        Wildfire stood up before his Jeep had even started slowing down as it approached the low cluster of buildings on the outskirts of Seoul. The lance corporal driving eyed him with a little surprise. He grinned in response and the lancejack narrowed his eyes. The Jeep didn’t slow as he turned toward the entrance to the nearest building. Wildfire bent his knees slightly, steadying himself by gripping the top of the windshield. The lancejack dropped into second gear and whipped the Jeep around, sending up a spray of gravel and dust and Wildfire leapt.
        He landed easily in front of the door as the corporal finished his bootleg turn neatly in a perfect stop. He snapped a sharp salute from behind the wheel and Wildfire’s heels clicked as he returned it just as sharply before the corporal headed back in the direction they’d come from.
        “You always did bring out the worst in your subordinates,” came a familiar voice from behind him.
        Wildfire turned, finding the door to the building hanging open, his brother Cain standing framed, smiling, in the doorway. Cain extended his hand and the two brothers grasped wrists tightly before they shared a quick embrace.
        “What the hell are you doing here?” Wildfire asked incredulously.
        “Serving my country,” Cain said with a wry smile. “The presiding surgeon died of a heart attack last month.”
        Wildfire whistled softly. “I hope they offered you a bundle of money to take his place on such short notice.”
        Cain shrugged and smiled. “They did.”
        “Alright, second question. How did you know I was coming?”
        Cain turned and put his arm around his brother’s shoulder, leading him into the building. Wildfire smiled. It felt good to have his brother at his side. Over the last few years, he hadn’t found much time to be around civilians, much less anyone he was actually comfortable around. Despite his reputation for being somewhat reckless, he still had to be a typical, hard-nosed soldier most hours of the day. 
        “The CG’s an old friend of dad’s,” Cain explained. “He just told me you were arriving today. And what, leaving tomorrow? No details, or anything. Hell, I’m supposed to pretend that half the guys I treat are Joe Bloggs, so it’s no new news to me.” He shrugged.
        They walked in silence down the main corridor of the building, past a few offices and through a room of cubicles where both civilians and soldiers stood in groups by whiteboards or monitors. 
        “Colour, eh?” Cain asked, noting his rank insignia.
        “Yep,” Wildfire said. “Last year. Didn’t I tell you?”
        Cain shrugged. “You never write.”
        “It’s hard to find time,” Wildfire said honestly as Cain led him to a corridor connecting two buildings. 
        “I think I’m starting to understand that,” Cain said with a weary smile. He stopped in front of a closed door with no windows. “Can you swing by the infirmary to say goodbye, before you hop posts?”
        Wildfire shook his head, his face grim. Honestly, he had no idea what he was here for. His mission was top secret and needed to be accomplished by the end of the week, and that was all he had been told. His named had been mentioned specifically. He hoped it was for his reputation, and not because of the CG’s history with his father.
        Cain sighed softly and shrugged. “Well, if you can’t walk in, just make sure they don’t have to roll you in, alright?”
        They embraced again, Cain slapping him sharply on the back. He stopped, holding his shoulders and looking him in the eyes, his grim smile matching Wildfire’s. Without another word, Cain smacked his brother’s shoulder then left him at the closed door. Wildfire waited until he turned a corner, then opened the door and stepped inside. Closing it, he flipped the switch by the door, turning on a red light outside so that he wouldn’t be interrupted.
        Wildfire’s first instinct was to snap to attention, expecting the man at the other end of the table to be an officer. But the walrus who eyed him from across the room wore no rank insignia. Every place Wildfire’s eyes automatically darted to on his uniform were blank: name, rank, regiment. Everything. His beret sat in front of him on the table. Emerald grey. Secret Reconnaissance Regiment. Apparently, this mission was even more top secret than Demon had realized.
        Aside from the table, six chairs, and the two of them, the room was empty. The stony-faced walrus gestured his hand at a seat. Sitting, Wildfire eyed the man, whose eyes were downturned, looking over documents in a folder. He looked old enough to be a colonel, but then again, he was the first walrus Wildfire had ever seen in uniform. His bristled moustache and dour face made it difficult to judge his age with any confidence.
        “Address me as Uncle,” the man said. “As far as you’re concerned, I have no rank and no name. If I see you salute me, you will be dismissed. You’ll need a callsign, son.”
        “Demon,” Wildfire said quickly. He had earned the nickname during his first tour, due to the uncanny coloration of his eyes, and his equally uncanny precision with a burst-fire automatic.
        “Your mission,” Uncle said, sliding one of the folders across the table to him. “And your candidates.” Another, thicker, folder slid across the polished wood. “Read them, then shred them. I’ll be back in an hour and you’ll have a chance to see your candidates in action. You roll out in the morning.”
