Chapter 3: Pre-Deployment Protocol
The officer’s barracks smelled of male sweat, boot polish, and the faint, greasy odor of suppressed violence. Miles stood in his temporary cell of a room, packing his tactical vest with spare magazines. The movements were automatic, each magazine slotting home with a precise, satisfying click. He heard her before he saw her, the familiar cadence of her steps in the corridor—softer than a soldier’s, hesitant. He didn’t look up.
The door was unlocked. Security protocol was for the regular grunts, not for him. She pushed it open and slipped inside, closing it softly behind her. The sound sealed them in a tomb of grey light.
He finished with the vest, laying it over the foot of his perfectly made bunk. The thin mattress was taut under a standard-issue grey blanket. Everything was regulation. It was a relief.
Finally, he looked at her. Amy stood with her back against the door, wearing a simple dark green tunic and trousers, her hair loose. She looked out of place amidst the starkness, a splash of unruly life.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice low. The barracks were mostly empty pre-dawn, but not entirely.
“You’re leaving.”
“Observant.”
She ignored the jab, stepping further into the room. Her eyes took in the sparse belongings, the absence of anything personal. He’d only officially checked out of the marital suite hours ago, but he’d already erased himself from it.
“Karina came to see me,” Amy said, her voice testing the air.
Miles went very still. His hands, which had been checking the action on his sidearm, paused. A cold, focused clarity settled over him. He placed the pistol on the small metal desk with a deliberate click. “And?”
“She knows you were there. She… she offered me a way out.”
He turned then, his face a blank mask. Inside, a furnace roared. The image of the botanist—soft, kind, safe—touching his wife, whispering comforts, threatened to detonate the icy control he wore like armor. He saw it with perfect, punishing clarity: Amy in that lab of glowing plants, yielding to tenderness, finding a peace he could never give her. It was worse than imagining her with another man. It was a rejection of his entire world.
“A way out,” he repeated, the words flat. “From me.”
“From this,” she said, gesturing vaguely between them, at the room, at his weapon. “From the waiting. From the goodbyes that feel like open wounds.”
He crossed the distance in two strides. He didn’t grab her. He invaded her space, forcing her to tilt her head up to meet his eyes. The early light from the high, grimy window caught the flecks of granite in his irises.
“But you’re here,” he said, his breath a warm wash on her face. “You came to my kennel. Why?”
She swallowed, her throat working. Her green eyes were wide, swimming with conflict he could almost taste. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.” His hand came up, his thumb brushing roughly over her lower lip. “You came because you need it carved into you. Words from that woman are just air. You need to feel it. You need to remember what it costs.”
“Stop talking,” she whispered, a plea and a command.
A grim, humorless smile touched his lips. “Okay.”
His kiss wasn’t gentle. It was a reclamation. A brutal negation of every soft word Karina had uttered. He devoured her mouth, his tongue plunging past her lips, tasting coffee and a lingering trace of something sweet—tea, maybe. Her tea. The thought made him growl, a low sound that vibrated into Amy’s mouth.
He walked her backwards until her knees hit the edge of his bunk. He broke the kiss, his hands going to the fastenings of her trousers. He yanked them down, along with her underwear, in one ruthless motion. “Turn around. Hands on the footlocker.”
His voice left no room for debate. It was the voice he used on raw recruits, on mission parameters. A shiver, equal parts dread and raw anticipation, racked her. She obeyed, bending over the cold, olive-drab metal of the footlocker at the end of the bunk. The position arched her back, presenting her to him. The air in the room felt suddenly frigid against her exposed skin.
She heard the rustle of his own clothes, the click of his belt, the zip. Then the blunt, hot pressure of him, nestling between her cheeks, seeking entrance. He didn’t ask. He didn’t prepare her. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly, and drove into her in one relentless, deep thrust.
Amy cried out, her knuckles whitening on the metal locker. The stretch was intense, shocking. She was wet—she hated how her body responded to his dominance—but he was large, and he took her without preamble.
He didn’t pause. He set a punishing rhythm immediately, each withdrawal a promise of violence, each slam forward a brutal fulfillment. The metal frame of the regulation bunk creaked and rattled with their movement. The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet barracks.
His hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging into the flesh, surely leaving new bruises over the old ones. He leaned over her, his chest hot against her back, his mouth at her ear.
