Project Divinity

Chapter 38: Mission Brief

Cassie was curled into Elaine, feeling her body against his. For all her muscle she was quite soft when she was relaxed, and her smooth skin felt amazing against his.

“I wasn't too rough with you, was I?” she asked softly.

“Where's this coming from?”

“You know,” she said, sounding a little embarrassed, “normally I make sure to communicate with my partner, make sure everything's alright, but you just made me lose all self-control.”

“Mission accomplished, then,” he said with a chuckle. “I didn't want soft and gentle and courteous. I wanted you to take what you needed from me and you did.”

“But...”

“And,” he said, cutting her off, “I'm sure if I'd told you to stop, you would have.”

“Of course.”

He craned his neck to kiss her cheek. “So, nothing to worry about. I wanted you to treat me like a toy and you did.”

“Okay,” she said, “that's good.” She was quiet for a moment, then asked: “It wasn't too freaky for you, either?”

“You mean when you bent me over and absolutely rocked my world there?”

“Yeah, that,” she said and he saw her blush a little.

“Let me put it this way: Now that I know you're up for that kind of stuff I can hold back a lot less.”

She bit her lip and he could feel her cock give a slight twitch.

“Seriously? You're ready to go again?”

“He may be,” she said, “but I'm not. Hope it doesn't bother you.”

He chuckled and then turned his back to her so they were spooning. “Not right now but if I wake up to you humping my ass cheeks I might just take you for a ride.”

“I can think of worse ways to wake up,” she said and kissed his cheek as she wrapped her arm around him to pull him close. “Good night, babe.”

“Good n—“ The word cut off as Cassie let out a huge yawn, then just cuddled back into Elaine and pulled the blanket up a little higher.

When he was almost asleep he thought he heard her mutter: “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” he muttered back, just as quietly.

**

Sadly, Elaine did not wake up the next morning to Cassie taking her for a ride. Instead she woke up to a sleeping Cassie who looked so peaceful that she just wanted to let him rest. She gently extricated herself from him and got up, intending to get dressed and then maybe wake him up so they could go grab breakfast together. But by the time she'd managed to put her clothes on he'd begun stirring.

“Good morning, sexy,” she said as he started feeling around on the bed, trying to find her.

“Good morning,” he mumbled, still partly asleep. “Come to bed.”

“Can't,” she said. “We got a mission today, remember? You can still doze a couple more minutes if you want though.”

He let out a groan and then jumped out of bed, suddenly awake.

“That was a fast wake-up,” she commented.

“If we can't have comfy morning sex I might as well get up,” he said with a shrug and she took a moment to just admire him.

Without the lingerie on he looked a lot less feminine. He had wide hips and narrow shoulders for a man but the toned stomach, the Adam's apple and the incongruously large cock left no question as to his gender, even if his face and the tiny little mounds on his chest said otherwise. It was an unusual combination of masculine and feminine traits and it made her turn away before she forgot herself and pushed him down for another round.

**

“So, do we just head out?” he asked once they were fully clothed and walking along the hallways of Base 15.

“We're supposed to check in with the Professor before we head out,” Elaine replied as they went.

“Okay, got it,” he said and they took a right to head to the Professor's office.

Elaine knocked once, waited for a muffled “Come in,” and then opened the door.

“Private Maxwell,” the Professor said politely, then gave Elaine a nod. “Elaine.”

“You wanted to talk to us?” Elaine asked, giving a deep, formal nod but not saluting anymore.

Cassie blinked. Since when were they on a first name basis? Was it a Lacrima thing?

“Right,” the Professor said. “I wanted to talk to you about these entities we want you to find. There has been speculation on whether they might be connected to IDS and Caulder. Their activities did coincide somewhat with the attack on the refugee camp, after all.”

Cassie sucked in a breath.

Elaine stayed silent, waiting for the Professor to continue, which he soon did.

“Of course, this is just speculation. They have proven themselves to be quite elusive after all. However, I would like you two to take these along, just in case they do turn out to be IDS agents.” As he spoke he reached into a drawer on his desk and pulled out two devices, spherical and with glowing bits attached.

“Grenades?” Cassie asked, only noticing that he'd spoken aloud when he saw the Professor's eyes meet his.

“Not quite,” the Professor said. “Think of them as electromagnetic pulse emitters.”

Elaine blinked. “Are you saying EMPs work on Caulder's cyborgs? Christ, that would have made fighting them so much easier.”

