by Michael Todd
Sal smiled. She fell asleep quickly, but since she usually wasn’t the type to cuddle after sex, he decided not to spoon for the moment. Instead, he pulled himself up and dragged his pack out from under the bed. He retrieved his tablet after a fair amount of rummaging. A couple of very secure encryptions kept it safe from intruders. He dealt with those in short order and opened a file labeled Madie.
“Impressive sexual stamina, possible side-effect of the goop,” he tapped quickly into the digital keyboard and tagged it with a reminder for him to come back to it later once he’d had more time to research. He stowed the tablet and pushed his pack under the bed before he shuffled down into his place beside Madigan.
Damn it, he’d forgotten to check the time.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Talk to me here, Dr. Bial,” Anderson demanded as the technicians and engineers worked single-mindedly on the suit upgrades. With the amount of work imported from Pegasus, he wondered if it wouldn’t actually be cheaper to simply take everything away and start from scratch with whatever these new upgrades were. They had to be tied to the feedback that the scientists had sent back.
He assumed so, anyway. They had sent him the specs of the improvements, but it provided innumerable details that were supposed to be in English but didn’t seem to be in any kind of English he could understand. The colonel had minored in computer sciences back in college, so he got the gist of what they talked about when it came to the software upgrades. But even then, it was leagues and leagues ahead of any of the coding he’d studied, which explained why he was out there to oversee this rather than comfortably seated in New York where he’d be paid six figures to develop this crap.
His real trouble, as if he didn’t have enough others, was when it came down to the specs of the hardware upgrades. He liked to think that a college degree enabled him to get a good grip on the coding. But no amount of dozing off in elective classes for extra credit would get him anywhere when it came to the electrical and developmental engineering that went into a multi-million-dollar project like this.
It took aliens to beat aliens, he thought with a small smirk.
“How can I help you, Colonel?” Bial asked and glanced up from his own copy of the specs.
“I may have failed high school chemistry,” Anderson said and pushed from his chair in the operation center to walk to where the researcher stood. “Well, not so much failed as forgot to take, but I’ve seen the periodic table of elements, and I don’t ever remember seeing something called…” Anderson took a moment to check the name again. “Eurtonium?”
Bial nodded. “I was curious about that too. It turns out that it’s a proprietary element created and trademarked by Pegasus. These days, the trademark laws allow them to withhold the precise details about the creation and even the atomic density of their elements for up to twenty years. That includes anything from scientific journals to high school chemistry textbooks.”
The colonel nodded. “Well, hot damn. I wondered what I could do with the elements I discovered and couldn’t make any money from.”
The scientist smirked. “Yeah, well, they made me sign about fifty non-disclosure agreements before we started on this fucking project, which means that their proprietary designs are legally safe.”
“They made me sign the same NDAs,” Anderson confirmed and folded his arms as he watched the engineers who worked on the suits. They’d been flown in almost minutes after the reports had been sent out, and word was that the new pilots they would bring in wouldn’t even be military. At least, not any branch that he was aware of.
Because that wasn’t fucking shady at all, he thought snidely.
“From the look of it, I’d say it’s a mineral used when they make the metal that they put into the armor,” Bial said. “It makes the metal less dense but with a firmer molecular grip. It has a low melting temperature, so it’s easily malleable, but once it cools, it will maintain its integrity under even the worst pressure.”
Anderson rolled his eyes, and his companion laughed. “That means that it’s light and easy to work with, and at the same time, is capable of absorbing gunfire and other kinds of impact without breaking—and even absorbing kinetic energy, it appears.”
“So…along the lines of Kevlar made into a steel plate?” he asked.
“It’s obviously more complicated than that, and I assume it cost millions to develop, but yeah, that’s it in a nutshell,” Bial confirmed.
A little intrigued despite his frustration with the entire project, the colonel watched as the engineers drilled into the plates with what looked like diamond-bit drills. He assumed that was what it took to penetrate them. He’d heard of armor-piercing rounds with diamond bits built in, but with the amount of difficulty that the man had to make even a tiny hole in the piece he drilled into, Anderson suspected that even diamond-strengthened slugs would have trouble making any real impact.
“What are they doing?” Anderson asked.
“The first order of business was to fit all the individual pieces with tracking markers,” the scientist answered. “My guess is that they don’t want any more legs to go missing with chunks of trademarked metal in them.”
“That’s the first order of business? We have only four days in which to prepare everything for the next trial run or this whole operation is dead in the water.”
“That’s their call, not ours,” Bial replied and tapped lightly on the clipboard he held. “Our people are relegated almost entirely to support roles right now, while the people that they brought in do all the work. It seems they want to pass the blame for the mishaps onto us rather than their own development teams.”
“You’ll still get paid for all this though, right?”
“Oh, yeah.” The man chuckled dryly. “Still, I didn’t come out here for the money.”
“I wish I had come out here for the money,” the colonel muttered. He wouldn’t even have the satisfaction of a pay bump from this entire fiasco.
