AZU-1: Lifehack (21 page)

Regan suddenly decided that she needed
to get out, to avoid being caught. She had more than pushed her
luck. She put the clothes back as exactly as she could and headed
for the door.

Just then, Alisia arrived. “Regan?” She
sighed, “What are you doing here?”

Regan paused, thinking fast. “I... just
came to give these back.” Regan pulled out the dog tags that she
had taken days ago. “I’m sorry.”

Alisia, still mostly in the hall, took
the tags. She happened to look past Regan for a moment and saw her
teddy bear out of place. She looked at the tags again. She didn’t
really mind if Regan had them, but she didn’t want Regan to know
that. She glanced at the garbage can nearby in the hall.

“
I don’t need these anymore.
These say I’m a Captain. I’ve been promoted to Major, remember?”
Alisia reached the tags over to the garbage, ‘accidentally’
missing, leaving them on the rim. She moved past Regan into her
room and sat down. “I’ll be getting new ones soon. Was there
anything else?”

Regan stood, stunned. She didn’t think
she was convincing, but you can’t argue with results. She still
felt that something odd had happened. “Mm, no. That was all. Just,
uh.. thank you. For today.”

Alisia smiled ever so slightly. “What
are friends for?”

Wordlessly, Regan backed out and closed
the door. She then spotted the dog tags. She considered not taking
them... it’s not as if she was digging through the garbage or
anything. She picked them up and hugged them in her
hand.

Alisia looked at her bear as if to ask
what Regan did in her room, but the bear told no
secrets.

~~~~~

Chapter 30: Old Chum

~~~~~

The next morning found Alisia and Regan
on a teleconference with the General.

“
Ladies, without question
you two are the authority on fighting the creatures that lived in
Autar. Since we doubt we’ve seen the last of these things, I’ve
gone ahead and authorized the use of an airlimb to be the base of
operations for a unit specifically for combating this new threat.
Major, you’ll be the C.O. of this new unit. Ms. Grier, if you
wouldn’t mind, we’d like you to stay onboard as a civilian
consultant.”

Alisia was blown away. Airlimbs were
for the elite.

Regan nodded to the notion of being
kept on as consultant. It’s not like she was going anywhere without
Alisia, or had anywhere else to go.

The General continued. “Very good, Ms
Grier. In that case, I have a surprise up my sleeve if I can pull
it off. Oh, and Major, you’ll need a zipper gunner.”

“
I’d like to request
Corporal Parker, if he’d accept.” Alisia didn’t have to think about
it.

“
Done. I’ll send word to him
tonight. In the mean time, your airlimb is already docked at Yute
base. Familiarize yourself with it, and make it home. Have fun,
ladies.” And with that, and no chance for questions, he was gone,
disconnected.

“
Wow.” Alisia said,
stunned.

“
Man, this will be like my
third move in a row.” Regan mused.

Alisia mulled the new position in her
head while chatting with Regan on mental autopilot. “Moving again,
yeah. I’m gonna have to move all my crud again.”

“
Why? You’re a Major for
crying out loud. Make some grunts do it.”

By noon, the two of them and Parker
were moved into the airlimb. For a mobile unit, the quarters were
pretty roomy, bigger than their previous ones. At least the first
two were. Parker was stuck with one of the ten smaller ones. “On
the plus side, no room mates.”

In general, the airlimb interior was
dark and a little cramped. While well lit, most of the walls and
fixtures were of a dark metal. No one complained though, being
either too impressed with the slickness of the airlimb, or deciding
the cramp was... ‘cozy’.

This was Alisia’s and Parker’s first
time on an airlimb. It was Regan’s first time being on one that
wasn’t ripped in half. Remembering the fancy toy she salvaged from
the last one she was on, Regan went looking in the storage lockers
for something similar. Something to even the firepower a little
between her and Alisia with her bad mojo. Alas, this airlimb wasn’t
currently stocked with anything besides rations and medical
kits.

