A freelancer christmas, p.1
A Freelancer Christmas, page 1
A Freelancer Christmas
By G.S. D’Moore
Copyright © 2023 by G.S. D’Moore
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. For permission, contact gsdmore@outlook.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN 13: 978-1-7377036-9-3
If you like Haremlit Readers, monster girls, harem lit, or want to check out something by the other Dukes of Harem then check out the linked Facebook groups for other good reads.
A Freelancer Christmas
“Beer me,” I held out my hand expectantly.
What was supposed to happen was choreographed, alcoholic bliss. The hot, little splice with purple ears and a cat tail should have grabbed a can out of the food processing unit, tossed it over her shoulder, and right into my waiting hand. Ever since Miko and I started hooking up, we’d been more in synch like that.
Of course, Miko wasn’t usually drunk as a skunk, which I’d read was a fearsome Old Earth alpha predator that even ancient humans feared. With a loud belch that nearly made her commit a party foul with her cup of whitish liquid, she grabbed a beer, fumbled it, turned, and blindly chucked it.
“Shit,” I lunged for the can and was barely able to snag it with my fingertips before it smacked into the real-life evergreen the skipper had obtained from space gods knew where. I didn’t even know there was a planet nearby that held the unique species of tree.
“XO for the score,” Miko pumped her fist and downed the rest of her eggnog.
Originally, it had been non-alcoholic, but what kind of ex-marine would I be if I hadn’t spiked it with a little something extra.
“Yeah, nice shooting, Tex.” I didn’t know who Tex was but history said he was a damned fine shot.
Then, I went out on a limb. “Hey, Miko, maybe you should take it easy,” I suggested.
She finished throwing back her spiked drink and turned her glare on me. “What did you say?”
I thought it was pretty obvious by the way she slurred her S’s, but this had always been a touchy subject for the splice. She was young, almost twenty, but she hated it when people looked down on her and thought she wasn’t ready for something. It didn’t matter if it was something important like flying the ship, or simple like holding her booze. We’d butted heads – and other parts of our bodies – together over that issue several times.
The truth was, she was more than capable. She was an infiltration splice. She was born to get close to people, get them to like her, and then kill them if needed. I’d seen her in action and she could be pretty fucking scary. I thought I had pretty good situational awareness and she’d snuck up on me an embarrassing number of times.
If she wasn’t so drunk, I never would have dared to poke the bear but it was barely Christmas Eve and . . .
“He means exactly what you think, Miko,” a giant, green, scaly body squeezed through the door to the rec room as Astrid arrived.
Twelve feet of the ultimate killing machine was undermined by a red hat with a little white ball perched on the top of her head. I couldn’t help but snort at the imagery.
“Is this not your traditional holiday garb?” she asked as she patted her head to make sure the hat was still there.
“No. You nailed it,” I smiled.
It was more holiday-appropriate than Miko’s outfit. Her shirt had a disgruntled-looking elf on the front, smoking a burner, with the statement, “I’ve got your present right here” written with a big festive arrow pointing down between her legs.
I’d tasted that Christmas Miracle before and planned to give her my Yule Log whenever we could find some time to be alone. The tight leggings she was wearing weren’t helping my self-control on that front.
“Oh. It’s so cute,” Miko completely forgot what we’d been arguing about as she pranced over to the dragon.
She wasn’t even half the bigger alien’s height but the two were like sisters. They started talking about girl things and left me to enjoy my beer. I cracked it open and looked at the corner of the rec room we’d decorated with holiday cheer.
Underneath the rare tree were some presents, and the holo-projector had a crackling fire displayed against the bulkhead. Christmas was still one of the most popular holidays in this corner of the galaxy, and I just happened to be spending it aboard the Wayward Stepchild.
Honestly, it was probably the best Christmas I’d ever had. For the moment, no one was actively trying to kill us but that probably wasn’t going to last. Things with Miko and Astrid were going well. Hell, even the skipper had come around to me.
“Speak of the devil,” the woman in question strode through the hatch.
Unlike the other two women, Andrea wasn’t wearing anything festive. Technically, neither was I but that wasn’t for lack of trying. My history of limited funds and lack of shopping opportunities was the reason. I didn’t mind the holiday itself, even if I’d never really had a reason to celebrate.
That had all changed recently.
“Good, everyone is here,” she glanced around. “We can begin.”
“Secret Santa!” Miko cheered and there was no hiding the fact from her mother that she was wasted.
Andrea shot her a look that said there would be extra duties added to her task list tomorrow, but Miko was too shitfaced to care right now. If I was being honest, I was a little excited. People didn’t usually give me presents. For the types of things I wanted, I usually had to pay by the hour.
“Should we start with what we are thankful for?” Astrid asked as she settled down into her reinforced chair.
“Wrong holiday,” Miko grunted.
“That’s Thanksgiving,” I informed. “I think it happened while she was . . .” I nodded over to Miko.
