Waking up, Tyger realized he lacked the annoying hangover of before, though it turned out to be a lot less comfortable than the healer’s home.

            It was also significantly itchier.

            With a groan, Tyger shrugged his stiff shoulders. He then reached behind his head to find the shuffling, pliable mess of a pile of dried leaves. That was when he came to notice an equally uncomfortable, yet different sensation on his lower half, as if he’d been dipped partway into cold water.

            Tyger sat fully upright.  “The hell’s going on?” He asked.

            His surroundings were dimly lit by what appeared to be strategically-arranged bundles of glow sticks, affixed to shoddy wood paneling that reminded him of a hastily thrown together hut built with branches and leaves. In fact, the slant of the walls gave it the appearance of a lean-to, but a great deal more spacious than he expected, with what appeared to be the foil side of a large survival blanket covering the floor. Beside the far wall was a smooth-barked circle of wood, as if someone had sawed off the top of a large tree trunk and fashioned into a kind of makeshift table. And the sight of what lay upon that table made him realize that the coldness on his lower half was from the lack of something, rather than the presence.

            “Hey! My pants!” Tyger shuffled forward, about to crawl towards the table and grab the clothes from where they sat, but he was stopped halfway by a combination of elements. The first was a previously unnoticed thick vine that was wrapped securely about his ankles; the second was a gleaming flat, silvery object that appeared out of the corner of his eye to hover dangerously close to a place where he most decidedly did not want it to be.

            He froze instantly, then slowly leaned back against the bed of leaves. The blade was from an Imperial vajra, a relatively archaic weapon, used mostly during the Imperium Wars centuries ago. He’d seldom seen one as its purpose had become more ceremonial than practical among Imperial soldiers, but he knew it well. Its flat, sharp-edged shaft flared into a hoop shape that narrowed into a sharp pointed end, and, in spite of its odd shape, was quite effective at removing appendages, especially the one it already was uncomfortably close to.

            “Let’s not be so hasty, furry fighter.”

            Tyger nearly jumped out of his skin. God, had he been so upended from his ordeal he hadn’t even noticed that he wasn’t alone? The voice of the blade’s owner was female, and carried an accent that was an odd mix between musical Jakartan accent and sharp-sounding Iconian. To his relief, the blade began to retract. He followed it to a shadowed corner directly beside him, near a cloth that served as the shelter’s opening. Tyger exhaled, trembling. His back and tail were beginning to ache from the rough, uneven floor that lay beneath the blanket and bed of leaves.

            “We have things to discuss, you and I.”  The woman, his apparent benefactor and captor all at once, shuffled away from her corner, and into view. She casually held the handle to the weapon’s retracting liquid metal blade, then placed it behind her into a compartment behind the belt that girded her torn uniform. Even in her sitting position, he could tell that standing upright, she would be markedly taller than he was by at least a foot. As he expected, like Maria, the Shadow Star’s heavy weapons expert, she was an Imperial tank. The monochromatic hair and skin of those mass-produced soldiers from composite DNA templates was unmistakable. Her face was heart-shaped, with full lips and narrow eyes that were a pale blue-gray, and stood out on her gray-white skin in spite of their faded color. The black stripes of her short-cropped silver hair ran from the center of her head in something like a swirl pattern that led Tyger into thinking she could have passed for a hybrid, like him. She was attractive, but the hair was the only thing vaguely Felyan about her.

            “So you’re the one who saved my life?” Tyger’s gaze had become transfixed at the lithe form that the spidersilk weave of the soldier’s green camouflage uniform hugged against. In spite of his situation, he couldn’t help but chuckle as he made small talk. “Been a long time since I’ve seen an Imperial soldier wield a vajra.  Ah, there a reason why you tied me up and took my pants?”

            “In my experience, males are easier to talk to without their pants,” the soldier replied with remarkable blandness.

            “You have lots of experience with males?” Tyger asked. “I thought all Imperial soldiers were female? What’d you do? Have a stint at a brothel, or pleasure house?” His chuckle burst into a momentary guffaw.  He tried to cast the buds of lurid intent from his mind; after all, she was a tank. They were meat machines, bred for only combat, and men were forbidden on her birth world.  They might as well have been eunuchs. 