“
These things are made for
about a dozen troops.” Alisia said, seeing Regan take interest in
the storage lockers. “Some units can spend more than a week in the
air, just waiting for orders. With this few of us, I guess we all
get a lot of closet space.

“
Hm.” Regan wandered down
the hall a bit. “Too bad most of my wardrobe’s gone up in flames. I
had some really hot stuff in Autar.” She got almost to the aft of
the airlimb, and saw the doorway to the two washroom/showers. One
labeled ‘men’, the other labeled ‘women’. “Holy fuck! This thing
has shower rooms?!” That was definitely something that she didn’t
see on the last airlimb she was in. “Leesha, Leesha! Let’s try out
the women’s showers!”

Alisia sighed, and rolled her eyes.
“Don’t say things like that. If Parker hears you, he’s bound to
have a stroke or something.”

Regan giggled, resisting the urge to
make a comment about stroking.

In the late afternoon, Alisia was
called to the base Colonel’s office to do some paperwork and other
administrative garbage.

Alisia got back to the ‘limb late. She
was a little surprised to see a maintenance crew working on the
airlimb at this hour. The General must really be excited to get
things going. She made her way to her cabin, and on opening the
door, saw Regan curled up asleep on her bed, clutching her teddy
bear tight. Alisia’s first notion was to yell at her, but it was
late and she was tired. She walked over to Regan and nudged her.
“Hey. What are you doing in my cabin, with my bear?”

Regan moved a bit and let out a
satisfied little purr.

“
You can get back to your
own room now.”

Regan sheepishly peered out at Alisia,
and groaned meekly. Despite her disappointment that Alisia hadn’t
decided to just curl up, Regan dragged herself off the cozy bed,
patting the bear on the head, and picked up her blanket. She
toddled towards Alisia on her way out, sneakily planting a small
kiss on Alisia’s cheek. Alisia rolled her eyes. It could have been
worse. Regan was soon in the hall. Alisia peeked her head out and
spoke to her.

“
You do realize we’re not a
couple, right?”

Regan just kept going, and made some
kind of grunt. Alisia couldn’t tell if it was an angry sound or a
sarcastic laugh. Maybe both.

Alisia closed the door and quickly got
ready for bed. As she slipped under the covers, she noticed it was
still warm from Regan. Already nearly asleep, she reached over to
the night stand to set the alarm, but her hand first hit a folded
note, standing like a tent. It had Alisia’s name on the
front.

She dreaded to open it, but instead of
the expected dirty, suggestive come-ons, it was almost all doodles.
At the top, it read ‘Alisia-‘ as if to start a letter, but the rest
was filled with little drawings of Alisia, the teddy bear, little
hearts, and things like that. At the bottom where one might expect
a signature, there was a doodle of Regan. It was far away from the
other happy doodles, and looked sad.

Alisia stared at it for a bit and
imagined Regan trying to come up with words, but not knowing what
to say. The sweet little ‘note’ angered Alisia somehow. “How dare
you impose this on me?” she thought. She crunched the note and
threw it in one motion, and turned over to try to sleep. She could
still feel the warmth of the bed’s previous inhabitant, and hated
the fact that it felt nice.

Regan slowly made her way back to her
own cabin, when something familiar struck her. A scent. A familiar
scent. “No....” Regan thought to herself, “can’t be.” She continued
to her room, and went to bed.

When Alisia woke, the events of last
night were gone from her mind until she stepped out of bed and felt
the crumpled note under her foot. Her heart sank. She picked it up
and smoothed it out a bit.

Regan’s crude little face was there. It
was still looking at the other doodles, but it felt like it was
watching her. She put the note in her nightstand drawer, and got
ready for the day.

Alisia could hear the airlimb engines
running. They sounded great, the airlimb must be nearly ready to
go. She saw someone out of the corner of her eye and followed the
motion to the cockpit/ops room. When she caught up, she was
surprised to see a woman with blonde hair and glasses, making
herself at home in the central control seat.

“
Eh? Soldier? Who the hell
are you?”

The woman turned in the chair to face
Alisia with a smooth smile and bedroom eyes. “Captain Kris Taylor,
reporting for duty as operations officer, Sir.”