        Uncle’s eyes narrowed as he watched Demon over his thick moustache. An awkward silence passed between them. He’s waiting for me to say Yes, sir, Demon realized. He kept his mouth shut, simply returning the man’s gaze. Uncle nodded, almost smiling under those thick bristles, but not quite. He stood.
        “An hour,” he repeated. Demon nodded, keeping his hand still over the closed folders. Uncle turned and left through the door at the rear of the room.
        With the door closed, Demon flipped open the thicker of the two folders. The mission brief could wait. After over a decade of service, he’d learned that mission objectives meant bugger all if you didn’t have a team you could rely on.
        And there, on the first page, paperclipped to the top of the first personnel dossier, was her face. He smiled slowly. Suddenly, he felt much better about the team he was putting together.


        ***

        An hour later, Demon fed the portfolios into the industrial-strength shredder under the table, paperclips and all, just as the door opened. As Uncle stepped into the small room, Demon removed his own rank and regiment insignias and dropped them into his pocket. Uncle nodded approvingly, handing him an emerald grey beret as he gestured to the door. Demon turned the fabric headdress over in his hand, noting the lack of cap badge. He smiled slowly. The Special Reconnaissance Regiment was being rather particular about the anonymity of their uniforms, and yet the anonymity itself was a dead giveaway. Uncle turned and Demon followed him silently out of the room.
        The building on this side of the room looked much the same as the side Demon had entered from, yet it felt much different. They passed nearly no one else in the halls and most of the doors were closed, a few with red lights patiently blinking on and off in front of them. The few people they did pass in the halls simply walked by with their eyes forward, intent on their destination.
        Uncle opened a door for him and he stepped into a low ceilinged operations room that was corner to corner with computer terminals. The monitors were low, letting Demon easily see the faces behind them from his vantage at the front of the room. Every terminal was occupied.
        “You’ll get to observe all the candidates as they go through typical regiment operations training and evaluation. Around here, we believe strongly in a leader having both complete control over and complete trust in his team. We can arrange for other evaluations if you need them, but keep the timeline in mind.”
        Uncle handed him a slender tablet, then turned and exited the room. Demon glanced over the tablet’s display. It was a live record of each candidate’s choices as well as an overall success predictor for the evaluation they were going through. He lowered it to his side, focusing instead on the three dozen faces in the room. Names, ranks, and insignias had all been stripped, but the names and histories from the dossiers ran through his head, matching up to the faces as he looked them over. Of the thirty-six, only Cindy met his eyes during the first scan. She was one of the oldest in the group, and one of only a handful of enlisted over the rank of Lance Corporal. The rest were lancejacks and privates, all nauseatingly fresh-faced despite each of them having seen combat action before.
        He couldn’t decide if he was more worried about these barely pubescent soldiers or the half-dozen second lieutenants in the room. Unlike the enlisted, five of the six had no combat experience at all, and the sixth only had a single mission. Fresh out of officer school, he knew each one begrudged having to leave their freshly-polished butter-bars back in their bunks. They were all MI-6 agent candidates being forced to serve in combat before their official agent suitability evaluation. They would resent taking orders from an enlisted man, even though there weren’t supposed to be any ranks beyond “Commander” and “Subordinate” for this mission.
        Cindy gave him a saucy wink as he surveyed the group thoughtfully. He let himself smile slowly, again feeling relieved that she was part of this pool of candidates. He tried to keep his mind from insisting that he’d pick her as his second in command. He was going to try to be impartial and objective and choose the best candidate for that position. But who else would he truly trust his life and the fate of this mission to?
        One by one, the second lieutenants met his eyes as he surveyed the room a second time. He tried to gauge their expressions, but they all had the typical stony-serious faces of new officers. He suppressed a grin, then lifted up the tablet to see everyone’s progress. The evaluation simulated a series of short missions through text, and led the candidates through a series of value judgements. Many were straight forward choices. Do you shoot the prisoner of war in the face, torture him for information, or simply keep him tied and gagged until you returned to base? But others were far murkier, and offered true insight into the candidates decision-making thought processes. He was impressed by the scope of the evaluation, but still took the results with a grain of salt.
        As he watched, most of the candidates’ scores hovered between the 70% and 80% likelihood of success range. Mentally, he made a note of the handful who were in the 60% range. Then, one number caught his eye. 100%. Responses flitted across the screen periodically as thirty-five of the thirty-six candidates continued through the assessment. But one had already completed the evaluation and had chosen the best response for each scenario. The evaluation contained over two hundred value judgements. He raised his eyebrow slowly and scanned the room a third time. One pair of eyes met his.