            “We have commanding officers,” the soldier replied in a tone that was so businesslike as to be mechanical. “And my commanding officer gave me ‘extracurricular training.’”

            Had Tyger been drinking with her at a bar, he supposed she would have been showered with his beer, mid-draft. Regardless, Tyger sputtered at the nonchalance at which this soldier had revealed what surely would have been an indiscretion worthy of a court martial for the officer involved, and –if his memory about Imperial practices served– almost surely execution for them both.

            “This surprises you,” the soldier said, still calm and mechanical in her observation.

            “Well, yeah,” Tyger said, forcing himself to calm down after his eyes had almost certainly bugged out of his skull. “I don’t know much about Imperial soldiers, but, well … knowing where you come from and such … I mean, am I now in danger of getting fucked to death, rather than shot on sight? Or both?”

            “You’re a morbid one.” The soldier fixed him with a puzzled look. In spite of her rigid elocution, her voice was soft and sultry, and not at all like what he’d expected from her kind. “Perhaps it was good that I bound your legs, after all.”

            “How’s that?”

            “So you can’t run away.” 

            Tyger, glad for the reprieve from his discomfort, held down a deep belly laugh. And as he spoke, his voice shook with the force of his restraint. “Again, ma’am, I refer you to that ‘you saved my life’ thing. Why would I run away?”

            The soldier eyed Tyger with narrow, yet conspicuously piercing eyes. Tyger was surprised to see such eyes on a soldier, as he’d heard that the gene pools of tanks were usually assorted for practicality and not aesthetics. But he supposed that somewhere in the shuffling of DNA templates, the law of averages demanded that whatever esoteric computers that tended the crèches on Jakarta’s Pride would happen to align the right genes for attractiveness in some way. And she was undeniably beautiful. She was after all, despite her artificial origins, human, and female. And true to his nature, his Felyan side was highly attracted to humans, even more so than to other Felyans. The very sight of her made his fur stand on end in the most mortifying way. Still, he had trouble believing the soldier’s confession of her dalliances with a commanding officer. As far as he was aware Jakartans were supposed to all be lesbians.  Why would they encourage heterosexual tendencies in their soldiers? Hadn’t even the Spartans of ancient Earth encouraged same-sex relationships to induce camaraderie in the ranks? Allowing attraction to males would be self-defeating.

            Of course, she could have been lying. Though she’d spoken so matter-of-factly, he doubted this.

            By the Creator, she was hot!

            “Not many see us as a symbol of trust,” the soldier said. “You’ve seen my uniform, yet you seem to be unafraid of me.”

            “You’re alone, as far as I can tell,” Tyger said. “And now that you’re not holding a weapon to my jibbley bits anymore. That tends to ease relations somewhat.”

            “You look at me same the way the colonel did before he bedded me.”

            Again, Tyger would have spat out his drink, had he been drinking. In truth, he did harbor some fear. He’d have been a fool to not be at least a little wary of the Imperium’s military element. Each soldier, having all knowledge for their rank and position downloaded into their minds from birth, made for an expendable, unlimited army, but even individually, they weren’t to be trifled with. One thing he’d learned from his tank colleagues aboard the Shadow Star, they were embarrassingly forthcoming. This one was no exception.

            “You know, most folks aren’t so chatty about their sex lives,” Tyger countered awkwardly. “And your confessions are the last thing I’d have expected from an Imperial soldier.”

            “It’s not uncommon to happen,” she said, still with that astonishing innocence. “Nevertheless, to be unafraid of me, you clearly have more courage than most.”

            “Well, you’re the one who rescued me from those … things,” Tyger said.

            “Are you sure you’re not a soldier yourself?”

            “Well, considering I’ve been working with a crew of mercs for the last few years, I’ve been in my fair share of scrapes,” Tyger said. “But I’m not what you’d call a ‘soldier,’ not officially, at least.”

            The soldier’s next words were spoken in a manner that practically screamed the word, “deadly.”

            “Though you claim not to be a soldier, you speak like someone who has put his fair share of bullets into my sisters.”

            “Tyger swallowed against a dry throat, at a loss for any reply. He didn’t relish being rescued from certain death only to be run through by his rescuer. But even now, he had to fight against an urge building to run her through himself, in a very different way.