“
Ah,” Alisia said, almost
forgetting that this Captain was now lower rank than her. “Well, I
guess the General assigned you. Welcome aboard.”

Just then, Regan appeared. She stopped
in her tracks, and pointed at Kris. “No! Demon! Back to hell with
you!” Regan stormed off, nearly bowling over the emerging Parker.
Everyone just sort of stared back to Regan’s door as it slammed.
Parker and Alisia then slowly looked back to Kris.

“
Hm.” Kris said, “She really
needs to get over it. Too bad.”

“
You... know each other, I
gather.” Alisia said.

“
Yeah. We used to.. hmm.. be
a ‘thing’.”

Parker huffed in disbelief, but didn’t
seem to mind the whole thing terribly.

“
What?” Alisia said, “Oh...
the General. You’re his surprise for Regan.”

~~~

“
Your surprise is here,
General.” Alisia later said in a comm conversation.

“
Ah! Yes, record shows that
before the Captain enlisted, she and Ms. Grier were room-mates.
Maybe Ms. Grier will take better to military life if she had an old
buddy around.”

Alisia considered telling the General
everything. About Kris and Regan. And about Regan hitting on her.
But then she reconsidered. The General was an old man, no need to
give him a coronary so close to retirement. “I see. Ah, well, it
seems they didn’t part on such great terms. Hopefully I can smooth
it out.”

“
Oh? That’s a shame. I guess
I should have researched it further. But Captain Taylor seemed
eager to take the assignment. Can you handle it?”

“
Oh, probably.”

“
Good, good. By the way,
your unit is designated “AZU-1”. Anti-zombie unit one.”

“
Cute one, Sir.”

Alisia later went to check up on
Regan.

“
She’s a slut,” Regan
seethed, “An evil, evil slut!”

“
I thought that was your
description, Regan.”

“
I’m flattered you think so,
but no. I’m just.. aggressive. Kris is an ev-“

“
Evil, evil slut. Right. Got
it. Well, if you hate her, and I’m straight, we won’t have to worry
about her sluttiness.”

“
Yes, yes, again with the
straight talk. Just promise me when you realize you’re not, that
you’ll come to me first.”

Alisia sighed. “Fine.”

“
We must also warn Parker.”
Regan darted her eyes around as if the evil Kris could pop out of
the walls at any moment.

“
What? She’s
BI??”

“
Like an old airplane. Hell,
she probably did half the base crew on her way here! Damn it, I
knew I smelt her perfume last night!”

“
Aren’t you over reacting,
Regan?”

“
Listen to me.” Regan
grabbed Alisia by the shoulders and stared into her eyes with the
intensity of fire. “She converted a girl in half an hour without
alcohol!”

Alisia blinked.

And blinked.

“
What?”

“
You heard me.”

Alisia shook her head, accepting the
stupidity at face value just to try to get to the point. “Which is
what you’re afraid she’ll do to me.”

“
Listen. I love you, Alisia.
She does not love you. She does not love. She is not human, and
cannot love. She will try to consume you, and kill you from the
inside. Good lord, we must warn Parker!”

With that, Regan ran out the door.
Alisia, weary and confused, flopped down on Regan’s nearby bed.
Regan was insane, of course. It was becoming increasingly clear. If
the General only knew, she’d be gone, yesterday. Into some funny
farm.

Moments passed, and a shadow darkened
the doorway again.

“
Reg-“ Alisia started to
say, sitting up. She gasped to see that it was Kris. “Oh, hi.” Was
Kris’s blouse unbuttoned that low before?

“
I was looking for Regan,
but... hmmm, whatever.” Kris said. “Are.. you two an item? If you
don’t mind me asking?” There was a distinct predatory tone in her
voice. “I mean... Sir?”

“
Huh? No! Good lord no.”
Alisia was jumpy.

“
Oh... good.” Kris stepped
forward a step before Alisia blurted out “Ah, that is, I’m straight
and... yeah. So..”