After nearly getting killed on a raid of a pixie ship, Miko had been in cryostasis for the better part of a week. It was easy to lose track of things out in the black, especially when everyone was stressed beyond belief, but I was pretty sure the intergalactic turkey slaughter had happened around then.
“Apologies. What do you do for this Christmas?” Obviously, dragons didn’t celebrate Christmas but Astrid wanted to be included in the celebration.
“No,” the skipper held up a hand to stop Miko’s response. “This is our first Christmas together,” she looked around the room. “We’ve been through a lot in the last few weeks. I think we should all share something with one another. Mitchell,” she put me on the spot. “Why don’t you tell us what Christmas means to you.”
“No pressure,” I laughed awkwardly as I tapped my chin. “What does Christmas mean to me?” I pondered as my thoughts drifted to what was probably my most memorable Christmas to date.
***
“I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus. Underneath the mistletoe last night,” echoed from the comms section of the tactical operation’s center, only to be drowned out by laughter.
“Kissing Santa Clause. I don’t think so,” Private Burnum announced loudly to the enjoyment of the marines standing around her.
Despite the military, and especially the Confederation Marine Corps being predominantly a sausage fest, the brunette lounging in her battle armor with her helmet on the desk beside her was an oddity. She was cute. Hell, I’d even call her hot. That made her popular. The fact that she gave as good as she got among her fellow marines just made her that much better.
“What do you mean?” another private asked her. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember the guy’s name. He was a fuck-up and that was all that mattered in my book.
“Mommy ain’t kissing no Santa Clause. Come on, guys,” she flashed a smile at the group. “If she’s hooking up with a guy that can travel the entire galaxy in a single night, and has enough cash to make gifts for all the girls and boys, she ain’t just kissing him. She’s stuffing his fat cock in her mouth and . . .”
“Private,” I warned as I finally entered the conversation.
I stood in the TOC of Bravo Company, Second Battalion, Second Regiment, Second Marine Expeditionary Force. The Triple Deuce. One of my squad mates had actually tried that out as a nickname for me back when I was a Lance Corporal. It had lasted all of a week and a half. I didn’t do nicknames, and I made sure the marine who thought he was some sort of comedic genius learned that the hard way by cleaning the head with his face. What happened in the barracks stayed in the barracks.
“Oh, come on, Sarge,” Burnum gave me puppy dog eyes.
I wasn’t a Lance Corporal anymore but I had at least one evaluation report that said I “lacked the bearing of an NCO”. If I wasn’t so good at killing things, I probably never would have made staff sergeant.
Burnum kind of reminded me of the ex that had been the origin of the triple deuce nickname. The unfortunate nom de plume stemmed from an unfortunate encounter that was entirely not my fault. The MPs didn’t think so but fuck them. Shit happened when a woman Dear Johned a marine after a three-month deployment because she wanted to fuck her spin instructor or something cliché like that.
Don’t worry, there wasn’t any violence involved. I saved that for the battlefield. Why some of my fellow marines had taken to calling me Tripple Deuce was because, in my anger over the breakup, I went to her house and summoned forth the shits of three men. That would hav e been bad enough since I didn’t flush, but since I did it in the upper part of the toilet, I ruined her shitter.
That wasn’t the part that reminded me about Burnum. With the MREs we’d been eating for the last couple of days while we waited for resupply, no one was taking a regular deuce anytime soon. What Burnum and my ex had in common was a truly remarkable ass. I swear, I could see the private’s junk in her trunk through her battle armor. That was some serious bootyliciousness. Thank all the space gods for our standard-issue vitamins.
“Oh, come on, Burnum,” I parroted right back at her.
Everyone E4 and below might bend over backward to please her in the hopes they might get a peek at that ass, but I wasn’t your average enlisted guy.
Her pout vanished when she saw her feminine charms weren’t working on me. “You’re killing me, Sarge,” she feigned getting stabbed in the heart.
“Killing you? A little of my soul dies every time you make me listen to these oldies,” I gave her a look. “That song has got to be a millennia old. Don’t we have anything from the last century to listen to?” I looked at the PFC who was manning the comms station, and who was supposed to keep an eye on incoming and outgoing traffic.
“Sorry, Sarge,” the PFC shook his head.
“That’s staff sergeant to you,” I stared him down until he looked away.
What could I say? I wasn’t completely immune to Burnum’s charms, or the occasional wank session to the image of her running around in PT shorts.
Still, she might have been right about my current mood-killing attitude. That’s what happened after a full night of staff duty and babysitting all the privates while the LT who was supposed to back me up went and took a nap in the officer’s quarters. I failed to summon the proper enthusiasm for my chosen profession at 0600 in the morning.
Burnum understood my mood and dropped it as she went back to tinkering with the lights strung across the ceiling of the TOC. When they’d first been set up, the red and green LEDs had been programmed to blink in time with whatever music was playing. Now, they were just permanently on the fritz and threatened to give some unlucky marine an epileptic seizure.
The jerry-rigged Christmas lights weren’t the only thing not working after three weeks at our objective. Three weeks on this particular planet would test the most resolute of men, and I wasn’t just talking about trying to get in a certain private’s pants.