He looked out the window and studied the changed environment. A few years ago, this had been the second largest desert in the world. Now, it was dangerous for a whole myriad of other reasons. Heavy machine guns still covered the angles of the Zoo and men alternated on a twenty-four-hour schedule to maintain the couple of kilometers that were still free of the trees between the construction site and the Zoo. Satellite images revealed that the Zoo was already within spitting distance of other sections of the wall that were already completed.
Beyond the limit of his vision and shrouded by the rampant growth, something moved in the underbrush of the Zoo. The creature stood almost at the edge of the tree line. Four eyes were spread over an elongated skull. They all moved independently from each other like a chameleon’s, but at that moment, all were focused on the encampment across the open space. Very little could be seen of the animal, even by anything or anyone closer to where it stood. The eyes blinked one at a time before the beast growled, a low, deep rumble easily lost in the noise of the jungle before it withdrew slowly between the trees.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Madigan shook her head and opened her eyes when the glare of the sun bothered her. She peered at the window, annoyed to find that the shades were pulled but that the sun shone through them easily. Just like the Russians to go cheap on the shades, she thought and muttered her irritation.
It took her a few seconds longer than she would have liked to realize that something else had woken her. The sun had been the catalyst, of course, but something else had penetrated beyond that to draw her out of her instinctive grumbled protest about not being able to sleep. She scowled and focused on the strange surroundings to identify the something that dragged her into full wakefulness. Someone whistled on key but off rhythm enough to scratch at her internal senses.
She growled incoherently as she pushed her legs off the bed and winced when she realized how sore she was. At that moment, she had approved of how roughly Sal had man-handled her, but in retrospect, she probably could have done wit
h a bit less macho through the marathon. Her tits and ass were red and tender, along with her aching pussy. All three would probably remind her for a couple of days of the experience. Although, she mused, there was something hot about being marked by Sal. She wasn’t sure what that was about. It was like he’d established his dominance last night and made sure she wouldn’t forget it anytime soon.
Kennedy pushed past the memories and stood carefully. She swayed a little as she tried to keep her balance while resisting the urge to spread her sore thighs too much. Her gaze paused at the clothes from her pack that were now hung over the back of the chair in the room, and she narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t brought them there. No, she had come with only a towel on since the idea had been seduction.
The towel was gone too, she realized.
Before any thought of dressing, she needed to take a shower. She smelled of sweat, sex, and cum, both hers and his, and while it had been hot in the moment, it was now much less so. She snatched her clothes, shrugged, and simply walked out of the room.
The whistling came from Sal who worked happily in front of the stove. She could smell breakfast food, and while her mouth watered, she forced herself to head to the bathroom first.
“Morning,” he said with a smile when he heard the door open.
“Morning,” Madigan responded and turned. He watched her with an amused grin and she realized too late that it was because she still walked bow-legged. “Oh…bite me.”
He pointed at her shoulder where, sure enough, there were a couple of bite marks. “Already done. I’m efficient like that.”
She chose to say nothing in response and simply flipped him off.
“We can do that next time if you feel up to it,” he said with a grin. She shook her head but felt a tremor between her thighs at the thought. Quickly, she pushed the sensation aside. She was in no shape for a repeat and probably wouldn’t be for a while, although she knew that she would knock on his door for the next round before too long. She would, however, refrain from making any bets against him this time.
“There are some pain meds in the mirror cabinet,” Sal called before she closed the door. She peeked out at him, suspicious about how he knew that already—and how he knew that she would need them.
He shrugged at her unasked question. “I might be Super Sex Man, but I’m not Man of Steel yet. I’m still not at a hundred percent after last night either.”
She smiled and looked away. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He turned back to his cooking. “Think of me while you shower, okay?”
She blushed and flipped him off again, unconcerned that he couldn’t see it before she shut the door behind her. Even so, she couldn’t help but think about him in there, especially while she washed where he’d thrust into for most of the night. The exercise stirred conflicting feelings and sensations, and she was tempted to explore these further. Common sense prevailed. She knew that if she fell, she might need to call Sal to help her up.
There was no way she would ever live that shit down.
It still meant that she had been left with an ache of need and more than a little wetness to disguise when she pulled her clothes on. She shook her head and gave up her attempt to come to terms with all this before she took Sal’s advice, stole a pill from the cabinet, and swallowed it smoothly. It would take a few minutes to kick in, so she was unfortunately damned to make another walk of shame from the bathroom to the kitchen.
At least he didn’t tease her about it this time.
She sat at the table and watched Sal work at the stove. A couple of minutes passed before he turned to put a plate with a couple of bacon strips and a stack of pancakes in front of her.
“I…didn’t know that you could cook,” Madigan said, impressed, as he put some butter and jam beside the cup of hot coffee that he’d prepared as well.