        It was one of the butter-bars, a woman even younger than the other officers. Red squirrel. . .his mind sorted through the dossiers he had memorized. Twenty years old, Oxford. Domino, to her friends. Fast-track for a command position within MI-6, but a questionable lineage. She needed to be evaluated under high stress situations. He walked over to her slowly. Looking down at his tablet, he reset her evaluation to the beginning, then nodded at her expectantly.
        She arched her eyebrow at him, then looked down at her screen. Demon moved to stand over her shoulder, watching as she flew through the decisions. It was clear that she had memorized the expected responses from the first time around. She barely paused to read the text on the screen as she went through the evaluation. She was done in under four minutes, answering at a rate of nearly one question per second. She looked up at him when she’d finished. He checked his tablet again, though he knew what he’d find. 100%.
        “Gaming the system isn’t the same as making good decisions,” he said softly. Other candidates glanced up as he spoke to her, some of their faces darkening when they saw Domino had already finished her evaluation. Little did they know, she’d finished it twice. 
        He watched her face. It was clear that a hundred different responses flashed through her mind. He was fully expecting a snarky, arrogant reply.
        “I’ve always been good at evaluations,” she said eventually. Demon raised his eyebrows slowly. A milder response than he had expected. But then, she knew what he expected, didn’t she? She was gaming him as surely as she had gamed the test.
        “The right answers aren’t as clear cut in the field,” he said. 
        “Then you should design a better test,” she snapped before she could think of a better response.
        “Ah, there it is,” he said, nodding. “As your commander, I expect honest answers, not lip service. If you tell me what you think I want to hear again, not even perfect marks will get you on this team.”
        She frowned, and he took some satisfaction in surprising her. Then she nodded slowly. Satisfied, he walked back to the front of the room, looking over responses on his tablet. Ten others had finished. He frowned, looking up over the candidates.
        Corporal Keeba McFarlane was easy to pick out. He had a satisfied look on his face and was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head. Demon double-checked the score on his tablet. 52%. Demon pointed at the snow leopard, then jerked his thumb toward the door.
        “Hotspot,” he addressed the man. “Dismissed.”
        The corporal’s mouth hung open in surprise. Demon didn’t waver. The snow leopard snapped his jaw shut, then stood up, leaving the room with some of his dignity intact. The candidates around him avoided Demon’s eyes, bending themselves to the evaluation with worried expressions creasing their brows.
        Domino was right. The evaluation was flawed. It certainly wasn’t an accurate simulation of the real decisions one had to face during duty, but what was? Still, it should only take an ounce of mental stability and a basic valuing of human life to score better than a 52% on the test. Seven more people finished the tests and Demon watched scores gradually improve.
        He sighed then and slid the tablet onto the table next to one of the candidate’s computers.
        “In the field,” he said, addressing the whole room. “Confidence in your decisions is just as important as making the correct decision. If you have not finished the evaluation, you are dismissed.”
        The room fell silent. Eighteen pairs of eyes looked up at him incredulously. The other seventeen pairs instead looked around, seeing who had made the cut with them and who had not. The room’s two doors opened. Uncle stood at one, while two soldiers stood to either side of the door Demon had entered through. Demon was impressed as the eighteen who had been cut, like Hotspot, simply stood and left silently, escorted by the two soldiers. It was nice to see that those who’d gotten this far had senses of dignity and decorum. 
        Uncle and Demon exchanged a nod, and the two exited the room, the seventeen remaining candidates following after them. 

        ***

        Demon crossed his arms, leaning against a wall as he watched Cindy square off against a female otter who called herself ‘Dead Eye.’ The candidates had been through basic firearms and martial arts evaluations, and he’d learned nothing more than that all seventeen were excellent soldiers. Within a few moments, Cindy had Dead Eye pinned to the mat. The otter slapped the mat, and the two broke off.
        “That’s enough,” he said. He turned to Uncle. “I’m going to need a sniper rifle, a spotting scope, binoculars, and some live rounds. On the roof.” The walrus gave him a quizzical look but turned, pulling aside two soldiers with a gesture to relay Demon’s request.
        Demon, meanwhile, led the candidates up the six flights of stairs to the roof. He was pleased when a soldier emerged only a few moments later holding the rifle he’d requested. He pointed at two candidates, a weasel from the Royal Marines and a hybrid from the RAF who called himself, of all things, ‘Sky Wolf.’
        “You two, spar.”
        Then he tossed the rifle to Dead Eye, lifting the scope to scan the city. Finding something that satisfied him, he tossed the scope to a tigress private. Of the remaining candidates, only a few were under twenty, and the tigress was the only female so young.
        “There’s a dead canary in one of the cages along the market street,” he said quietly. Pointing at the tigress, he said, “Find it,” then he pointed at Dead Eye, “Shoot it.”
