.
“Used to hitting moving targets?” Lace asks.
Quirrel shrugs. He busies himself with wiping the paint from the rifle’s barrel, covering it instead with more dirt to camouflage it into the ground. “Commanders need to be. If everything were right in the galaxy, targets would stay still and the wind wouldn’t exist. But seeing as it isn’t, we have to adapt to it.”
“That’s a verbose way to put it. Is that why they called you Books?”
“Because I speak, what— verbosely?”
“Sure. Or excessively.”
The look that Lace receives is message enough: seriously? And yes, seriously, Commander. It’s not often that the lieutenant has the chance to spend much time with her own commander’s boyfriend (not that she wants to, really), and so she’s putting this training session to good use. Having a bit of fun is harmless, isn’t it? All the teasing, the poking and prodding. Quirrel’s a big boy. He can handle it.
But the commander doesn’t play ball. It’s in his court, and he just lets it sit there like he’s never thrown one in his life.
“No. The callsign came after my sergeant found out I used to be a researcher. Researchers read books, so duh— why not call Quirrel Lieutenant Books?”
It would give away their position completely, and so Lace musters down the laughter she so desperately wants to let out. The humour pools in her stomach and weighs her closer to the ground. It makes the planet feel as if it has more gravity than it actually does, in spite of it being a near carbon-copy to Earth’s.
“How inspired.”
“Extremely so. My CO wanted me to keep it since he said it matched me well, but I kept getting confused on the comms. After a near-death and miscommunication later, he made the awfully difficult decision to tell the boys to cut it out.”
“And why, pray tell, did Books match you? I don’t think your previous career has any real bearing on whether or not you continue to read.”
Quirrel shakes his head as a small smile grows on his face. His cheeks crinkle, reminding Lace how Hornet’s does the same whenever she’s recalling a fond memory. They say that happens sometimes between lovers. When you’re in love, you copy your partner, and they you. She wonders if she and Hornet ever looked similar before dismissing the useless thought. It’s no use lingering on ghosts.
“It actually is because I read. The battlefield, that is. My commander said I should have gone into tactics a while after I enlisted.” Quirrel purses his lips, looking out into the field. The forest is quiet but for the tousling of grass, soft whispering winds sliding its hands through the tresses. It’s peaceful. “That’s why, while I believe your plan is rather callous, it is the best decision to make if we wish to win this game. It’s one of my least favourite aspects of being a commander, if I’m being honest. Sometimes, winning means playing dirty.”
The tactical yet kind commander. Calculating in his orders, though caring in the aftermath. Lace gives Quirrel a sidelong look as he pointedly ignores his temporary lieutenant. Seems he’s revealed a bit too much in the silence, although Lace doesn’t mind it one bit.
She sort of sees why Hornet likes him so much, despite the dopey, lovestruck look he wears whenever he’s around her. His dichotomy is such a fine line between being human and being a soldier that it’s difficult not to acknowledge that he has managed to keep his morality while gunning down others. It’s less duty and more knowledge that each sacrifice is to keep the Alliance— humanity— safe.
It’s a noble goal. One that Lace doesn’t have. She’s here because she has to be, and there isn’t anything else waiting for her in the rest of this stupid galaxy.
“Hornet doesn’t have that problem,” Lace says. “Far from it, in fact.”
Quirrel nods. “I know. She’s a military woman, through and through.”
The way he says it ticks something off in Lace’s head. She’s probably overreacting, hearing things where they don’t exist, but sue her for noticing the small details within her best friend’s boyfriend’s voice. It’s Lace’s duty as Hornet’s lieutenant to pick up on these things— to protect her. Bullets or otherwise.
Lace turns slow, eyes narrowing. She tightens her gauntlets around her rifle.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not,” Quirrel replies. “She does her job extremely well, and she deserves every bit of respect given to her. I only think that—”
“That what?”
“That there’s strength in mercy.”
Lace rolls her eyes. Gross.
Captain Iselda leans back against her ship and checks her Omni-tool. It’s almost evening, around 1700 hours. Nearly every member from each crew has returned with a red splatter on them. On their chest, their legs, their backs. The walk of shame must have been long for these poor souls.