“This cunt,” he grunted, punctuating each word with a savage thrust, “is. mine. That botanist with her gentle hands? She doesn’t know what to do with you. She doesn’t know you need to be used.”
Amy gasped, the truth of the words searing her. He was using her, turning her into an instrument for his anger, his fear, his possession. And her body was singing for it.
He changed his angle slightly, leaning back, pulling her hips higher. The next thrust hit a spot so deep she saw stars. A sharp, brilliant pain-pleasure exploded in her core.
“Yes, right there,” he hissed, watching her face contort. He snaked a hand around her hip, his fingers finding her clit, already hard and swollen. He rubbed it with a rough, circular pressure that was almost cruel in its effectiveness. “You come on my cock, Amy. You come reminding yourself whose mark is inside you. Whose seed is already in you.”
The vulgarity, the physical domination, the sheer, raw ownership of the act shattered her last vestiges of control. Her orgasm ripped through her with a force that was almost traumatic. Her internal muscles clamped down on him in vicious, rhythmic spasms, her cries muffled against her own arm as she shook, her vision blurring.
Feeling her tighten around him, his own control snapped. With a guttural, choked roar that was devoid of any tenderness, he slammed into her one last, deep time and held himself there. She felt the hot, urgent pulse of his release, jetting deep inside her, another claim staked in her flesh.
He collapsed over her, his weight heavy, his breath ragged and hot against her neck. They stayed locked together, joined by sweat and sex and bitterness, the only sounds their ragged breathing and the distant hum of the base.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out of her. A trickle of his spend followed, a warm, shameful trail down her inner thigh. He straightened up, adjusting his clothes with methodical, post-coital detachment.
Amy stayed bent over the footlocker, her legs trembling, unable to move. The reality of where she was, what they had just done, crashed down. In a barren barracks room, on the eve of another violent mission, they had fucked like animals. It was the farthest thing from Karina’s soft offer of tea and understanding.
Miles moved to the small sink in the corner, splashed water on his face. He didn’t look at her.
“Get dressed,” he said, his voice back to its normal, gravelly register. All passion spent, only duty remained.
Amy pushed herself upright, her body feeling tender, invaded, and shockingly alive. She pulled her trousers up, the fabric catching on her damp skin. She felt hollowed out and impossibly full.
He was checking his gear again, his back to her. The moment of connection, however brutal, was over. The silence stretched, a vast, uncomfortable gulf.
“What if you don’t come back?” The question left her lips before she could cage it.
He paused, his hand on his vest. He didn’t turn. “Then the botanist gets her way.”
The words were a spear to her gut. He said it not with anger, but with a cold, factual finality.
He finally looked over his shoulder at her. His face was unreadable. “My bird leaves in twenty minutes. You need to go.”
Dismissed. Just like on the operations deck. The sex had been a transaction, too. A physical reaffirmation of a toxic bond. A goodbye that left no room for softness.
Amy walked to the door, her steps unsteady. She paused, her hand on the latch. She wanted to say something.Be safe. I love you. I hate you. The words tangled into a knot in her throat, impossible to unravel.
She left without a sound.
The corridor was still dim, empty. The walk back to her quarters was a blur. She felt raw, flayed open. The memory of his body driving into hers was vivid, a brand on her nerves. So was the memory of Karina’s sad, understanding eyes.
She reached her door. As it hissed open, a young corporal, barely more than a boy, rounded the corner, looking harried. He saw her, recognized her, and skidded to a stop.
“Ma’am!Dr. Quaritch?”
She nodded, forcing her professional mask into place. “Yes, Corporal?”
“You’re needed in Lab Three, urgently. There’s… there’s been an incident at one of the remote sensor arrays. They’re bringing in a wounded Na’vi.A child. Science division is ordered to assist and… and assess.”
The Na’vi. A child. Wounded by RDA sensors—or RDA bullets. The reality of Pandora, the reality of Miles’s war, came crashing back, not as an abstract ethical dilemma, but as a bleeding child about to be laid on her lab table.
Her personal torment, the war between her heart and her body, suddenly seemed obscenely small.
“I’ll be right there,” she said, her voice miraculously steady.
She turned and followed the corporal, leaving the scent of sex and despair behind her, walking straight into the consequences.