        The two looked at him, wide-eyed. The hybrid who was sparring heard him, too, and turned in surprise. The Marine clocked him soundly on the chin, sending him sprawling to the roof. Demon smiled, satisfied.
        “Sky Wolf, you’re dismissed. I don’t care if aliens are beaming down for a probing, man, you can’t let yourself get distracted in the middle of a fight.”
        The hybrid stood, rubbing his chin sourly as he turned to head down the stairs. Demon pointed at the other otter in the remaining group, the only candidate from the navy. He jerked his thumb at the marine. “Spar,” he ordered again. The marine fell back into his defensive stance. He was quick and silent, bouncing elastically on his the balls of his feet the way only an ermine could. If anyone could put him in his place, it’d be a seaman. The otter, whose slick black pelt had earned him the nickname ‘Night,’ was as barrel-chested as one expected from a Navy man. 
        Demon turned back to his sniper team. The spotter was laying on her stomach, elbows on the lip of the roof, whispering instructions to Dead Eye. The tigress was built like a whip, and she’d easily put down every opponent during the martial arts evaluation, including Cindy. She was quiet and sweet, but tried hard to maintain the stern soldier-face everyone else in the group wore. Despite having fought in more bouts than Dead Eye, and having climbed just as many stairs, she wasn’t winded, and as she lay, she was stiller than the otter beside her, who seemed to be growing more and more agitated.
        Demon raised the binoculars to his eyes, expecting the otter to squeeze off a round any moment now. The binoculars weren’t as powerful as the scope, but he soon found his target canary. He’d chosen the target carefully. The dead canary was in a cage with a hundred other birds, and there were plenty of potential civilian casualties milling about the busy market. There was a solid cinderblock wall just beyond the cages, however, and a perfect shot was possible, if one was careful and confident. The stakes, however, were awfully high for a simple evaluation, which was exactly why he’d picked it.
        He waited, breath held, listening to the knuckle-on-flesh sound of the two sparring behind him. Finally, rather than the discharge of a rifle round, he heard the exasperated grunt of Dead Eye as she stood up.
        She glowered at him, and then threw the rifle back.
        “No,” she said simply as he caught the rifle. She had turned toward the stairs before he could tell her she was dismissed. 
        Demon turned just in time to see the ermine slink easily under one of the otter’s punches. In a blink, the marine was behind his opponent, and a solid punch to Night’s kidney took the otter to his knees.
        “That’s enough,” he said softly, before the marine could lay the man out. Night stood, holding his side with a grimace.
        “Moves like a damned ghost,” the otter spat ruefully.
        The marine smiled slowly. “Ghost? I like that.”
        “Me too,” Demon said, throwing the marine the sniper rifle. “You’re up, Ghost.” The new callsign replaced the marine’s earlier nickname of ‘Twist’ and it certainly seemed to fit the weasel as he silently approached the edge of the roof.
        “Still got our target, Princess?” he asked the spotter. Her face darkened as the nickname tumbled off his lips. Her dossier flashed through his mind. She prefered the callsign ‘Stripes,’ but how awful a name was that for a tiger? Plus, she hated being called out for her femininity. He smiled despite himself. With a new callsign like Princess, she’d just have to get over it. He raised his eyebrows, as if daring her to call him on it.
        “Yes,” she said simply, nodding to Ghost as he lay beside her. The two turned their sights toward the city. Behind Demon, the thirteen remaining candidates, Cindy included, watched, holding their breath. Princess was cool and still, lips barely moving as she whispered to Ghost beside her. Ghost moved his barrel in smaller and smaller increments as he honed in on the target. Demon watched his body. Ghost had sparred twice down below, climbed six flights of steps, then sparred twice more on the roof. It was enough to make even the best trained soldier breathe heavily. That was the point.
        Despite his need for oxygen, Ghost’s body stilled dramatically as he controlled his breathing. Demon lifted his binoculars. He pulled the canary back into his sights just in time to see it pop like a feather-filled balloon. He also saw the slight puff of dust as the round buried itself in the cinderblock wall behind the stall. Only the man selling the birds seemed to notice and began running around jabbering to customers angrily, pointing at the smear that had once been the corpse of one of his birds.
        “Ghost. Princess. You’re on the team. Return to your barracks and await orders. The rest of you follow me.”

        ***

        With thirteen recruits remaining, Demon felt no closer to reaching a conclusion. Aside from Cindy, none of them had done anything to inspire confidence from him. He frowned. He really needed to stop thinking of Cindy by name. Nogitsune. She needed to be a callsign to him. She went through the trials with an air of amusement, as if she were quietly teasing him by jumping through his hoops. 
        Part of him was truly tempted to take Nogitsune, Ghost, and Princess and approach Uncle as a four-man team, just to see the look on the walrus’s face.