            Stop it, Tyger!

             “You were brave, though,” the soldier continued in a somewhat less intimidating tone, “you took on the creatures and killed many of them before losing your nerve.”

            “So what is it you want me for?” Tyger asked, and was met by a look he knew well, a look he’d seen from the many girls he’d encountered on his journeys. It was look that they gave that made him know that he’d won them over, that he’d hit the proverbial jackpot, the look that said that he was about to have a very pleasant night.

            “Wait, you rescued me to be your sex toy?” he said, putting two and two together. And in response, the soldier smiled for the first time.

            “As you said, I saved your life,” the soldier’s tone was incongruously evasive. “Aren’t you curious as to what those creatures are?”

            “Actually, yes, very much,” Tyger said, grateful for something that would distract him from what was happening in his underwear, which the soldier had thankfully not removed. It was one of the few times he regretted his mother’s side of his lineage. Humans didn’t react readily to pheromones from their own kind, but he was only half human. The other half was quite disobligingly reactive to things like this. “How you wound up alone out here has gotta be a story in itself. I thought you guys travelled in packs. Where are your sisters?

            “This location is not as far out as you think,” the soldier remarked. “About fifteen kilometers to the west, there’s a small garrison, a frontier outpost. And I was not alone at that time. About two weeks ago, my sisters and I saw something land in the clearing near here. Speaking of which, where did you come from anyway?”

            “From Solace,” Tyger replied with tactical simplicity, deciding to hide the full reason for his being here for the time being.

            “You’ve come a long way, then,” the Soldier observed without further questions. “My sisters and I saw the crash that caused the smoke you most likely saw. Outlaw and pirate ships were famous for landing in clearings in the middle of nowhere on this planet, and since there was one where the crash happened, we suspected it might have been some kind of an emergency landing or drop-off point for contraband, and we set out to investigate.

            “Knowing what I know now ...” She furrowed her brow, lost in a moment of thought that Tyger could not tell was pain or concentration. “No, that’s not it. I’m the only one who has been able to stop the growth of what we saw, so I’m sure that I would have done it again. Only I would have kept my sisters safer.”

            “Growth?” Tyger asked, attempting to bring the soldier back to the present. “Just what did you see?”

            There was yet another long, pregnant pause as the soldier shifted herself with visible discomfort that Tyger guessed was not from the unevenness of the floor.

            “About a kilometer to the east, you’ll find the clearing, and nearby, an abandoned hangar. In the center of the clearing, there’s a crater. Something –emphasis on ‘thing’– is growing there. A central mass of some sort, like a vine, but ... well, you’ve seen them.”

            “Creator save us …” Tyger groaned, slumping back down into his bed of leaves. “There’s something out there even worse than those creepy robo-plant things?”

            “A main body, for lack of a better term,” the soldier said with a grim nod, “every day, at midday, it makes more, nearly thirty in all. My days from that point on consist of hunting them down and destroying them. You made my job easier by attracting the remainder of them to one place. All that noise you were making drew them right in. You thinned them out somewhat. But I doubt we’ll have such an opportunity again.”

            “Looks like I walked into some serious shit, didn’t I?” Tyger asked rhetorically.  “Why not call for help, then? I mean, you’ve been fighting these things by yourself for two weeks; I assume they ate your sisters, like they ate my guide?”

            “No, they weren’t eaten,” the soldier replied. “They found them, ‘indigestible’. We were four in all; Kaz, Rala, Del, each of their killers tried to absorb them, and died. With only me left, and clearly of no benefit to them, they switched their strategy from eating to killing. They learn fast.  And they go for whatever tech you have first. I am uncertain why; perhaps it’s to shift the playing field in their favor. We had communications equipment; it’s gone now, taken then same way.” She then paused and eyed Tyger with a grim-looking smile. “You most likely wouldn’t have been a difficult meal for them, but I wasn’t about to wait to find out if you were something they could absorb.”

            “I’m sorry about your sisters,” Tyger said, at least thankful to see what seemed to be a tinge of altruism in the solder, in spite of her unsettling grin.

            “They died fighting,” the soldier replied. “They served their purpose well.” 