“Well, I could make a couple of cracks about how much there is about me that you don’t know,” he said, “but there were a lot of occasions to learn how to make some good breakfast food when I was a teenager. Breakfast is the only thing I really know how to make. When we get back, I’ll make you some killer eggs Benedict. They only had dehydrated eggs here, so…yeah.”
“So you can’t cook a decent steak, but you can make eggs Benedict?” she asked, her mouth half full of pancake that she’d smeared with butter and raspberry jam.
“I can make a decent steak,” Sal said and sat across the table from her. He dug enthusiastically into his own pile of pancakes. “Decent baked potatoes. Pretty much anything that doesn’t require days of work, which means…yeah, breakfast foods and snacks.”
“Since when is steak a breakfast food?” Madigan asked. She sipped her coffee and winced.
“I know,” he agreed. “Russians make up for their good vodka with terrible coffee. Anyway, where I come from, steak and eggs are the go-to breakfast. And bacon was in everything, so it mixed into breakfast too.”
“Yeah, in a diner,” she sniped.
He didn’t actually have anything to say to that. In all honesty, he liked diner food, especially when it included fries, steak, and no judgment for someone who had lived on coffee and popcorn for the past week or so.
“How do you feel?” he asked after she demolished her first stack and he served her a second.
“Don’t even ask,” she protested. “I’m not even sure how you managed that, but you did. I might be ruined for life.”
“You might want to see a doctor about that,” Sal said and looked genuinely concerned.
“Not physically, dumbass.” Madigan laughed. “Well, maybe a little bit, although it’s nothing that shouldn’t be rectified in a couple of days. Hopefully. I will see a doctor if it doesn’t.”
“How do you mean, then?” he asked and his face twisted with disgust when he sipped his coffee.
She smirked. “Well, unless guys who can marathon like that have been in hiding all my life, I don’t think I’ll find any other guy who can do it like you can. The guys I’ve been with before couldn’t, and that includes you. Not that our sex before wasn’t fun and enjoyable, but never…that fun and enjoyable.”
He smiled and nodded. “Well, I guess I’ll take that as a compliment and look to improving my performance for next time. That’s…assuming that there’ll be a next time?”
“Provided that the both of us haven’t died before then, you can bet your nail-marked ass there’ll be a next time,” Madigan said and grinned.
He smirked. “Well, I am happy to hear that. Although I need time for recovery, and I’m sure you do too.”
“Hey, my recuperation skills might not be as impressive as yours, but I don’t think it’ll be too long before your bones get jumped once more,” she said and winked.
Sal looked like he might actually be blushing when he looked down. If she were that kind of woman, he was the kind of guy she could have eating out of her hand. He was still young, energetic, and passionate about things. She wasn’t like that, though. Even though he’d probably ruined her for other guys, she didn’t want to be the kind of woman who ruined other women for him.
She took another sip of the coffee and coughed. “Fuck, is there any cream around here? This stuff is atrocious.”
“There’s some milk in the fridge.” Sal pointed at the mini refrigerator behind him. She nodded in thanks and poured a hefty amount into her mug.
“They’ve transferred the money that the commandant promised us into the company account,” he said once the pancakes were gone. “Even the stuff that they said was for Courtney. I already pushed that into her personal account. I know I should have checked with my partner first. I’m sorry about that. It only occurred to me after the transfer was made.”
“So long as you don’t touch the money I help make without my consent, it’s all good,” Madigan responded with a smile. Even with milk, the coffee tasted like it had been harvested a decade before. “You’re the senior partner, so I trust you to do the right thing. For now, anyway.”
; Sal nodded. “Thanks, I appreciate that.”
She finally put the mug of coffee down with a snort of disgust. “I swear to God, I need to make this stuff Irish or something.”
“I don’t think that the whiskey will be any good around here,” he said. “Do you call it Russian coffee if you mix it with vodka?”
“Isn’t that a black Russian?” Madigan asked.
“Nah, that’s with Kahlua, I think.” He’d had some group projects with students who worked part-time as bartenders. Of course, he had only been a teenager at the time, so he had to go on what he’d heard them discuss. It really wasn’t that much to work with, but still, when you had a bear trap for a brain, things stuck around.
Madigan didn’t seem to know any better, though, and she merely shrugged and scowled sourly at her coffee mug. “The vodka here is pretty good, though.”
He nodded, still prepared to take her word on that. “You know, if it’s good and cheap, we might be able to get some money on the side if we used what we got here to buy a couple of crates of it and flipped it to the bar.”
“That way, we might even get to drink some of it too.” She paused when she noticed that Sal looked at her with narrowed eyes. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said and looked away quickly. “I thought you would think that it was a stupid idea.”
“I know how much money there is in alcohol here,” she said with a chuckle. “Believe me. I’d say that I know better than most.”
“Considering that you constitute about half the money that goes into the bar, I most definitely believe you,” Sal said with a grin which persisted even through the venomous glare that she threw his way.
“Well, with breakfast out of the way, why don’t we go ahead and do it now?” Madigan asked.
“What time is it?”