The deck plates beneath my boots give a dying shudder as the shuttle we're all on comes to a standstill. Wherever we're supposed to be, we are now. A couple of my fellow specialists are staring at the bulkhead, or anxiously fiddling with their hands on the cramped seats in this shuttle. Trooper Clarke's mouth forms sounless words, his face lit from a slice of light arcing in through a chink in the steel covers over the outer windows. The artificial light was turned off an hour ago, I would guess. It's not as if there's a lot to see aside from each other.

There are eight in here. From where I am near the great boarding ramp which currently forms the rear bulkhead, I can see Clarke, Trooper Raven, Bren and Steiger sitting across from myself. Trooper Carrack sits directly to my left. I don't know who's beyond him; my head catches on the ceiling when I try to lean foward and take a look. I'm the tallest of the group, I think, aside from the Captain posted to us for this mission. I don't have to look to know where he is. Paelyn will be in the seat that faces straight down the aisle between we Magnum Black Ops troopers, where he can see all of us at a glance. Instantly my spine stiffens, as if Captain Blaquerocke were listening in on my thoughts.

Damn him. I risk it, and lean forward to see what's happening. Sure enough, the top of my head scrapes along jagged metal, a fresh burst of pain letting me know just how much of my skin is on the ceiling. I can see Paelyn. I was right.

With his arms across his chest, head bowed foward serenely, it looks almost as if he is sleeping. I know he isn't, though. he would never be so vulnerable in front of his subordinates. What I don't know is what he's looking at. I wonder if his small, square glasses are there to hide something behind their black plastic cover. Maybe he has no eyes? Or maybe there's something worse in those eyes to hide.

"Something to say, Corporal Beckett?"

So he was looking at me. I jump back, sitting ramrod straight on the steel bench - the ceiling wrenches more flesh from my skull. "No, Sir," I choke over the pain, trying to ignore it.

Apparently, I fail.

"Should I inform a medic, Corporal, or would you prefer if I simply came over and kissed it better?" His voice is strung taut like a bowstring, dry, completely deadpan. A couple snicker at his joke, falling silent as he inclines his head a fraction and they imagine his eyes on themselves.

"No thankyou, Sir." I reply mechanically. Strangely, it's the first time I've heard him speak in days. All of us have heard him before - he's none other than the Paelyn Blaquerocke, reporter of the NNN. Now, though, the false kindness and compassion put on for public display is gone, leaving only traces of contempt in his tone.

It feels as if he's still looking at me. I busy myself applying dark grey camoflauge paint to my fur. All of us, Paelyn included, are wolves. Some policy about same-species teams being more effective in combat, I guess, digging one claw into my tray of paint and smearing it over alread grey fur. Of our squad, Paelyn has the most work to do. His fur is totally white. Completely white, there's no other way to explain. Simply bare, without a hint of grey of flesh. Barren like a winter wasteland. Calmly, he begins coating himself in the paint, no longer looking so unique.

There's a rumour going around that Paelyn's not like us. I don't understand it, and he is our squad leader on this mission, so I don't want to get caught gossiping and given a turn cleaning the privvies. I'll ask Ulrich about it later. It seems likely, to me. He stays so quiet, preferring not to speak except to command, discipline, or mock. Until just now, I had known only one of those voices. I wonder what he thinks of me.

Carrack leans foward without fear of the ceiling, to remove something from his pack. Paelyn catches my eye. Almost totally grey like his troops, Captain Blaquerocke has but to darken his face to complete the camoflauge effect. He removes his glasses, and for the life of me, I can't help but stare.

The most intense eyes I will ever see dart to me, and I'm pinned instantly under their scrutiny. So bright is the green his eyes look almost like stars of malachite, burning with ferocity that would match those great stellar bodies if the man behind them wished it so. I force air into my lungs, and still he hasn't finished looking at me. That's enough, I decide. I try to turn my head, and my body fails me. He stares at me, still; a bug under a microscope, am I. To turn away seems tantamount to a great disrespect, so I watch him instead. But for all the reasons I can't bring myself to move, the one my mind screams the loudest? 'They're beautiful...' Like the moth to flame, I find myself trapped in their deadly allure. I've been in space too fucking long.

