The sharp sound of thick steel pins retracting into the armored door of her cell broke the muddled silence that forever reigned in this quarter of the solitary housing unit where she'd been for the last four days. Harsh light stabbed into the blackness, slashing painfully across her dark-acclimated eyes and shielding the brawny figures who rushed in just behind the blinding vanguard.
Eyes stinging, arms and legs shackled, she lunged forward. Her head caught the first one in the stomach like a battering ram, sending him crashing to the floor, heaving and choking breathlessly. She bent over and drove her shoulder and elbow into the neck of the next one who came rushing. She could hardly see anything, going by instinct alone as she leaned down and bit into the CO's forehead with her teeth, causing him to scream in pain.
From behind, the first CO managed to snag her feet, causing her to fall hard, tearing some skin off in her teeth as she growled savagely.
Then the blows came. Enraged and infuriated, the two COs took turns kicking and beating her viciously. The shackles prevented her from using her hands to shield her face, so she curled into a ball and weathered the beating until they began to lose interest.
"Hold her down!" she heard another voice from above, and immediately she started kicking again, knowing what was coming. One of the COs slugged her good with his fist, dazing her, and the next moment she felt the needle entering her arm, the plunger pushed down to its stopper, and the chemicals pouring into her bloodstream.
It only took her seconds to pass out.
"Rise and shine, Buttercup!" It was the shock of the icy water in her face more than the snarky voice that woke Cara Shepard from the drug-induced sleep. Instead of opening her eyes, she held them shut tight and braced against what she knew was coming. Right on cue, the MP punched her in the face, tearing open the perpetual split in her lip.
Spitting blood, Cara took stock of her new situation. She was still dressed in her customary orange prison garb, her hands cuffed together behind her back and attached via high tensile-strength chains to the shackles on her ankles, which were stretched painfully tight around the lip of the chair in which she sat. And judging from how solid it felt, Cara suspected the chair was even bolted to the floor. She wouldn't be able to so much as scratch her nose if she wanted to. The thought immediately made her eyebrow itch, but she blinked away the sensation.
Cara leered up at the man who'd struck her, a pretty standard run-of-the-mill MP. "Get sixed," she growled at him.
The MP grimaced and raised his fist again, ready to deliver more punishment. Cara grinned at him, egging him on, but a voice from across the room brought the potential beatdown to a premature end.
"That's enough, Chief!"
Across from her at the table dominating the center of the spartan but decidedly un-prison-like conference room sat a distinguished-looking gentleman preening in a military dress outfit, nursing a Holmesian pipe in a distracted hand. He motioned for the MP to stand down. "I really don't think that's necessary. We're all civilized people here, aren't we?"
Cara scoffed, hacking up phlegm from the back of her throat, which she then expunged in a violent, bloody mass onto the table. "Yes sir. Civilized. You can six yourself."
The man tapped his pipe on the table and sighed. "I suppose this is about what I was expecting. You know who I am?" he asked.
"What makes you think I give two craps who you are?" Cara shot back.
"Oh?" He looked genuinely surprised. "This might." He snapped his fingers lightly and a long, wide viewport opened up to her left, offering a view of an orbital skyline as breathtaking as any Cara had ever seen.
At first she was ready to spit at him and tell him to get sixed again, but the sight unexpectedly drew her in as she began to realize it wasn't just any orbital skyline. This one was rather special to her.
"Shanxi," she said, transfixed.
The man nodded, took a drag of his pipe. "Mm-hmm, been a while, hasn't it?"
Cara nodded. "Yes sir, it has."
"How long?"
Stupid question. Cara wrenched her gaze from the planet's surface to scowl in irritation at the pipe-sucker. He had to know. If he was the one responsible for getting her here in the first place, he had to know how long it had been since she was at Shanxi.
"Six and a half years," she answered flatly. Six and a half sordid, excruciating years.
A puff of smoke. "I would presume you know why."
Even dumber question. Cara didn't even dignify it with a response.
"Yes, the Fugitive Four incident. As I recall, you were sentenced by court martial to serve eighteen years for insubordination, sabotage of Alliance property, and unauthorized use of lethal force against an allied operative."
Cara spat another round of bloody mucus at the snob in the suit, but missed. "Ten points. You can read."
Pipe-Sucker exhaled another plume of smoke and leaned forward with an earnest expression on his face, his patience unaffected by her attitude. "I'm simply trying to assess your awareness of your situation."