I put all the thoughts of my current predicament out of my head as I forced a smile onto my face. As my drill sergeants used to say, fake motivation was better than no motivation. I was going to fake the shit out of what came next.
I parted the sea of privates as I walked over to the comms station and hit the call button on the panel in front of me. “TOC to skipper, over.” I waited for the reply.
“Go ahead, TOC,” the commander of Bravo Company radioed back.
Overall, he wasn’t a total waste of space. During the few fights we’d been in, he’d kept his head and relied on his platoon leaders, platoon sergeants, and squad leaders to get the job done. As one of the latter, it was nice to not have a captain breathing down my neck every time I assigned sectors of fire. Still, there were a few things I thought he could do better. That was true for any commander.
My main critiques had to deal with garrison situations. Tactically, the guy was sound but when we started to sit around with our thumb up our ass for too long, he made it his personal mission to find busy-work bullshit for us to do. That, and he became obsessed with doing things by the book. In combat, he was willing to take suggestions, try shit out, and color outside the lines. But if we were on base, gods help the poor bastard whose armor wasn’t spotless. One speck of rust and the First Sergeant brought down the hammer on the whole squad.
I had a few suggestions I was waiting for the right moment to email him about. Thanks to my three chevrons and single rocker on my armor, he might actually listen to me. That would be a first but now was not that time.
“All clear, sir. Nothing significant to report. We observed only slight movement from either camp during the night and intelligence says it was routine resupply. Just a few shuttles ferried to and from orbit. No other movement to report and no uptick in chatter.” If there had been anything worthwhile, I would have filed a Serious Incident Report and woke the skipper up.
Since there was no SIR waiting in his inbox, he already knew that. My impromptu sitrep was because there was a standing order for staff duty to brief the CO every morning at the end of their shift. Technically, it should have been the LT doing the job but I suspected he’d gone to bed hours ago after “checking” to make sure the sensitive sites on the forward operating base were secure. That left me in charge. Awesome.
“Thank you, staff sergeant,” it was tough to tell what the man was thinking with only audio.
“Yes, sir. I’m off to do my final checks and conduct the handover to the next SDO,” I finished up and moved to disconnect the call.
“Staff sergeant,” he stopped me.
“Yes, sir?”
“Put on your fucking helmet,” he growled.
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir,” I heard the radio click as it disconnected. “Fuck you, sir,” I finished with a growl of my own.
That was one of the skipper’s latest obsessions. He wanted everyone in their helmet at all times and he wanted grooming standards maintained. Talk about an oxymoron. Who the hell gave a shit if you had some five o’clock shadow if you had on your helmet? For fuck’s sake, no one could see anyone else.
The familiar need to punch something reared its ugly head and it took me a few deep breaths to calm down. I’d lost my stripes the last time by punching out an NCO. I didn’t need that career backtrack again.
I was just about over my need to ring the captain’s neck when I heard snickers behind me.
I knew exactly who did it.
“Did I hear something, Private Pyle?” I rounded on the man manning the comms station. The rest of the privates heard the dangerous edge to my tone and immediately vacated the kill box that had sprung up around Pyle’s location.
The guy wasn’t unlucky enough to actually be named Gomer Pyle. His momma really would have had to hate him if that was the case. In his case, he’d earned the most infamous nickname in the Corps by being a grade-A fucktard to his fellow Marines. He was the kind of guy who’d get fragged by his own battle buddy, which was why he’d been moved from one of the line platoons to headquarters and spent all his time in the TOC. Now, his most pressing duty was not to forget the cream and sugar in the officers’ coffee. That, and being the First Sergeant’s personal bitch.
He probably should have been forced out of the Corps by now, but the fact of the matter was that there was way too much paperwork involved in a discharge. Our recent and sudden deployment had put the kibosh on that at least until we got home. It would probably be easier to do a write-up about how he tripped leaving the TOC, somehow managed to pull out his own knife and slit his throat. I was an asshole, but even I wasn’t willing to take things that far . . . yet. So, me and the other staff duty NCOs suffered his presence. Too bad for Pyle, he just couldn’t get out of his own way.
“No, staff sergeant,” he zipped his lips despite the smirk he was shooting at the rapidly retreating privates around him. I was already onto him.
“Are you calling me a liar, private?” I loomed over him so close that he could smell my most recent fart. It was almost to the point the crotch of my matte gray armor was hitting him in the nose.
“No, staff sergeant!” he knew he’d stepped in it but I wasn’t letting him off the hook.
He’d been as annoying as a pair of howler monkeys fucking all night long and I’d had it. He should have known better. I had a reputation as a bit of a hothead in the battalion. My story of punching out my last sergeant, because he was a dumb shit, was a bit of a legend in the Triple Deuce.
“So, I did hear you, private,” I grinned down at him as he tripped over his own words.
“No . . . yes . . . I was just saying how beautiful of a day it is, staff sergeant,” he looked to the other marines in the TOC for backup. But that was the thing about being a blue falcon, no one came to his rescue.