            “Maybe I’m unique as you, though?” Tyger asked, though in truth, he had very little confidence in this. Most likely the creatures would have eaten him with the same ease with which they’d finished off his weapons, the van, and the body of his guide. Moreover, contemplating the true gravity of this situation he found himself in gave him a sick feeling in his gut. And the soldier’s nonchalant commentary on her comrades’ demise was nothing less than disturbing. “I mean my mom’s a Re’Kya Felyan and my dad was human.”      

            “You want to test that probability?” the solder asked with a grim almost-monotone.

            Tyger gave a nervous laugh. “Point taken. So why rescue me, then?”

            “Maybe it’s because of your uniqueness that I did rescue you?” the soldier asked. “I happen to like unique.” She reached out and ran her fingers through his goatee. Tyger stiffened at her touch, longing for a strained moment to just give in, but he reigned in his Felyan side with strident force.

            “Guessed you’d have some kind of ulterior motive,” Tyger said, taking the soldier by the wrist and gently removing her hand from his chin. “Seems I set the bar too high when I thought you did it out of the milk of human kindness?”

            Tyger instantly felt a pang of regret over what he’d said, but when he looked at the soldier’s face, she showed no signs of offense. Just as instantly as his embarrassment of before, he felt silly for his burst of emotion over someone who was perhaps emotionally stunted. She was only a soldier, after all.

            “Well, not exactly, furry fighter.” The familiar, inviting grin remained on the soldier’s face, a lingering invite to something he felt would be just as unethical as what her commanding officer had done. “Perhaps the reason why I rescued you goes a little deeper. So yes, you’re right about the ulterior motive ... after a fashion.”

            Tyger frowned, glancing at his bound feet and his folded clothes upon the makeshift table, which may have been a million light years away. “Okay, fair enough. So what’s the ulterior motive?”

            The soldier’s grin broadened. “Compensation.” 

            “Ah, what kind of compensation are you talking about?” Tyger asked, as if he hadn’t known. Nevertheless, it produced a war between his logic and instinct that he desperately wished he didn’t have to fight. His gaze shifted back towards the flat log. He noticed that along with his pants, his field knife and machete lay upon the table as well, and he doubted he could outpace the speed of the soldier and her running the blade of her vajra into his crotch before he could reach them.

            With a grace that would have done any Felyan dancer proud, the soldier hefted herself up and came to hover over him, dangerously close … enticingly close. The large tear in the front of the swirling patterns of green, brown, and black upon the uniform’s nanoweave exposed a long, attractive line of cleavage. She grinned widely, almost hungrily, and Tyger nearly lost it.

            “Nothing too gruesome, furry fighter,” the soldier purred. She reached out and brushed an errant hair from his forehead. “Just your time and company.”

            Tyger jumped in his bonds, the movement more like a spastic jolt with his bound ankles as he tried to shove down his more primal instincts with a ferocity that surprised even himself. “Wait … what? I mean, look, we don’t even know each other. And you’re Jakartan … and a clone!”  Tyger winced at what he’d just said. He knew better than that. Images of Maria glaring angrily at him filled his mind and he fixed the soldier with an apologetic gaze.

            “A ‘tank’ is the proper term,” the soldier said, correcting him.  “And what of that?”

            Tyger felt every hair on his body stand on end as she ran a hand over his shirt, and through the fur on the exposed part of his chest below the collar. “Your superior officer probably didn’t teach you discretion, did he? That there was a time and place for stuff like this?”

            “There’s a time and place?” The soldier paused, and gazed at him with a wide-eyed stare so innocent, it seemed childlike, perhaps even stupid. And it was this blatant innocence that was what he needed to at last shove his instincts aside. He slowed his breathing, and regained control of his faculties as she continued to talk. “And so formal all of a sudden, after being so tense? Very well, then. I will introduce myself formally. I am tactical officer, Soldier AZ- 51L-V37, subordinate level-3. And I saw your I.D. in your pocket, so I know your name, Tyger Ral of the Siberna G1 Major League Circuit. Gestalt Pilots require a certain level of bravery, do they not?  It is because of this combined with the valor you showed today that you’re in my company. And you are in my company for the sole purpose of what you can provide for me.”