"Oh, I'm aware of it, alright. You bet your ass I'm aware of it." Cara stared out the window at Shanxi far below, sinking back into bitterness. "I saved our unit from asari treachery, not that I got thanked one bit for it. You asses sold me out to kiss up to the Citadel, it's too late to change that. I did what I had to, you just refused to see that. And I don't give a crap what intel had to say about it after the fact." She shot him another glare. "Get sixed."
The man took a long, contemplative drag of his pipe. "Political landscapes change," he said. "You don't need to make me your enemy. After all, we're both interested in the same thing: protecting mankind, even if we have to go the extra mile. We're cut from the same cloth, Shepard, and I can make good things happen for you, I just want your cooperation."
Cara scoffed. "Do I look like I'm in a position not to cooperate? Just tell me who in the frack you are. For the moment I'm interested."
Pipe-clutching lips parted in a devious smile, as if he were relieved to finally be getting down to business. "Rear Admiral Lucian Stockholm, newly-appointed commander of the Frontier Security Task Force, at your disposal."
She raised her eyebrow dubiously at him. "I'd shake your hand, Admiral..."
"Yes, that's a matter I hope I can clear up by the time we're done. You see, right now I am the Frontier Security Task Force. It technically exists, but only on papers. It was meant to keep me out of trouble, but I intend to make as much of it as I possibly can, and I think you can help."
Cara hated to admit it, but now she was interested. "Alright, spill. What's Frontier Security?"
"Just what it sounds like." Stockholm gestured out the window. "You know, Shanxi used to be on the outer limits of our space frontier, and our current frontier is no more secure than was Shanxi. Less, even. We're spread all over the Attican Traverse and temptingly vulnerable to every criminal syndicate and pirate gang with the ships to get there." He took the pipe from his mouth and clenched it in a fist. "One would think that we would concentrate our efforts on keeping those colonies secure, but politicians have well-documented problems with seeing military fact. So, for sticking my nose in Consulate business, I got handed this paper tiger and told to be happy while they suck up to the Council.
"But you see, they should never have done that. Because I'm going to turn their paper tiger into a real one. With teeth. With your help, Commander, I'm going to make them eat their words."
Cara blinked. "Commander?"
Stockholm nodded and stuck the pipe back in his mouth. "As of this moment, you are a Lieutenant Commander of the Systems Alliance. Your dishonorable discharge is stricken from the record, your slate is clean. I'm building Frontier Security from the ground up and that's where I want you; on the ground. You'll be my commander of all groundside troops."
"You sure this is what you want, Admiral?" Cara asked. She gave her MP the evil eye. "Pretty Boy's not going to like me with my shackles off. If you're looking for discipline, I could be something of a problem for you."
Lucian Stockholm chuckled. "You're good at what you do, Shepard, that's all I need from you. If I wanted a by-the-book drone like the kind they feed into the officer corps these days I'd be at the assembly line, watching military regs crank them out like clockwork. But as far as the Service Chief goes, you should be busy enough not to give him too much trouble, don't you think? After all, there's soldiers to assess, re-assign, and train for new posts. Then there's pirates to kill, rebellions to put down." He gave her a wink. "Spies to be rooted out."
Cara grinned. "I might just be starting to like you, Admiral."
Rear Admiral Stockholm, Man In A Suit, Pipe-Sucker, Alliance bigwig reduced to a garbage post he was making his own, smiled. "Would you please release her restraints, Chief?"
The MP gave her a wary look, then bent down to remove her shackles and cuffs.
Instantly, without even taking a moment to stretch the newly-liberated limbs, Cara sprang up from the chair, swinging with her right arm to deliver a smashing roundhouse to the MP's chin. Teeth were loosened, his head was probably ringing like a bell, but she could have done much worse. It was enough for a warm-up, at least.
The MP staggered, clutching his jaw as Cara flexed her fist experimentally. She drew in a deep breath. "I can't begin to tell you how good that felt." She gave the MP a spiteful shove on the forehead with two fingers. "Until next time."
She grinned at Admiral Stockholm. "I feel more civilized already. Let's get on with this, then."
Mass Effect: Condemned
SSV Ardenne was a piece of crap.
