A different kind of mission - Chapter 8

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When Sandy awoke the next day, her first impression was pain. The trauma of the previous night was almost too much for her mind to accept. Her memories were distant, disjointed, disconnected. She remembered enough to understand the source of the pains that assailed her, and deep shame added its burden to the load she carried. The transformed soldier wept silently in her bed, sure what she perceived as her weakness had betrayed the team and Marilyn. The nurse noticed her stress on the monitors and was soon at her side.

"Now, just relax, honey, you're fine now," she tried to reassure the sobbing girl.

Sandy couldn't speak to answer her; her throat was as choked as an intruder from the night before had made it. She just shook her head in helpless negation and let the tears run down her bruised cheeks.

"Do you hurt bad?" the nurse asked. "The doctor said I can't give you anything unless I call him. Do you want me to call him?"

Sandy just wanted to be alone in her misery, so she gave another negative shake and looked away at the blank wall. The nurse went back to her station and called the doctor anyway. He happened to be talking with Marilyn about Sandy's prognosis. The blonde team leader overheard enough of the conversation to realize that Sandy was awake and Marilyn was on her way to the room before the doctor even hung up. Once at her bedside, Marilyn just leaned over and gave Sandy a long, warm, gentle hug, cradling her in her arms. Sandy turned to Marilyn's breast like a child to her mother and shook with deep sobs that were too overwhelming to allow recognition of how the motion was aggravating the physical pains that assailed her.

"It's okay, baby, it's okay. You're okay now," Marilyn murmured monotonous assurances that meant no more, and no less, than the gentle stroking of the girl's hair. The doctor stood quietly by as the two teammates shared a closeness that was more than comrades in arms. After an interval that seemed forever, yet was only a few minutes, the wracking sobs diminished, and Sandy's crystal green eyes looked up to meet the brilliant blues of her comforter.

"I'm so sorry, Marilyn," she whimpered.

"No. You're not," Marilyn declared with deliberate flatness, an absolute, unequivocal order from a general to a private. It shocked Sandy, as it was supposed to do. She pulled back further to get a better look at Marilyn and saw a fierce determination in those eyes that had moments ago seemed so softly comforting.

"You performed magnificently," Marilyn continued. "Two of those pigs were out of the picture; a third would have been for long enough for you to get away. There aren't more than three or four soldiers in any army that can take on three street thugs while wearing 5-inch spikes and a tight skirt, let alone beat the crap out of them. All of those who can are part of our team. Your only problem was that there were more than three of the pigs, and that's not your fault; it's mine. I didn't let the teamwork together; I sent you out alone. But I do have a job for you, and I expect your best efforts, just as you have always given me your best efforts."

The doctor looked like he wanted to intrude, but Marilyn was sure Sandy needed the emotional reassurance that she was still valuable to the team and personally to her leader, more than any physical comfort. She held him off with a glance that revealed the strength of will that had gotten her this job in the first place, then waved him out of the room.

"Since you earned the right not to participate in our El Supremo's class today," Marilyn began with a reminder of the happy time before the tragedy, "I'm going to get you started on the next phase of our training. Beginning later this morning, a language instructor will come in. Don't tell any of the other girls yet, but you may be able to tell from the language where we're going. I'll tell you now, it's not a Latino country, and the dictator doesn't really call himself El Supremo, though he likes the equivalent in his language. I expect you to become our language expert since you'll have some idle time on your hands for a few days. I won't insult you by telling you to do your best to get better, but we need you looking beautiful before we can go on the mission, so keep that in mind also. Any questions?"

Sandy's wide eyes betrayed her shock at the sudden turn of events. She had felt broken and useless, only to be complimented and confirmed in absolute terms as still part of the team. Motivation takes many forms, but Marilyn had learned to push Sandy's buttons with sure reliability, and the green-eyed brunette was lifted from the depths to the heights with a couple of simple orders, most of which promised hard work and struggle followed by danger. Well, Marilyn had picked her team carefully, more carefully than most of them knew. She stood up slowly, knowing that jiggling Sandy's tortured body was to be avoided if possible, then turned to leave.