The Professor chuckled. “No. They aren't actual EMPs, that is just the closest analogy I have for them. They are a combination of anti-magic, EMP and bio-inhibitors. They are harmless to you and the technology you use but they should be capable of temporarily disabling his cybernetic abominations.”

“That still sounds like it would have been useful to have during the attack on the refugee camp,” Elaine said, a bit of irritation in her voice.

“If they would have helped, I'd have given them to you,” he said. “They are quite short-ranged, so much so that they would be useless in a large-scale battle. Most of the enemy casualties occurred outside their range. But in this situation they might be quite useful.”

Elaine thought for a moment, then said: “When you say they disable rather than kill, can I take this to mean you would like us to capture them alive?”

“If it is not too much trouble then yes, I would like to examine one of his cyborgs that isn't too terribly destroyed. If these spies are even his work, of course.”

“What else could they be?” Cassie asked.

“Rogue soldiers, survivors, cultists... any number of things, really,” the Professor said. “But if they are Caulder's doing, then...”

“Understood,” Elaine said and took the two EMPs from the Professor, then handed one to Cassie.

“The mermaids will be trying to monitor your surroundings while you're out,” he said. “They didn't have much luck when Jeanne was out there but, truth be told, they were busy with the attack on the refugee camp at the time so they might have missed things.”

Elaine nodded. “Anything else?”

“No. Good luck, both of you.”

**

“Two fighters have left the compound,” the slaver AI riding Subject 202 told Subject 259. While the AI was clearly meant to be her minder, the cyborg dog it was attached to was their group's scout, quiet and quick and nimble as it was on those spindly robotic limbs. It was also the least heavily armed of the cyborgs 259 nominally had control over.

“Are they as powerful as the monster they sent out last time?”

The slaver AI stayed silent for a moment, just long enough for it to appear deliberate, then said: “Unlikely.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“One is quite powerful for a human but still distinctly human. The other is harder to quantify. The readings are inconclusive.”

259 pressed her lips together. “We will try to capture the one that can be quantified, under the assumption that they're weaker. If we have the weaker one we can ensure the cooperation of the other one.”

The slaver AI regarded 259 for a moment, then nodded 202's head. “How do you wish to go about this?”

“The building near Carlton,” 259 said, “the one we scouted out. I will take the other cyborgs there. It will be your job to lure them there.”

The slaver AI regarded 259 for a long time, then said: “If we want a lure, a humanoid like you would be more desirable.”

259 narrowed her eyes at it. “Your armor is better than my ballistic shield,” she said deadpan. “My shield is barely strong enough to fend off small arms fire.”

“If this is a ploy to get me destroyed...”

259 rolled her eyes. “You have a cloud backup. If I was planning to get you destroyed you would wake up in the server room and report my treachery immediately.” Also, if you break there's no chance of saving 202, 259 did her best not to think.

The slaver AI nodded 202's head, then said: “You have fifteen minutes to reach the site.”

259 nodded, then snapped her fingers. Instantly the three cyborgs stepped up and stood at attention. She didn't give them any commands. They knew what they had to do the moment she turned her back on them and set off in the direction of their... vehicle.

259 did her best not to think of the thing. It was a mode of transportation. That was all it was. And so long as she told herself that she could use it to get around without suffering an existential crisis. It wasn't like she needed to think about where the vehicle's memory bank had come from in order to operate it. It wasn't like she had to acknowledge what the seats were made of in order to sit in them. It wasn't like she had to consider its locomotion as anything other than a means to an end.

And so she got in alongside her cyborg minders and a moment later they were off to their rendezvous point.

**

“I think I just saw a flash of metal,” Elaine said into her CARD, half a dozen crystal swords orbiting her, ready to fend off any projectile sent her way.

“There was definitely movement in your vicinity,” Clio the mermaid said. “Yeah. North by north-east, course of fifteen degrees.”

“Any chance it's a trap?” Cassie asked.

“Roughly 100%,” Elaine said cheerfully. “They've been sneaking around the base for a week or so. If they managed to hide this long, there's no way they would slip up so blatantly.”

“Okay, so if we know it's a trap, why are we falling for it?”

“Because we're stronger than they think. I would say Jeanne and I are evenly matched at this point. So with you along we're way stronger than what they hid from. So I think we should have a decent chance.”

“Okay,” Cassie said. “I trust you.”

Elaine gave him a nod, since he wouldn't be able to see her look of gratitude through the opaque visor, and they set off.