The aged ship probably dated back to the First Contact War, its mass effect drive was clumsy, ineffectual, and inconsiderately loud. Whenever Cara ventured into the aft section of the ship she was careful to wear ear protection. Half the engineering crew, she was sure, had to be deaf. Life support filled the interior cabin with a rancid, chilly flow of atmosphere that reeked of ozone, and over half the ladders that connected each deck were rusted and wobbly. Considering the state of the rest of the ship, it was a small wonder the weapons systems worked as well as they did.
But the Ardenne was all Frontier Security had to call its own, and Stockholm and Cara had worked long and hard first to requisition the use of the ship from its near-permanent patrol in the fattened sectors of heavily-protected Alliance space where it had slowly rotted due to insufficient funds for proper maintenance. Cara had spent months browbeating private investors into putting up money for Admiral Stockholm so he could afford to hire his own technicians to repair some of Ardenne's more critical systems. The one thing that was fully and satisfactorily operational were its shields. Cara had refused to fly until they were up to one hundred percent operational capacity.
Recruiting soldiers to fill Ardenne's barracks was easier. Cara and Stockholm had done extensive scouting during the months spent securing the ship, and she'd already identified over a dozen men and women she wanted for her personal squad. Dozens more, upon learning of Frontier Security's mission, had fallen over themselves volunteering.
Plenty were eager, either for revenge or the promise of action, so Cara had no want for men to lead, the only limiting factor was the issue of ships. but if she and Stockholm had their way, that would cease to be a problem. Effective and efficient troop transportation and support could be theirs if all went right.
Shanxi had served as the fledgling task force's surrogate home base pending formal deployment. Stockholm had his eye on territory in the Attican Beta for the base of operations, so his future fleet could be close to trouble when it struck, and able to strike back twice as hard.
They were preparing to leave and the Admiral had asked her to meet him in his quarters. He probably wanted to share a customary bottle of wine with her as they shipped out. So Cara perspired in the cold air as she climbed a rickety ladder in a poorly lit shaft on an indecently loud ship to meet with her commander on the upper deck. Once above, she passed the bridge crew with hardly a glance, shuffling through the cramped space with familiar ease.
At his desk in the captain's cabin, Stockholm wasn't in his formal dressware; he rarely was when not on official business. While the first ship-out of a newly-created task force might have qualified as "official" to some, Cara had learned over the months that the Admiral had a very loose style of operating that was, in fact, quite similar to her own. He was wearing the standard casual blues, the short sleeves baring his masculine arms.
The Admiral was spry and fit for a man of seventy. An exercise fanatic like her, they often spent time in the gym together, and Cara knew him to have the endurance of a stallion, and strong enough to wrestle an ox. His thick brown hair showed no signs of recession or graying, bright green eyes burned with a devious intelligence sharpened by age, and the few wrinkles on his face served only to highlight his masculine features rather than obscure them.
A dark bottle of wine sat on his desk, untouched. The pipe, however, looked not to have left his mouth; pungent smoke filled the room.
Cara saluted loosely. "Lucian."
The Admiral put up a hand, as if to deflect her forwardness. "Thank you for coming, Shepard."
So, not in the mood, then. Cara eyed the wine bottle. "Are we doing our military duty and boozing up on a ship-out, sir?"
Stockholm chuckled softly. "Maybe a little later. I need to talk to you before we set sail." He set his pipe down.
Cara instantly sobered her expression. "Absolutely, sir. We'll break it off. It could never have worked anyway."
Stockholm frowned, tapping the neck of his pipe on the desk. "Now that we can discuss another time, Cara." He smiled slightly.
She laughed. "Any time, Lucian. Any time."
"No, this is something we've not talked about since I pulled you out of the SHU at Penal Colony PN27; the Contact War."
Cara's eyebrow twitched involuntarily. "What else is there to discuss?"
Stockholm stood and clasped his hands behind his back, a telling gesture that said he was about to get very serious. "Officially, the Turian Hierarchy is not held responsible for the First Contact War, but the Citadel imposed a harsh reparations agreement and prosecution of war criminals which most turians resented. Tactically, they held the advantage at war's end, and could have been considered the victors in the conflict, so the sudden withdrawal and agreement to the Citadel armistice terms came across as a betrayal, a stab in the back, if you will. You can imagine the kind of hate for mankind that fueled within the Turian Hierarchy. And that hate hasn't gone away, despite what the political scene tries to tell you; it's just changed its form."
Cara crossed her arms in irritation. She hated sermons, even Stockholm's. "Get to the point, Admiral."