As she did, she heard a quiet voice from Sandy, "Thank you."

Marilyn nodded abruptly as though it were only to be expected that she would properly use the resources of the team and that Sandy's role was just as reasonable. She didn't turn back, though, because the film that filled her sparkling blue eyes would have destroyed the image of command she had used to snap Sandy from her despair. She strode as quickly from the room as her towering heels, and habitual wiggle would allow, looking now for the doctor. He was allowed to tend to his patient, an embarrassing but necessary interlude that would be repeated many times over the next few days. Sandy recovered quickly, though. Her renewed sense of purpose was supported by visits from her friends. They smuggled her treats from the dining room, some of which extracted a painful price a day or so later when their remnants worked their way to their ultimate destination, but Sandy loved them anyway. The language training occupied her for several hours each day, and she still practiced at her barely-adequate lock-picking skills whenever she had a moment to spare. After a week, she was allowed to return to her room. She still didn't move with the liquid grace she had shown before, but she looked better, the bruises gradually fading, the cuts on her lip slowly shrinking.

In her room, she found an article from a local paper about the aftermath of her assault. Five gang members had been found dead in an alley, all with broken necks. One also had a fractured skull from being crushed against a truck window; one was blinded and almost castrated from some sort of penetrating trauma. One had a broken nose and teeth from sometime before he received the death blow to his neck. Signs of sexual assault indicated that a rape in progress had been broken up, with fatal results for the attackers. The paper reported that the strength of the retribution indicated that some group of men must have been involved in the rescue since women were not considered capable of applying such force. The police were looking for a woman accompanied by at least a couple of men and possibly another woman. If anyone had seen anything in the alley, please notify such and such, etc. An editorial was clipped to the article that expressed due concern about vigilantism but expressed no regret that the gang members had been dealt with so severely.

After another week, she was physically healed, and in another, she had re-learned her feminine skills. The pain of her assault lurked in her eyes, though, adding to the damsel-in-distress appearance in a way none of them would have wanted, but which was nonetheless impossibly effective. She was more desirable than ever, more certain to invoke help from any men she encountered who had even the faintest sense of chivalry or of true masculine responsibility.

All quiet times must come to an end, though, and when she was as fully recovered as she was likely to get, Sandy returned to the unarmed combat mat against El Supremo. Everyone, most of all Sandy, was shocked at her new lethal effectiveness. She managed to hold a potentially killing stroke by only the barest of margins, at the last second flattening a hand that would have crushed a larynx into a resounding slap. It scared her, terrified El Supremo, and got her excused from further practice. It was clear that her reflexes had chosen the path of attack rather than defense when confronted by a masculine threat and that her skills had not been lost through the trauma. Her problem, if it was a problem, was control. There was a fierce anger within her now that made her deadly in a way none of the others could match.

That wasn't the end of the surprises for the day, however. Marilyn finally told the rest of the team of their destination, and they had the first briefing on their actual attack plan. It was deceptively simple. They would merely allow themselves to be captured as harem slaves. All initial captives were kept inviolate until El Supremo (as they continued to call him) got around to initiating them, something that might take months. Until that happened, they could wander through the harem at will. The turnover was so great that new faces would not be unusual. Converging on the only entrance to the hidden biowar lab at a specified time when the technicians were asleep, they would gain entrance and effect the switch of the harmless agent for the deadly brew. There was a problem, though. From a source that Marilyn wouldn't reveal, it had been learned just how El Supremo's technicians delivered their fresh, live sperm to gain passage within the inner compound. Girls from the harem were chained at strategic spots throughout the lab, blindfolded to prevent them from seeing what was going on. Hidden within a mitten covering their bound hands was a button to open their assigned interior door. The doorways were reportedly like airlocks, possibly with exactly that purpose, and only one man could pass at a time. The chained girls were trained to push their concealed button only when a man ejaculated into their mouths, with the usual deadly penalties for non-compliance. The problem was that there was the possibility that one of the true harem girls would realize that there were unauthorized intruders and compromise the mission. They could kidnap this theoretical observer from her captors and keep her from revealing their presence, but they couldn't trust her to work the door properly.