        After making a few requests of Uncle, he had led the candidates back to a similar room as the one they had started in. He had decided that evaluations and skill demonstrations simply wouldn’t cut it. He had to see them make real decisions, even if simulations were the best they could do. 
        He stood by the door next to a screen which projected their objective.
        “This is a civilian building, but it is being defended by terrorists. They are protecting a high value target within. You each have intel on the building and the target typical of what you’d receive in the field, as well as a list of materiel. Secure the target and minimize civilian casualties if you want a spot on this team.”
        He fell silent. Three people, including Nogitsune, immediately began rifling through the intel in front of them. The others waited for a beat, expecting more instruction. When he offered none, they opened their intel as well.
        The objective was dangerously similar to their actual mission, he knew. Uncle stood across the room at him, frowning but quiescent. He was looking for the traits Ghost and Princess had displayed on the roof: confidence, patience, willingness to act, skill to avoid unnecessary casualty, but ability to take risks when ordered. 
        And one other thing. Interoperability. For the tech geeks, it was a buzzword. Something they wrote on proposals to get funding. Demon had always liked the word when applied to people, not systems. Princess had proven her ability to work with any sniper and take orders without question. Ghost had shown a willingness to take guidance from a spotter, which tended to be rare among snipers. 
        Interoperability was the nebulous trait he was looking for now. He hadn’t told them to work together, and he hadn’t told them not to, either. Each candidate had the tools necessary to accomplish the mission after some fashion, but the solutions they could come up with independently would be crude and dangerous. A true mission success would only be possible if people pooled their resources.
        Demon leaned against the wall by the door, watching them all. He kept an eye on Domino, smiling as she frowned and reviewed the mission materials for the third or fourth time. Finally, she stood up, dossier clutched in one hand, and walked over to him.
        “Sir,” she said. “I don’t--”
        “Don’t call me sir, Domino. You can call me Demon or commander, but nothing else.”
        She frowned. It was obvious she didn’t like being interrupted, which, of course, meant that he enjoyed nothing better.
        “Commander,” she corrected herself. “I don’t think these mission parameters are correct.”
        He arched his eyebrow slowly, resisting the urge to smile.
        “I assure you, they are correct.”
        “But commander--”
        “Domino,” he interrupted again. “They are correct. Even if they’re incorrect, they’re correct. Even if you think the mission is impossible, they’re correct. You can sit back down or you can dismiss yourself, but the mission I gave you is the one I want you to accomplish.”
        She frowned and he gave up resisting his smile. She straightened slightly and turned her back on him, returning to her terminal. Two terminals away, Nogitsune was leaning over her own dossier, whispering in low tones to a lanky wolf who was the youngest of the remaining bunch, even younger than Princess. Demon smiled, a little relieved that Nogitsune turned out to be the first one to break the room’s silence. A few other candidates noticed their collaboration and began whispering together as well. Everyone paired off, except for Domino.
        Demon studied the wolf by Nogitsune’s side. He was the youngest candidate in the room and had earned himself a reputation of complete mechanical ineptitude, supposedly so bad that he couldn’t even screw in a lightbulb without burning it out. The knack had earned him the callsign ‘Spark,’ and it matched his dishevelled hair and quick eyes. They argued and discussed the mission heatedly together, getting much more animated than any of the other pairs, and clearly aggravating Domino nearby. Curious, Demon moved into earshot of their whispers.
        “Would you two be quiet?” Domino hissed in a low tone.
        “Sorry,” Nogitsune said, though she didn’t sound very apologetic, just businesslike. “We have a plan for extraction, but no good method into the building.”
        “Securing the asset is no good if you don’t have the ammo to take out the defending forces,” Domino said offhandedly, scribbling notes onto a legal pad with her shoulder turned toward Nogitsune.
        “Ammo? We have plenty of ammo. We’re drowning in ammo. I just need some damn C-4 or something to get into the fucking building,” Spark grumbled.
        Domino looked up, meeting Nogitsune’s eyes.
        “You need C-4?”
        Domino rolled her chair over to the other two, sliding her dossier across the table to push it next to theirs. The three ducked their heads together and whispered animatedly to one another, lower than Demon could hear. Domino pulled her legal pad to her and began sketching out what looked to be a rough set of physics equations with vectors relating to a rough sketch of the building’s blueprints.
        The other pairs in the room noticed the three working so quickly and quietly. Chairs rolled as pairs expanded into groups of four.