Finally he finishes his close inspection of me, and continues with preparing for our mission, unpeturbed. "Alright, ladies." Sergeant Hammett stands up carefully, putting a knee to the deck - wisely, he's already wearing his helmet. "Listen up. Mission is simple: A Colonel in the SDF has gone missing here on Maximus Station, and we're going in to get him. Simple, ain't it? No recon yet, we're the primary insertion, so be prepared for hostiles."

"So what're we going to do?" Carrack beside me, asks that. Idiot.

"You're going home to your folks in a stasis pod with my foot up your ass, Carrack, you smartass. Now-"

"I thought you liked it in the ass?" Steiger interrupts.

"Magazines and clips where you can reach them," Paelyn begins a string of orders, completely business as if the only words he can hear are his own. "I want Steiger on the M60, Clarke, you're medic. Raven takes Sniper, and Beckett, you're point."

There's a chorus of 'Yes, Sir', so I add my own brassy tone to it. Shit, I'm pointman. The first to get shot at if we run into anything hostile. Paelyn's eyes fall back on me, I swear to the Gods that he knows what I'm thinking. He slides his glasses back up his muzzle, and his face falls dark again. I hope I don't have to see those eyes again today.

***

The flashlight on the side of my rifle plays it's cone of white ilght over a streak of blood on the uniform steel walls. Inwardly I balk at the sight, but to save face in front of my comrades I simply point and turn my head away, making like I'm scanning for another presence. Behind me, I just know that white-furred fuck is looking at me again. I fantasize bringing my weapon to bear on him, emptying my clip into him and staining that pristine white with crimson. Then he wouldn't look so smug.

"Old stain," reports Sergeant Hammett, and a collective breath of relief from the squad rushes past my shoulders.

"Does somebody want to explain the math of this to me?" Steiger, heavy weapon toted in front of himself, begins to complain. "I mean, where's the sense in risking the lives of the eight of us for just one Colonel?"

Paelyn's voice rings clear to the group, authoritive but firm tone practically spitting his words like the crack of a whip at poor Steiger. "Would anybody like to take a stab at answering that?"

"Sure as hell we ain't comin' all the ways out here just so he can catch a ride back to his family," Raven shoots, the butt of his rifle tucked into his shoulder. "That old cunt has something, or knows something important."

"Yeah, so what?" Steiger stops, turning to Paelyn. Paelyn watches on, still silent. "I'd like to be in one piece whenever it is I get back to my family." Paelyn suddenly starts moving again, fluid, graceful steps carrying him past me.

"We all do, moron." Carrack's weapon is lowered as the Captain stalks past. "I've got a family, you got a family, fuck, I bet even the Captain has a family."

Ulrich puts a hand over the barel of Carrack's weapon, and I notice Paelyn stops. His head lowers, and I know that for some reason he's looking at the deck. "Captain Blaquerocke's a Primarch, dipshit. He doesn't have a family."

"Oh." Carrack mutters quietly. "Sorry, Sir, didn't mean-"

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die," Paelyn cuts him off. I make a mental note of that Primarch word, intending to ask the Captain about it later. "Our duty as soldiers is that we have orders, and that supercedes everything. Including your families."

The group as a whole nod, and Sergeant Hammett orders everybody back down the hallway. I don't move as the rest of the squad files away, watching the Captain's back for what seems like eons. His whole frame seems tense, and my thoughts drift back to those eyes. What I might see if I were able to see them now. What secrets I could discover.

His words snap me back to reality. "You, Corporal, are pointman. You should be at the head of our squad. Now, unless you find me attractive, you have no reason to be standing there, wasting your time by staring at me."

