Short story excerpt: THE SHORT-LIVED ESCAPE OF JORONO CYNES, an AFV Defender story

 

With Spitfire cleared and set free to go back to playing, hopefully wiser and willing to follow instructions, the two of them could turn back to helping Decker attend to the children in the post-dinner lesson and storytelling time. Currently they were sitting in a clump on the other side of the camp from the medical tent. Their adoration-mixed-with-terror for the Security Chief ensured that when he snarled and marched back and forth in front of them, hands clasped behind his back and shoulders hunched, they listened. Even more important, they remembered what he told them.

Currently, Decker regaled them with one horror story after another about ensigns and new graduates of the Academy who messed up big time. They thought they were experts in wilderness survival, but took two steps beyond the sensor field protecting their camp on their first dirtside mission, and immediately faced disaster.

“And don’t you forget, you smelly lumps of walking bait, we got no sensor fields or even those sissy vermin repulsion fields, so everything’s zooming in on you right this second, drooling over the snack they’re gonna make out of you!”

M’kar noted that Decker at least had the sense to vary the many and messy disasters the arrogant, careless idiots encountered. So far, while she hadn’t really been paying conscious attention, she had heard about three arms, six legs, and various hands and feet that were lost, either swallowed whole or mangled so badly they couldn’t be regenerated before various disgusting flesh-eating bacteria set in or venom melted flesh off bones, along with large chunks of flesh bitten away so various organs were revealed. When that happened, usually the companions of the said careless idiots had weak stomachs and were too busy losing their last four meals to apply medical aid. Someone always died in each story.

The children loved it, even as they cringed and squealed and made gagging noises. M’kar hoped she and Brea could find something suitably silly to entertain them before they curled up in their sleeping bags, to dilute the images in their minds and deflect nightmares.

“I’m thinking the older ones should get guard duty tonight. Wear them out, have them available during the period when nightmares usually hit, so they can help quiet down the ones who are noisy when they wake up crying.” She pitched her voice soft enough only Brea heard her, as they settled down between the fire pit and Decker’s audience. 

“All of them get guard duty. Prove to them that the shadows aren’t going to solidify and swallow them whole,” Brea countered. They locked gazes a moment, nodded, and turned back to listening to the end of Decker’s story.