        Spark’s head popped up from the trio. With a quick command, he pulled up the simulation interface on his terminal. The simulation wasn’t a robust graphical interface like some of the training cadets and enlisted went through. There were no flashy modelled soldiers running around buildings and shooting big guns. Mostly, there were just numbers. Variables that the candidates could enter to model their solution. The base’s modeling and simulation team had done a remarkable job in a short time, putting the simulation together at Demon’s request, but the interface lacked the polish most of the candidates would be used to. Undeterred, Spark began typing quickly, faster than Demon would’ve ever guessed, considering his callsign.
        Spark turned toward Domino and Nogitsune with a questioning expression. Both women rolled their chairs over, going over his model. Nogitsune nodded, then looked to Domino. With the time she took, Demon knew she must be reviewing the variables three or four times at least, running the scenario in her head.
        Then she reached out and hit the enter key.
        ‘Mission Success’ flashed on the screen, followed by a detailed output of casualties and results.
        “Ha!” Spark exclaimed, startling everyone in the room. “BOOM, girl!”
        Spark held his hand up for a high-five. Domino and Nogitsune exchanged a glance, then they both sheepishly accepted the gesture, the team high-fiving as the other three teams in the room bent back to their own scenarios.
        “Stop,” Demon said softly, glancing over the numbers on Spark’s screen. Their final outputs were far from perfect, but the raw numbers weren’t the only things he was looking for.
        “Nogitsune, Spark, and. . .” he smiled slowly. “Boomgirl. Congratulations. Await further orders in the barracks. The rest of you are dismissed.”
        Demon looked up, meeting Uncle’s eyes. The walrus nodded slowly, then turned and exited the room.

        ***

        A few hours later, Demon carried a small tray of food into a room at the interior of the base that he’d asked set aside. The rest of the team was already there, making idle talk around a small, round table in front of the rows of bunks. The six of them would be serving day and night together until their mission was accomplished. He’d ordered a separate room for them to bunk together before they rolled out in the morning.
        The conversation stopped when he walked in. Nogitsune let out a yip and pushed her chair back from the table, bouncing over to hug him around the neck as he laughed, holding his tray out to one side so she wouldn’t knock it over.
        Domino--redubbed Boomgirl by Spark’s exclamation--looked up with a raised eyebrow, swallowing her mouthful of food.
        “You two have a history?”
        Demon shrugged nonchalantly, giving Nogitsune a squeeze around her waist before joining the others at the table. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Boomgirl. Let’s keep the PII to a minimum, alright?”
        Boomgirl nodded, looking between him and Nogitsune thoughtfully before ducking her head to her food. The group ate in silence for a moment.
        “So,” Demon said, gesturing with his fork. “You guys want details on the op, or should we go around the table and do some icebreakers.”
        “Op,” said the other five simultaneously. He smiled.
        “U.S. Intelligence has pinpointed a chemical weapons facility operating just past the DMZ. Given the administration’s history, and after what happened in Pakistan, they’re asking us to operate on the intel instead of moving on it themselves. In addition to removing their manufacturing capability, we have also been ordered to secure one of the lead scientists in the facility, who may have information about North Korea’s plans to use these weapons. The North Koreans have made their intent to attack the west pretty clear, and we need make sure we’re ready for them, and that they can’t unleash these chemicals on our citizens. Or anyone, for that matter.”
        Everyone had stopped eating except for Spark, who looked up, startled, when the room fell silent. Looking abashed, he swallowed his mouthful of food and sat up straighter.
        “That doesn’t exactly sound like a UN-approved mission, commander,” Ghost said, breaking the silence.
        “The chemical plant doesn’t exist, and neither do we, as far as the U.N. is concerned,” Princess said softly, turning back to her food. Demon was a little surprised at the resolve he saw in her eyes..
        “I’m not sure what the process is for approving a non-existent squad to destroy a non-existent chemical plant,” Spark added with a snort. Nogitsune, Boomgirl, and Ghost all looked at Demon expectantly.
        “The door’s right there,” he said softly, looking Ghost in the eyes. “Through it, you’ll find a happy world of UN back-patting, ranks, and orders you don’t have to shred after reading. In this room? I’m the UN in this room, Ghost. You can choose which world you’d rather live in.”
        The look in Ghost’s eyes hardened a little and he nodded. Demon continued, trusting the sniper had made his decision.
        “We’re not going to have traditional intel for this mission. It’ll just be us and what’s strapped on our backs. No handy blueprints, structural or force analyses. The analysts haven’t seen this place, and the Yanks couldn’t risk wiring us what little they have. We roll out at 0300 for insertion by 0400. Extraction will be on call. Given the diplomatic tension, we may have to lay low for days before Uncle can get another bird across the DMZ.”
        “One last thing,” he said, unconsciously lowering his voice. The team leaned forward. “And the orders were very explicit on this. There are to be no witnesses of this operation.”