His voice has changed, I notice. Gone is the high-handedness, the smug pride, the arrogance and bravado. I sense no possessiveness when he speaks to me, his subordinate. I worry for him, I realise, without knowing why. For some reaosn, his words before - great orders, reprimands - sound more like the playings of an old record stuck to repeat than the actual words this great mind could commit. What he thinks. What lies behind his glasses.

"Sir..." My own voice creaks, hoarse.I don't want anybody else to hear the naked concern, and I don't think Paelyn would, either. "Are you alright?"

Squaring off his shoulders from their fallen position, Paelyn no longer looks like he expects a beating for speaking his mind. "I am fine, Corporal," he asserts. "Now, join the rest of your squad, and take point."

"But, Sir..." I want to ask again, to be sure. But I know I can't.

"Go back to your squad," he repeats, and turns, brushing past my shoulder although there's plenty of room to traverse me. "Take point."

I go slowly after him to floow his request, certainly no orders were given in that tone of voice. I fail to point out to him the white streak of cleaned fur running from the corner of his glasses, and down his cheek. I have at least a glimpse of what the shades are there to hide.

Torchlight finds the intersection, yet I can see no squad standing there, quietly joking to each other and awaiting our return. Paelyn's face, half- lit from the light's backwash, turns to me in askance. All I can do to answer is lift my shoulders in a shrug.

"Hammett?" he whispers. "Sergeant Hammett?" Still, no response. Looking at the ceiling to confirm it can't scalp me, I take a step foward.

My boot comes afoul of something soft on the ground, and with a startled grunt I pitch foward, landing on the deck, punctuated with a loud thump from my body and the skittering of metal as my rifle spins from my grasp across the deck, which I suspect I have just broken my nose on. With my eyes closed, I try to nurse my nose in one hand whie the other gropes about for my rifle in this self-inflicted darkness.

"Oh, Mike..." I open one eye a crack towards the source of the low moan. Paelyn stands stock-still above me, staring at the floor I would guess, and I open my other eye to see what brought such a guttural breath from the... Primarch.

Sergeant Hammett stares at me, the life done from his eyes. I kick back instinctively to escape the pall of death draped over him, and my back sticks into the barrel of a weapon. If there's one thing I'm proud of, it's my ability to recognise just about any weapon. What just poked me was a TR/12 .50 calibre sniper rifle.

Troover Raven lies dead behind me.

Fighting the urge to be sick, I lurch upright, my hands going numb around the grip of my recovered rifle as I pass the light over the deck. I wish that I hadn't. The squad I was pointman for lays dead on it's cold surface, their heads twisted to the most unnatural of angles.

Finally, I can't stand it, and I'm violently ill. I try not to be sick on the dead, but... They surround me. Paelyn moves only long enough to produce a pair of non-standard revolvers from the ankle-dusting greatcoat he wears. I know now that he's looking at me. I look back, trying to avoid the jealous stare of the dead whose eyes silently watch the ceiling.

"H-how?" I manage to stammer. Paelyn, blazé as ever, begins checking his pistols, flicking open each chamer as methodically as a man on the firing range.

"Remain calm, Corporal."

That's it. He had seemed aloof, detached, jaded, even cold - but this is just fucking nuts. I stare at him, slack jawed in disbelief. Some fellow a far way off starts hissing out a few words using my voice. I would never be so insubordinate. "Are you fucking MAD? Something just slaughtered six Magnum agents, and you want to remain calm?! They didn't even get off ONE FUCKING SHOT!!!" Now I know that those words are mine, from the way that Paelyn's face turns to mine, his head tilted to one side as if my fury, my terror, has only piqued his interested in our unseen enemy.

"We will continue as planned, Corporal," he levels. Another white streak from his eyes has appeared. You'd better be upset, you prick. No more bad jokes from Steiger. No more of Ulrich's seemingly endless information. No more Hammett... No more of any of them. "Come and kill me, you sons of bitches!" Screaming defiance down the corridors, I ram a fresh clip into my rifle.

Paelyn smirks openly, the first display of actual approval from him I have seen. "Indeed."