After the skirmish

Mark slumped down to a sitting position against a concrete wall, exhausted from his day. He had been rotated out after a 12 shift at the line; it was still so close to the command center that troops were rotated in and out on a 12 hour basis instead of 36 hour field assignments as usual. Once they'd pushed the bitches out of the city proper, they'd need more time to get on and off the line, and would go to 36 hour deployments. For now, though, he had a night to himself, and he planned to use it. As soon as he got up.

He rose about ten minutes later and headed in to the mess. Soup, of course, but it was thick and good. An advantage of major command post duty; they tended to be on supply routes, so they were well-stocked. He finished up and felt more refreshed than he had all day. A shower was in order; but first, he needed to pick something up.

Mark's deployments had not always been as fruitless for him as this day's had; in fact, he tended to be quite proficient at knock-out blows and making captures. Thus, he liked to be picky about his selections for "keepers," as they were called. He entered the stockade and signaled one of the guards over, scanning the crowd of huddled women. His only current keeper was quite a woman: slightly taller than average, with flowing dark hair (a strange concession to vanity or identity; few of the women soldiers trimmed their hair short) and impressively large breasts. The chief aspect in which he took pride, however, was that it had taken him nearly five minutes in a stand-up fight to take her down, during a dark night when she could have easily slipped away without engaging him or when the fight proved too risky. Instead, she had withstood several blows and returned with a few of her own before Mark had gotten in a solid shot to the jaw and dazed her enough to disable her. She was tough and spirited, strong, lean and a pleasure to the eyes. He hoped to pick up another like her soon, though, he winced in memory, he hoped the next one wouldn't put up quite such a fight. Sighting her, he pointed her out to the handler, who waded into the stockade to pull her out. With his prize collected, Mark headed off to the showers on the far side of the stockade.

He turned on the water and let it flow over them both for a few minutes, enjoying the warmth. She seemed to take some pleasure in it too, though she said nothing, as usual; he had never heard a word from her since he'd acquired her. The water glistened on her breasts and thighs and Mark decided to put his ablutions on hold for a moment.