            “I, ah, thought that was forbidden?” Tyger stammered, realizing with dismay that he had not truly defused the situation. “I thought the Wenists taught this to the soldiers also? And don’t you have a proper name? I thought tanks have names as well as numbers?”

            “You have my designation,” the soldier replied.  “My name is of no importance. And in answer to your previous questions, on the crèche world, mating outside your gender is forbidden.”  The soldier slipped her hand inside the waistline of his underwear. “And I was taught enough to know that in the ranks, none of us are meant to learn such things. But the male commanding officers do not hold to the Wenist proscriptions of my birth world. They are male, after all. And they’ve been known to give a few of us, like myself, ‘private training’. For some of us who have been given such training, the taste of male flesh is a particularly decadent addiction. And with the autonomy afforded to my rank, I’ve discovered that my tastes are more ... exotic than most.”

            Tyger was familiar with the soldier’s words in his own way, having inherited a part of his father’s exotic tastes: tastes that had led him to the bed of his mother, despite most humans’ attitudes towards his mother’s kya. It had led to his conception, birth and his own exotic taste in women. Tyger bit his lip, hidden scars itching as he recalled a previous time with the dragon queen of the pirate clans. She was a rough customer and he hoped that the soldier would be gentle with him, given her enhanced strength. Realization that this soldier was perhaps no more knowledgeable about relationships than any common virgin, his interest in her showed in a most disobliging reaction: one that greatly pleased his captor/benefactor. There was no way that he could deny that he was his father’s son. Tyger had bedded hybrids like himself, and at times (and often in seclusion, due to the danger they were said to pose), a few tertiaries, whose abnormally powerful psionics made for the most interesting sex he’d ever had.

            And once he could have sworn that one of those girls had been an android.

            Apparently, tank or not, a Jakartan fit the bill for ‘exotic’ in his book.

            Still, he had standards. No potential paramour got to third base without a first date. His pride would demand no less. And this soldier at least needed time to understand how to do it right.

            “Look, I have a better idea.” Tyger curled his knees up when he felt the soldier’s fingers reach a place that was noticeably close to their mark. “Care to hear me out?”

            The soldier hummed inquisitively and paused, only for what he knew would be a moment.

            “Well, if you brought me here because I fought against the creatures, then I can be more use to you than just your ... ah ... diversion.”

            “Are you saying you don’t like me?” The soldier sounded almost hurt.

            “No, not at all!” Tyger laughed in a way that could not help but betray a hint of desire of his own with its softness. “You’re ... well, hot as hell, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just that ... well, remember how I spoke about time and place?  See, I don’t know where you’ve had your fun in the past, but to me, this isn’t the best of places. It’s damn uncomfortable. My back and ass are killing me right now, and quite frankly, if we do, end up doing it, I want to do it right.”

            “And what exactly do you mean by, ‘do it right’?” The soldier asked, surprising Tyger by seeming genuinely intrigued. He betrayed a smug grin, suddenly realizing this leverage, which always paid off in the end for any interested females.

            “We hybrids don’t have to, ah, recharge, if you know what I mean.”

            “Recharge?” The soldier’s expression fell into a blank stare.

            “You know how human males have to, ah, ‘rest,’ after finishing the deed in bed?”

            The soldier nodded, now seeming to understand.

            “I’m a hybrid. We don’t have to ‘rest.’ We can go all night,” Tyger explained.

            Tyger felt a flood of relief from the wrenching, primal frustration as the soldier removed her hand from his underwear, though he knew it would be awhile yet before things fully settled down below the belt.

            “Really now?” She said. “All night?”

            “Absolutely.”

            Her pale eyes narrowed, and she reached for the vajra weapon she’d held sheathed at her belt since its prior use. Tyger froze. For a horrifying second, a flash of a very distinctive, very gruesome possibility flashed through his brain. This ended when she extended the blade through the vines that bound his ankles, severing them.

            “Help me to end these creatures, then, furry fighter,” the soldier said. “And we’ll do this your way.”

            Free at last, and feeling better with being on equal terms with his benefactor, Tyger matched her sensuous grin.

            “I look forward to it,” he said, as he reached for his pants.