“Who’s left?” asks Vespa. Iselda looks down at her tool again, fingers pattering against the screen, reading which players are still active in the roster. When she counts the remaining soldiers, she grins and leans the tool over to Vespa. Vespa barks out a laugh.
“It’ll be a fight to the death,” says Iselda.
“Or however close they can get to it.”
A small betting pool has formed between the “dead” crew members. The odds are stacked fairly evenly as of now, and while Iselda doesn’t like to encourage non-regulation behavior in her soldiers, she tosses a handful of credits into Quirrel’s pot. She has to root for her own team, after all.
Vespa places all her credits on Hornet.
They’re down an entire crew— almost.
The trade-off is that Quirrel and Lace are also nearly out of the game, if Tiso has been counting their kills correctly. Hornet’s little plan to lure the more curious, run-into-fights-first soldiers with the smoke signal worked quite well. All that was required of Hornet and Tiso was to wait in the bushes, behind the trees, and then spray or blast the unaware soldiers who stumbled into their trap.
But the ease with which the crews wandered toward the extremely obvious ploy made Tiso think that either Hornet’s soldiers are trained extremely poorly and prone to giving into impulse too easily, or Quirrel doesn’t have a good handle on his temporary crew and isn’t as flexible a commander as he should be. Either way, it’s discouraging for both the Warsaw and Alamo’s leadership, Tiso included.
At this point in the game, they’re forced to make a play. They can’t wait like sitting ducks forever. The only problem is that, if Tiso knows Quirrel well enough, he’ll be camped out on The Knoll with a few crew members to watch his back. That means their only real option is to head into the dead-centre of the field to take on the primary targets while right in front of The Knoll, where they’ll be extremely easy to hit for two premiere snipers.
“What they have in accuracy,” Hornet says as she peers out of the treeline, watching Quirrel steady his aim at the top of the hill, “we have in speed.”
With that, Hornet’s hand alights with a biotic blue glow. The eezo in her blood must run thick because the moment she makes a tugging motion with her fingers, the air shifts and becomes fat with a thread of power. Tiso can almost taste the way the biotics coil around the atmosphere, hanging heavy and languid to coax the world to its bidding.
Hornet wraps the biotics around their legs. They shine a bright blue, making them immediately noticeable from the treeline. Either Quirrel or Lace must spot it because a shot goes off, a red paintball just barely missing them to hit the trunk between Tiso and Hornet. Some of the paint gets onto the side of Hornet’s pale face, giving her the look of a true blood-splattered soldier.
“You’ll be able to jump higher, run faster,” she says, hurried. “Just dodge the shots and get as close as you can. Close quarters is the goal here.”
“Roger.”
And then they’re off in a blur of blue and bullets. Tiso holds his AR close to his chest, pushing his legs into overdrive as he sprints in a zig-zag toward The Knoll. It’s nothing but wide-open field here, long grass and little pink flowers that dot the land. You’d have to be blind to not see the two soldiers huffing it across the acre, and you’d have to be deaf to not hear the heavy footfalls of their running. Paintballs hit empty air as they fly past Tiso’s head, neither sniper accounting for the wind now that the enemy is gaining on them. He’s sure Lace is aiming for his face.
Soon enough, the two of them reach the edge of The Knoll. Tiso pauses for a second to watch Hornet bend and then lift herself from the ground with her biotics, a trail of hazy eezo following in her wake. She quite literally flies from the bottom of The Knoll to the top. Tiso mimics her movements to find himself also leaping high into the air, albeit a bit less gracefully. His legs flail in awkward jolts as he reorients his balance into the sudden zero gravity, landing heavily in front of Lace as she reloads her rifle.
“You fucker—” Lace chokes out as Tiso blasts her directly in the chest with his gun. The red paint spits everywhere, staining her pretty white armour. He even shoots her a few extra times for good measure. Just so she knows she’s lost.
But before Tiso can celebrate, he hears the tell-tale struggle of a fight going on next to him. A few paces over is Quirrel and Hornet, wrestling on the ground. Neither of their weapons are to be seen, discarded somewhere in the midst of their tussle. Quirrel has Hornet pinned, but the Alamo’s commander isn’t going down that easily. She kicks at her boyfriend’s stomach to force him off of her— notably, she doesn’t go for his junk, which is probably where most other people would have gone for. Obviously, she has some kind of stake in that location.