        The team was silent for a beat. Boomgirl wore an inscrutable look on her face as she leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms and looking thoughtful. Princess looked solemn and Spark uncharacteristically grim, but the two nodded within moments of each other. Nogitsune said nothing, but he knew she trusted him and would do what was necessary. Ghost met his eyes.
        “Civilians, commander?”
        “As far as you are concerned, Ghost, none of these men are civilians. Let me be absolutely clear,” he looked at each one of them in turn. “Each and every man and woman in that facility will be dead when the seven of us--this team plus the asset--walk out of there. The world you knew of innocent civilians lies outside that door, and this is your last chance to return to that world.”
        Spark, unfazed by the no-nonsense rhetoric, turned back down to his food, stuffing his maw full of dry, overcooked pork chop. The other three turned to see Ghost’s response. It was unusual for a team’s sniper to become their conscience, but Demon knew Ghost’s record. He’d taken out an impressive number of targets over four tours, but every mission he’d been on this far had been humanitarian. Relieving villages of their warlords or securing civilian supply convoys. 
        Eventually the sniper nodded, and the tense atmosphere eased a little. All six of them quietly returned to their meals. They ate in silence, and Demon privately hoped each one of them was considering the weight of what he’d told them.
        “Demon,” Princess said tentatively, “You seemed to place a lot of emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties in the evaluation.”
        “I did,” he said, nodding as he chewed.  “I can see how it seems like a contradiction. I can’t trust someone on my team who doesn’t put value on a man’s life. But at the same time, I was looking for people who could act when asked to. It’s a tough balance to strike.”
        Princess nodded, chewing thoughtfully. She glanced around at her teammates. “For what it’s worth, I think you were successful.”
        Everyone at the table smiled.
        “So do I, Princess.”
        Her expression changed rapidly. “God, do you have to call me that?”
        Demon chuckled softly. “The more you hate your callsign, the more likely it is to stick. Isn’t that right, Boomgirl?”
        The squirrel sighed and rolled her eyes. Nogitsune chuckled.
        “You should’ve seen him,” Nogitsune said, pointing her thumb at Demon. “He hated the name Demon. Punched a guy’s lights out the first time he heard it to his face. As you might imagine, that didn’t help one bit.”
        The rest of the team laughed nervously and Demon sighed dramatically.
        “They called me Demon because of the firing range, not because I decked that guy.”
        “Mmm, you tell the kids whatever floats your boat, Demon,” Nogitsune said, jerking her chin at the other teammates, each of whom was at least five years younger than either of them. “I was there.”
        “What about you?” Spark asked, nodding at Nogitsune. “Nogitsune doesn’t seem like the most creative callsign.”
        Nogitsune shrugged and smiled at Demon. “You wanna tell it?”
        Demon smiled back. “That’s not her full callsign.”
        Princess raised both eyebrows. “What? It’s pretty long as it is.”
        “Technically speaking, her full callsign is ‘Fucking Nogitsune Goddamn Troublemaker,’” Demon said with a chuckle. “They were the first words out of the sarge’s mouth when she lined up for bootcamp. First one he’d ever seen and he couldn’t believe his damn eyes. All he’d heard was stories, and he was just sure she was going to fuck something up every time he turned around. It was practically the name of our graduating class, because every time someone stumbled or fell out of line, he’d turn around and yell ‘FUCKING NOGITSUNE GODDAMN TROUBLEMAKER!’” 
        The entire table burst into laughter and Nogitsune smiled sheepishly. “Demon never let it go, either. He yelled it into my bunk every morning after we got a tour together. The lieutenant eventually asked him to shorten it up a bit, so now it’s just ‘Nogitsune.’”
        “Alright, Spark, your turn,” said Princess as she stacked the team’s plates and trays before setting them on the floor. Spark leaned back, resting his head on his interlaced fingers and propping his feet up on the table.
        “Alright. Anyone got a lighter?”
        Demon glanced around the table. Everyone shook their heads. Enlisted didn’t tend to carry personal effects. But Boomgirl unzipped a pocket on her leg and pulled out a fresh BIC. Spark nodded.
        “Alright. Light it.”
        Boomgirl raised her eyebrow. Everyone looked at her expectantly. She lit the lighter with a single flick, held the flame up for a few moments, then moved her thumb so it died. Spark nodded again then held out his hand. Boomgirl tossed him the lighter.
        Spark unzipped the pocket on his left sleeve and pulled out a cigar, its tip already cut. He held it up towards Demon. “May I?”
        “Son, you could get shot in the head tomorrow morning and I wouldn’t be able to tell your mother why. I’m not gonna keep you from a damn cigar.”
        Spark smiled his thanks then held out the cigar over the lighter. Demon had heard somewhere that BICs ruined the taste of a fine cigar, but what the hell did he know about smoking?
