Rescue Eleni

The jungle swallowed Eleni before either of us had time to react. I forced my way through the thick combative foliage and reached her just in time to watch the jungle vines retracting into the canopy overhead. Eleni disappeared upward.

“Lieutenant!”

I looked up. She was already twenty feet above me, hanging upside down as the vine reeled her toward the canopy.

I drew my pulse pistol.

“I am remaining calm,” Eleni said.

“You’re hanging upside down!”

“I am aware of my orientation.”

I fired.

The first shot missed the vine by several inches.

Eleni stared down at me. “Perhaps you are the one who should remain calm.”

“I’m trying not to shoot you!”

“That would be appreciated.”

I fired twice more. The second pulse burned through one of the smaller tendrils. The third severed the main vine.There was a brief moment where Eleni simply hung there. Then the vine wrapped around her thigh snapped, dropping her like a ragdoll.

“Oh, shit.” She dropped straight toward me. I barely got my pistol holstered before she hit. I caught her under the knees and around the back, stumbling several steps before slamming against a tree.

For a moment neither of us moved.

Eleni was in my arms. Her black hair had fallen across her face. One pointed ear twitched. Her arms had instinctively wrapped around my neck, and the cool, perpetually unimpressed expression she’d maintained since we met had completely disappeared. She was blushing. Actually blushing. I stared. She stared back.

“Well,” I said.

The color in her cheeks deepened. Then her expression reset so quickly I almost wondered if I’d imagined it. “You may put me down now, Lieutenant.”

“Right.” I didn’t. The tips of my fingers just so happened to be pressing into her very soft side boob.

One eyebrow lifted. “Lieutenant.”

“Right.” I lowered her carefully onto her boots. She immediately straightened her white uniform and brushed several leaves from one sleeve.

“We should retrieve Ensign Lilith.”

Lily.

Fuck.

We ran back.

The place where she’d fallen into the trap was easy to find. A section of the jungle floor had collapsed beneath a woven mat of branches and leaves. The pit underneath was empty.

“Lily!”

Nothing.

I jumped down into the hole. There were footprints everywhere. Large ones.

Eleni crouched beside the edge. “She’s been taken.”

“No shit.”

“Hostility toward accurate observations is counterproductive.”

I climbed back out. “Can you track them?”

“Yes.”

That stopped me.

“You can?”

“I encountered the indigenous settlement while approaching the crash site.”

“You knew there was a village?”

“I know many things you do not.”

“Yeah and it’s getting annoying.”

She pulled out her scanner. A holographic map appeared above it.

“The settlement is approximately six kilometers northeast.”

“Then we’re going northeast.” I checked the battery on my pistol, 46%. Not enough to take down all the ogres that had taken lily but it’ll have to do. I started walking. Eleni caught my arm.

“Lieutenant.”

“What?”

She pointed toward the jungle.

Night was coming.

The planet’s sun had fallen behind the mountains while we’d been running. What little daylight remained beneath the canopy was disappearing by the minute.

“We have perhaps thirty minutes of usable light.”

“So?”

“Travel through this ecosystem was hazardous during daylight.”

Something shrieked somewhere far away.

Another something answered.

“Your point?”

“My point is that continuing after dark would be irrational.”

I pulled my arm free.

“My trainee is being carried through the jungle by eight-foot-tall alien ogres.”

“Which does not alter the environmental conditions.”

“No. It alters how much I care about them.”

I pushed forward.

Eleni followed.

For the next hour, the jungle did everything possible to convince me she was right. Vines snapped at our ankles. Flowers sprayed corrosive sap. Something with six legs followed us through the undergrowth until Eleni put three pulse rounds into the darkness and whatever it was reconsidered its evening plans.

Eventually we reached a narrow ravine. I climbed onto the trunk of a fallen tree spanning the gap.

“Lieutenant.”

I looked back. Eleni hadn’t followed.

“What?”

“The sun has set.”

“I noticed.”

“Visibility will continue to deteriorate. Predatory activity has increased by approximately forty percent since dusk, and the vegetation has become considerably more aggressive.”

“So?”

“So continuing would be unnecessarily dangerous.” She pointed back the way we’d come. “There is a defensible rock formation approximately two hundred meters southwest. One entrance. Elevated position. We should shelter there until morning.”

“Lily doesn’t get to shelter until morning.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We don’t know what those things are doing to her either.” I stepped onto the tree.

“Lieutenant.”

“We’re wasting time.”

I heard Eleni exhale behind me. Then, “You slept with her.”

My boot stopped halfway across the trunk. Slowly, I looked back. Eleni stood exactly where I’d left her, arms folded, expression perfectly neutral.

“What?”

“Ensign Lilith.”

“I heard that part.”

“You had sexual relations with her before departing the beach.”

I nearly slipped off the tree. “How the hell do you know that?”

“I didn’t.” Silence.

One corner of Eleni’s mouth moved almost imperceptibly. “You just confirmed it.”

“You—”

“Your behavior toward Ensign Lilith indicated an unusually strong emotional attachment considering the extremely brief duration of your professional relationship. My tablet indicates she was only recently assigned to you. She also repeatedly displayed possessive behavior toward you in my presence. There were other indicators.”

“What other indicators?”

“I did a quick scan of Lily’s body when we first met. She carried fresh traces of biological material inside her that matched the DNA of your own scan.”

“I feel very violated by these scans you secretly conducted.”

Eleni tilted her head. “Standard information gathering. For one I’ve gathered that You are surprisingly easy to manipulate.”

“And you’re enjoying this way too much.”

“I assure you, I am not.”

She was.

I stepped back off the tree. “Lily is still my responsibility.”

“Yes.”

“So we’re going.” I turned.

“Perhaps I have been approaching this incorrectly.”

Something about her voice made me stop again. When I looked back, Eleni was studying me. Then her eyes briefly traveled down my body before returning to my face. It was subtle but Deliberate.

Eleni unfolded her arms. “If Ensign Lilith was capable of persuading you to disregard your professional judgment once today…” She took a slow step toward me. “…then perhaps appealing exclusively to your professional judgment was an inefficient strategy.”

I stared at her. She stared back.

“You’re propositioning me.”

“I implied nothing specific.”

“You implied the hell out of something specific.”

A faint flush appeared across her cheeks. There it was again. The tiniest crack in her logic forged armor.

Eleni stepped closer. “We would have several hours to occupy., completely alone”

Oh. “You’re trying to bribe me into stopping.”

“I am attempting to incentivize the safest available course of action.”

“With sex.”

“I did not say sex.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Her pointed ears were turning pink now. “If sexual activity motivates you to make the right decision I am not opposed to the idea.” Eleni glanced toward the darkened jungle. “The shelter is secluded. No one would know but you and I”

I looked into the jungle ahead.

Then at Eleni.

Then back toward the jungle.

Every rational part of my brain knew she was right. We’d barely survived the place during daylight. At night we’d be walking blind through an ecosystem where the flowers ate people.

But Lily was somewhere ahead. At the mercy of slobbering primitive ogres. I didn’t know if they were planning to eat her or fuck her.

Eleni leaned slightly closer. “So, Lieutenant?”

I sighed.

Somewhere in the darkness, an animal screamed.

“Just so we’re clear, if we stop, it’s because traveling at night is tactically irresponsible.”

“Of course.”

“Not because of what you implied.”

“Naturally.”

“And at sunrise, we immediately go after Lily.”

“Agreed.”