Quirrel releases her instinctively, hands loosening. That gives Hornet enough of a chance to slip free and turn the tables, forcing Quirrel to the ground instead. They trade a few blows, fists here and there, but nothing enough to leave a lasting bruise.
“Just do it, Lieutenant,” Lace bemoans. “We’ve already lost.”
Tiso’s hand stills. He watches the fight unfold, the shifting hips and jutting legs. Hornet throws a right hook and Quirrel dodges it. Quirrel presses his thigh against Hornet’s stomach, and she shakes him off.
It’s a dance, Tiso realizes. Whatever song they move to, it’s one they can both hear. In sync, in tune, each punch is a rhyme and every kick is a melody that they’re humming together. All at once, a wave of nausea rolls over Tiso and he can’t bear to look away from the way their faces flush under the dying sunlight, night settling above them.
The moon shines. Their breaths are heavy.
Then— then, Quirrel smiles. Laughs. And Hornet’s only response is a savage sound, closer to an animalistic growl than anything a human can physically make. She presses, presses, presses onto Quirrel while the commander beneath her lets loose a long sigh as he stares up at the endless stars.
Tiso sees red when he takes the shot.
The suggestion for a round (or two) of celebratory drinks was an impromptu one, shortly after the training session was wrapped up. There was a planet nearby, one that Lace knew served the best drinks you could get outside of Earth, and they just had to try it out. And then Quirrel made the offer that the losers should buy, which had everyone on board except for the woman who originally said they should go there.
And so here they are. Four little soldiers, sat in a booth. Quirrel and Tiso sit in the inner corners across from one another, and Hornet and Lace do the same on the outside. The night has been filled with chatter and well-poured drinks, random comments and stories shared from old missions. Though there’s a war being waged in the galaxy, all is calm in the bar. Tiso feels like the exact opposite, but he can’t complain too much when the whiskey here is really, really good.
It’s after an hour of getting liquored up that Hornet rises from her seat. Her beer glass sits empty on the table, a ring of condensation formed around its bottom. “I’m gonna go get some air,” she says. And then, turning to Quirrel, “Grab me another while I’m out?”
Quirrel nods, the happy recipient of a thank-you kiss from Hornet. “Of course, dear. Lace, would you like another cosmo?”
“I’ll come with,” Lace sniffs. She fetches her glass and runs a finger along the rim. “I think I need something stronger. To ease the sting of our terrible loss.”
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“No, Commander Quirrel. It was bad. I got shot in the chest and your own lieutenant blasted your face with paint.”
“Point taken.”
The two rise from the booth, with Tiso having to shuffle out of the way to let Quirrel past. He’s left standing awkwardly next to the seats as Hornet grabs her coat, an old, ratty leather thing that’s got to be from at least two decades ago. It’s flaking at the edges, worn and torn in spots that it shouldn’t be. There’s a patch on the front that reads in looping cursive, To The Moon and Back.
From the pocket, Hornet pulls out a carton. She nods her head toward the door and Tiso doesn’t need any further invitation than that.
The night air is cool, bracing. Tiso’s not sure what this planet is called, but its skies look eerily similar to Earth’s. A single moon sits high above, shining down on the spot where Hornet and Tiso lean up against the bar’s stone walls.
Hornet pulls out a cigarette, lighting it with what seems to be a vintage lighter. With that accessory, she looks a bit like a biker alongside her jacket and cigarette and short, messily-cropped hair. Her downcast eyes focus on lighting the filter until it sparks with an amber glow. She shakes the carton at Tiso, and he pulls a stick out.
Tiso pats his pockets for a lighter, and— shit. It’s not there.
“Need a light?” she asks.
“Yeah, thanks.”
Instead of just handing him the lighter like a normal person, Hornet leans over and touches her cigarette to the edge of Tiso’s. She takes a breath, and the ends both brighten in a single flicker of light. Tiso is momentarily rendered speechless because what the hell was that.
“Sorry,” she says, standing straight once again. Even while off-duty, her posture is regulation-perfect. “The lighter’s an old gift. I don’t use it unless I have to.”
“Who’s it from?”