"My point is, Shepard, that there's a lot of turians who resent and despise us and feel perfectly justified in doing so. They think the Council sold them out at the first sign of a new kid on the block, and many of them will do whatever they think is necessary in order to knock us down a few notches."
"I already knew that, Admiral. How is this any different from what we've discussed before?" She sensed that Stockholm was deliberately skirting around his true point, and his evasion was only putting her more and more on edge.
"Commander, you used your instincts during the Fugitive Four incident, and you might have been right; we may never know for sure. But this is bigger than one wayward asari, what we're dealing with. I want to show you something to help you better understand the kind of sheer inhumanity we're going up against."
He produced what looked like an old shoe box, and that puzzled Cara because she'd never seen it before, and she'd already seen everything in Stockholm's personal quarters. His hand came out with a tiny silvered medallion in the shape of a cross hanging on a thin gold chain.
"Sir?"
"This belonged to Anna Washington, an agricultural worker on Shanxi," he explained, holding the tiny cross in the light. "Her husband Jason served in the colonial militia, along with my father, Sven Stockholm. She was taken captive sometime after the scouring began. Jason became a prisoner of war soon after, when the garrison surrendered to spare further civilian casualties. Jason Washington and the rest of the POWs were freed when Citadel forces intervened, but Anna was never reunited with her husband.
"Alliance diplomatic proxies were always petitioning the turians via the Citadel for the release of captives taken in the scouring, but the Hierarchy stoically denied the existence of any unfreed hostages. It was two years later when a turian ambassador to the Citadel came to Jason Washington with this," he held up the charm, "and a story about how a prosecuted war criminal confessed to finding it on Mrs. Washington's body and taking it for his own. Only, her body was never found; not on Shanxi, not in this alleged turian's possession, nowhere.
"But justice had already been served, apparently, so there was nothing the Alliance could do about it, despite how suspicious it looked. Jason suspected that she'd been taken as a trophy by a turian general and had either starved to death or been poisoned by their food. He knew they murdered her and invented the story to save face.
"Jason Washington was forced to retire from active duty three months later, and he asked Sven to carry his wife's charm, to carry on the fight against monsters who strike at us when we're at our weakest. Sven died a few years back, but I've carried the Washington insignia since the day I made captain."
Cara held his rock-steady gaze as he gently placed the sparkling talisman in her hand.
"Cara, I want you to carry this. I know you're the right person to uphold everything it represents. There will always be victims like Anna Washington; we can't save them all. What we're here for is save as many as we can and punish the monsters who make victims of the others. This goes above affiliation and race, the people who perpetrate these crimes must be made to pay the ultimate price.
"That's what the Frontier Security Task Force stands for, Cara. Save who you can, avenge the ones you can't. We're the Teeth of Vengeance."
His hand enclosing hers, Stockholm closed Cara's fingers around the tiny cross.
She tightened her fist, feeling the hard edges dig into her palms. Her right hand snapped into a crisp salute. "Count on me, sir."
Stockholm smiled as if relieved of an enormous responsibility. "I do." He shook her hand firmly. "Well, Commander, shall we have that wine now?"
Wiping sticky hands on her dark pants, Cara jaunted back onto the bridge ahead of Admiral Stockholm. She didn't stay for his order to move out, instead heading straight downstairs to the deployment deck, pausing on the ladder to wince as the ship's engines screeched their way up to speed, the rungs beneath her feet and hands trembling sympathetically with the unholy racket shuddering through the whole ship. With one hand on the rung, she fished around in the breast pocket of her drab blue jacket for her earplugs and, somewhat armed against the sonic assault of the Ardenne's outdated engines, she continued downward.
Once the ship reached cruising speed it no longer howled like a troop of rabid monkeys in a machine shop. Cara hopped off the ladder.
The hangar, decontamination chamber, armory and equipment lockers, and training area were all on the deployment level, as well as a number of her and Stockholm's hand-picked ground troops. Most of them came from colonial garrisons, but she had carefully chosen her men mainly from those with substantial combat experience. This would be no mission for a green rookie.
If they saw action, Cara expected no less than half her current squad to be killed in the first deployment. Fighting with no intel was never fun, but she had to do it anyway, to make or break Admiral Stockholm's Frontier Security Task Force.