One of the team, any one of the team, would have to be prepared to replace a door sentinel. That meant they would have to be prepared to function as oral receptacles for sperm until relieved. The compelling logic of this situation did nothing to overcome the revulsion of the team members, except for Jaymi.

"Listen, girls, I've been there, done that. It's not so bad. I know that some of you have wondered about me all along. Sandy knew about me from the start. I've swung both ways with men and women, and the only true erogenous zone in anyone is the one between their ears. If you truly want to please someone you love or even lust after, then you'll accept any non-painful physical action you can do to give them pleasure, and it will be a pleasure of its own. As soon as you accept that sucking a guy's cock can be a pleasure, then the nature of the physical act doesn't matter anymore. I don't expect to enjoy blowing some guy I don't know while I'm bound and blindfolded, but that's because it's forced, not because of the cocksucking. If we need to do this, we can."

With that, the longest speech the usually reserved Jaymi had ever delivered to the team, she sat down. The others were as shocked by the uncharacteristic outburst as by the revelation of propensities that had been only rumors. It was an amazing coincidence, or perhaps a sign of the intimate closeness their long teamwork had created, to see multiple throats gulp as Jaymi's words triggered a reflexive response in the other team members.

In the next instant, all the team members, even Marilyn, were looking at Sandy. She had the greatest reason of any of them to fear and hate this approach. Her introduction to oral sex had been a brutal rape, one that could traumatize anyone into such a psychological rejection that it would be impossible for her even to try. Yet, if she could make the mental adjustment to the openness of mind expressed by Jaymi, could the others do any less? They watched as memories of her assault flowed behind her eyes, the pain visible in ways too subtle for those not part of the team to see, but glaring obviously to the tight-knit group. Then her eyes went to Marilyn, who looked back with unjudging patience, another silent communication telling Sandy that Marilyn would back up whatever decision she made. Finally, Sandy's eyes turned to Jaymi. The dark-eyed bisexual had never been intrusive on any of the team members, accepting herself even if they would not. That patience, really trust, had gained her the trust of the other team members in a way that aggressively forcing acceptance of her chosen lifestyle could never have been achieved. Sandy met Jaymi's eyes and couldn't reject the gentle philosophy of the quiet lady, no longer one of "them" in any way that mattered, now just another one of "us."

"All right, Jaymi, what do we need to do?" Sandy asked quietly.

Jaymi looked at Marilyn for confirmation that Sandy's acceptance was a team decision and, at a silent nod, turned back to the group. "Well, I guess it depends on what we want to achieve. We can make this mechanical, in a way that never touches us where we live, or we can learn to do it right, as an opportunity to pleasure our lovers. Even real women sometimes choose to be mechanical, but I'll tell you what, if you approach it as an act of love, it'll be more enjoyable for you as well as for your partner. I guess I think we should pair off and just practice a little. If you've been on the receiving end of a good blowjob, you'll figure out what to do. If not, well, let me know."

Another collective gulp passed through the team. Marilyn glanced at Constance, and if the team had been paying close attention, they would have seen a slight frown of negation flicker across Connie's elegant features, followed by an equally subtle nod from Marilyn.

"Very well," Marilyn resumed control of the briefing, "we'll do as you suggest. I guess I'll need a partner, too, but we can worry about that later. We all accept the wisdom in Jaymi's approach, but I think a little privacy is still in order. I'll leave it to you to work out any details. Now, let's get to work on our language lessons."

With that, the training continued. No one was surprised to find out that Marilyn already had good skills in the target nation's language. She had always led from the front. Sandy had made good use of her time as well, so the team had two tutors to go with the formal language teachers provided by the army. They made good progress over the next few weeks, not becoming fully fluent, which wasn't required, but gaining enough skill to eavesdrop effectively on any conversations they heard and to read signs that might be significant.