“Vespa. Right after I became an N7. Used to be my mom’s— same with the jacket.”
Hornet smiles. It’s not the one he saw during the training session, the one that was lined with barbed wire and nails. No, this is a softer smile, reserved for the in-between moments. Mentions of her mother.
“Must’ve been an interesting lady. That thing looks ancient,” Tiso says, breath flittering from his mouth. These are good smokes, he thinks distantly. High-quality. They leave a fine taste on your tongue, smooth like silk in the lungs.
“So I’ve been told.”
This would be the part of the conversation where Hornet asks about Tiso’s parents, and he’d have to come up with some stupid story about how he has a very happy family back on Earth and they’re all waiting for him to retire because being in the Navy is dangerous work, my son! He’s told it a million times to a million different people, all folks who couldn’t give two shits about whether or not he’s an orphan but he felt the need to hide the fact from anyways.
But Hornet doesn’t ask. The wound of a perished parent must run deep. It’s not the same as an absent one, though it’s similar nonetheless.
She finishes her cigarette in the dark night, stood under the combined white light of the street lamps and moon. Once the filter shrinks down to the root, she tosses the butt on the ground and stamps it out under her Alliance-issued boot.
“You know,” she hums, “you’d make a good addition to the Alamo.”
Tiso’s head snaps up. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?”
What does she mean? Is this an offer? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what Hornet is trying to get at here. Her stare is cryptic at best, and her statement doesn’t leave many clues for him to parse out any further meaning. Tiso just takes another drag and stays silent, unsure of how to proceed.
“I don’t know,” he says finally.
“You were willing to shoot your commander.”
“In a training exercise.”
“Sure. That’s what Quirrel told you it was? Just a training exercise?”
“What are you—”
Hornet chuckles. It’s harsh and sudden like the squall of gulls over the sea. “God, don’t make that face. I’m just fucking with you, Lieutenant.”
The confession makes Tiso’s lungs deflate with a breath he didn’t know he was holding. For some reason, a seed of disappointment has planted itself in the back of his mind. It whispers possibilities, but he smothers it, not unlike what he’s done with all the other needless, pointless, and going-nowhere thoughts he’s ever had in his life. Which counts for a lot.
“You’re stone cold, Commander.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” she says. “Though in all seriousness, you’re a good lieutenant. Maybe you were just on your best behavior because you were my temp— but whatever. The point stands. So as long as you trust your CO, the win’s always in your pocket. Remember that when you’re promoted.”
Tiso blinks confusedly as Hornet pulls the carton back out from her jacket. For a moment, Tiso thinks that she’s about to light up again, but that doesn’t happen. Rather, she tosses the carton to the lieutenant, who only manages to catch it because he drops his half-smoked cigarette onto the muddy ground.
“When?” he asks dumbly.
“Sure. When; if. Does it make a difference?”
“Technically, yeah.”
She laughs again and turns toward the door. “Better stop there before you sound too much like Quirrel.”
The carton in Tiso’s hands feels weighty, as if inside the cigarettes are made from lead and titanium. The edges crinkle in his scarred hands. Pristine white cardboard folds, bends, until he remembers that these aren’t his smokes— not really. They’re too pretty and nice and expensive to be called his own.
“Wait,” Tiso calls. “Quirrel’s gonna smell the ash on you.”
Hornet waves a hand, nudging the door open with a foot. The bell above chimes sweetly.
“It’s fine. A man should know everything about his girl, right?”
The statement sounds false. Something is wrong with it— Hornet shouldn’t be saying it. Not her, the woman of a hundred battles, Commander Hardass and all those other stupid names the recruits— the boys— give her. The daughter of the Alliance. Its pride and joy.
“No,” Tiso says. “You’re a woman. Not a girl.”
Hornet is one step into the bar when she stops in her tracks. Hands dug in her pocket, shoulder against the door, the wind slides through the streets’ slipstream and into the warm space inside. The temperatures mingle. Cold, hot. Hot, cold.
She blinks a few times, mouth opening and closing. Hesitating.
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” she says eventually. “I— yeah. Just… thank you.”
“Of course, Commander.”
She holds the door open with a hand, and slides a little to the side to let Tiso in first.
“Come on. It’s fucking freezing out here.”
“Roger.”