The men gathered around the lockers didn't seem to mind the uncertain nature of their maiden voyage aboard the crap-ship Ardenne. They were checking gear, cracking jokes, and chatting amongst themselves like bar-mates. At least they were, until she entered the room.
Cara was an intimidating woman. Her wilting glare and muscular build was threatening even to those unfamiliar with her reputation. Upon seeing her enter, her Marines instantly cut the joking and stood stiffly at attention, trying to pretend like they had never been anything but stone cold serious. Cara could have laughed.
"Will all you little girls lighten up? We're not attending a funeral." When this garnered nothing but a few confused blinks, she simply said, "At ease, gentlemen," which most seemed to understand.
"We getting underway, Commander?" asked her favorite recruit, a tanned Asian with the unlikely name of Bradley. He was a First Lieutenant and former military liaison officer from Shanxi, one of the ranking officers among the motley crew she and Stockholm had assembled.
Cara opened her locker and began unlacing her boots. "That's right. The engine noise didn't tip you off?"
Bradley shrugged. intent on a diagnostic running on his handheld. "Can you tell me where we're headed. The men don't want to ask."
"YP-T9 in the Attican Beta," she answered, unbuttoning her outer jacket and stowing it in the locker along with her boots. "We're going to set up home camp before taking a stab into the unknown with our glorious rust-bucket."
The Lieutenant scratched his head of black hair while the handheld chimed rhythmically as it scanned his standard-issue Onyx armor. "I can't wait to get to blasting some turian sobs."
"Mm-hmm," Cara muttered, idly touching the cross that dangled from her neck. Casually, she stripped off her shirt. "I'm going to hit the gym, Lieutenant. If you or any of the other ladies need to know more, that's where I'll be."
Still absorbed in his diagnostics, Bradley nodded. "Yes, ma'am, I'll be sure to--" Looking up, he stopped awkwardly. His eyes shifted. "Um, Commander?"
"You're blushing, Lieutenant," Cara noted with some amusement. "Never seen a girl in a sports bra before?"
"No, Commander, I—I'll talk to you later." He went back to stoically reading the diagnostic codes on his handheld, and Cara laughed to herself.
"The gym, Lieutenant," she reminded him.
"Yes, ma'am. I gotcha," he said without looking up.
The training area was properly furnished, to her specifications. Familiar enough with long voyages, Cara had made sure they would never be without adequate exercise and drilling space and proper equipment. Several different sets of weights, benches, and tension machines shared the large room with a wrestling mat, a small combat simulator, and Stockholm's favorite, an aerobics machine. Included as almost an afterthought was a pair of unpartitioned shower heads tucked away in an alcove.
Cara rechecked her earplugs and tied her thick fall of blonde hair into a ponytail before selecting a pair of weights and lying down on the bench to warm up her muscles.
She was getting ready to move up to some high weights when Bradley walked into the gym sporting a tank top that displayed his excellent physique. He gave her a curt glance with significantly more confidence than he'd shown earlier. Still, Cara couldn't resist throwing at least one jab his way.
"For a guy who's never seen a girl in a bra before, Bradley, you're getting to be an old pro pretty fast."
Bradley crossed his arms and flashed a brief smile. "It's your fault."
Cara set the weights down and sat up. "It really is, isn't it?" With a small white towel, she mopped a few beads of sweat from her forehead, craning her neck until she felt the satisfactory pop of joints.
She could tell without looking that Bradley was staring at her. She was muscular for a woman, even before the standard military genetic enhancement hers was an atypical physique and she'd never been shy about it.
Cara flicked her hair back over her shoulder with a jerk of her neck. "Come on, Lieutenant, let's wrestle."
Bradley eyed her suspiciously. "You'll beat me."
Cara laughed and put on a pouting expression. "Come on, it'll be fun!"
His adorable brown eyes said it all; he was weighing the inevitable pain and discomfort against the privilege of being able to touch her, and he wasn't sure what angle she was trying to play on him. Eventually, the inevitable won out.
"Alright, fine."
Cara laughed again. "First take off that shirt and let me see those muscles of yours, Lieutenant."
Bradley scowled, but it was forced. "Is that an order?"
"No, but I can make it one," Cara replied cheerily.
"What the heck." He laughed and pulled the sleeveless shirt up and over his head and stepped onto the wrestling mat.
They locked up. Cara and her strong arms held a definite leverage advantage over the shorter Bradley, but he was bullishly strong for one of his size, and tenaciously hung in despite her advantage. She could feel him trying different angles of attack to break the deadlock, but she held rock solid against his attempts and pushed back even harder.
Suddenly, she felt him give way, but deliberately. For an instant she was off balance, and he exploited it with a quick arm drag, flipping her onto her back. Cara quickly bridged out of his cover, twisting her body so they stood back to back, with her arms locked around his.
Grunting, Cara hefted him up off his feet and planted his shoulders to the mat. She started to count. "One! Two!" Bradley kicked himself out of her hold before she reached three and retreated a few steps. Cara got back to her feet and rubbed her hands together eagerly. She was just getting warmed up.
She beckoned with a hand. "Come on, Lieutenant, show a girl what you can do."
He rushed her faster than she'd expected. Not fast enough, though. She was ready and waiting for him, planting a boot in his gut and just as fast seizing his midsection with her powerful arms to heave him up and over in a belly-to-belly suplex. She could hear the breath leave his lungs in a whoosh as she drove him down hard onto the mat, his head bouncing back from the impact.
Bradley groaned and tried to get up, but Cara immediately wrapped her arms around his neck in a sleeper hold. His arms flailed in an unsuccessful attempt to dislodge her arms from about his head.
"Now," she said into his ear, "now we can talk about the assignment, sound good?"
Bradley wheezed something. He was starting to turn blue. Cara loosened her grip a little bit, easing the pressure on the blood vessels in his neck so he wouldn't pass out. "Okay," he managed to rasp.
"You ever heard of Hera?" she asked, jerking his head around so he wouldn't get any ideas about being able to escape.
"No, Commander," he gasped. "Not unless you're talking about the Greek goddess." He tried to pry at one of her hands to release her grip, but Cara just squeezed harder and he forgot about it.
"It's a planet on the frontier, in the Traverse," she explained, "targeted for colonization. Alliance surveyors have been over it and over it, they even cleared a little land for the first settlement, Atreus City. It wasn't much, just enough to land some trailers and other equipment so they could get to work."
Bradley continued to claw at the stone-like muscles in her arm to no effect. She just squeezed harder and made him give up the effort. "Is there anything special about it?" he breathed desperately.
"Objectively, no. The colonial board passed a series of budget cuts and the Hera project was scrapped." She let up a bit on her hold to let the Lieutenant get some air. "Incidentally, though, piracy in that sector has been on the rise ever since."
The Lieutenant finally gave up on his attempts to pry loose her vise-like arms from his neck, instead struggling to regain a vertical base. Realizing what he was doing, Cara responded by bearing down on him even harder, squeezing against his neck and shoulders like a constrictor as she put her whole body weight on his upper torso.
"Is there a connection?" he somehow managed to ask.
"Our esteemed ambassador to the Citadel, Donnel Udina, seems to think so. Or he at least plays at thinking so. He gave the Admiral orders to take command of Frontier Security Task Force—his paper creation—and 'assess' the 'possibility' of pirate forces utilizing and operating from the Alliance infrastructure on Hera. He and the Admiralty didn't want Stockholm anywhere near their politics, so they thought this would keep him out of trouble."
"But now the Admiral wants to make trouble," Bradley coughed. He had one foot under him and was starting to push up, which Cara fought.
"You're learning, Bradley. Good for you. Yes, the Admiral is making trouble, and we're going to stick this in all their faces and make them give Frontier Security the backing it deserves."
Once Bradley was able to get his other foot up, Cara knew it would happen fast, and it did. He gave a mighty push, forcing her upward. As he was heaving her whole body up on his shoulders, he reached his arms up over her head and locked his hands together so her head was trapped. She knew what was coming and tried to release her hold, but it was already too late. Bradley let go with his feet and let himself fall back to the mat. Newton took over.
Cara's jaw cracked against her skull like a hammer striking an anvil. Dizzied and stunned, she flopped back on the mat, her whole head aching and grinning like an idiot. A few feet away, Bradley took a few deep breaths and spat an expletive from his mouth.
"Let's never do that again, Commander," he almost pleaded.
Cara couldn't stop grinning. "I told you it would be fun."
Bradley just shook his head.
After a minute, Cara sat up and wiped sweat from her forehead. "Fun's over, I guess." She cocked her head at Bradley. "Unless you feel like helping me shower?"
Bradley chuckled. "No, Commander. I'll leave you to it."