        Spark flicked the lighter, sending up a spark, but no flame. He flicked it several more times. Six. . .ten. The thing refused to spit up a flame to light the stick in Spark’s other hand. Demon frowned, watching Spark’s fingers to see if he was doing something wrong, intentionally or not. But how could you really screw up flicking a light? Spark smiled ruefully and tossed the lighter back to Boomgirl. 
        Spark pointed, gesturing with the cigar still held between two fingers. “In boot camp, they actually called me Fritz. Lightbulbs popping when I passed, radios turning to static, routers dropping wi-fi. I’m pretty sure half of it was pranks staged by my bunkmates, but ‘Fritz’ stuck pretty good. When I got my first assignment with the RAF, my lieutenant’s callsign was Smoke. Now there’s a damn callsign I’m jealous of. I hadn’t had a damn stick since enlisting, and he’d carried two whole boxes with him into theater. My first night, he offered me one to cool my nerves, but I couldn’t get the damn thing lighted.”
        Spark held up the cut, unlit cigar and smiled. “Spark kinda stuck after that.” He slipped the cigar back into his pocket and zipped it up.
        The table was quiet for a moment. It was a good story, one of the better callsign histories Demon had ever heard. Then he remembered something from Spark’s dossier. 
        “Spark, what’s your field?”
        Spark twisted his lips into a grin. “Comms.”
        The whole table erupted into laughter again.
        “And field medicine,” Spark added.
        “Oh, god help us,” Ghost prayed, laughing.
        Nogitsune smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve got some medic training, too. I’ll try to make sure your heart doesn’t stop when Spark’s around. Come on, Boomgirl, your turn.”
        “Everyone knows how I got my callsign,” she said darkly, glaring between Spark and Demon. Spark looked abashed, but Demon just chuckled.
        “Come on. Everyone has to pony up a story.”
        Boomgirl glanced around at the other five at the table, then sighed. She cocked her chair back on two legs, crossing her feet on the table and staring up at the ceiling. “You want a story? Alright. Officially, this is all classified, of course.”
        “I think you’re in good company, where national secrets are concerned,” Ghost said, looking interested. He’d turned his chair around backwards and was sitting astride it, arms crossed on the back.
        “Yeah, when we stripped off our ranks and insignia, everyone’s histories became classified. But this part of my past was classified before I even enlisted.” She looked around the group again. Everyone was silent, which, of course, was exactly what she’d been hoping for.
        “My first memory is of designing my first circuit. I had two of those dolls that talk and blink when you hug them, and I’d figured out that under that velcro in their back were convenient bundles of wires, batteries, and pressure triggers. I pulled all the stuffing out their heads and stuffed them full of C-4 that I’d stolen from my dad’s workbench a pinch at a time. Then I wired them both so that if I squeezed their right foot and left hand at the same time, they’d blow me to kingdom come. But, if I just hugged them, they’d still talk to me, because they were the only things that actually said sweet things when they hugged me. . .”
        “I was four years old, but I knew my father had debts he had to pay. And I was worried he was going to use me to pay them.”
        She glanced around the table, looking satisfied with the stunned silence she’d wrought.
        “That is fucked up,” said Ghost quietly. Everyone else nodded sympathetically.
        “When the Royal Marines kicked down the door, I nearly did it. There was enough plastic stuffed in those heads to wipe my father’s shack off the map, with me, my father, and the three marines right along with it. Then I saw the guy’s face who was looking at me. There were emotions there I barely recognized. Pity, empathy, worry, courage. I was so confused by it I forgot to trigger the dolls. The next thing I knew, I was in a clean, quiet room, staring into the kind face of the woman I now call my mother, crying tears of joy because she was telling me I’d never have to see my father again.”
        Demon let out a low whistle. He glanced sidelong at Nogitsune, noticing she was on the brink of tears. Princess, despite trying to maintain a stern, masculine demeanor, was no better.
        “Ghost,” Demon said into the tense silence, startling the sniper. “Tell me you have a funny story to follow that up with.”
        “Actually, I do,” he said with a forced smile. Everyone turned toward him, except Boomgirl, who was still staring at the ceiling, lost in her own thoughts. 
        “My first tour was in Afghanistan. Without going into too much detail, my section was off subduing insurgents while Operation Eagle’s Summit was going down. A local warlord was conscripting youths for the Taliban and after a week’s worth of recon, the order came down to take him out, which meant it came down to me, my Browning, and a hill over two clicks out.”
        “Now, I’m a damn good shot, but I’d never taken sight at anything at two clicks. My spotter was worth bugger all, not like Princess here,” he favored the woman with an appreciative smile. “Anyway, I lined up my shot. The warlord was standing on top of a building, an armed guard on either side, yelling at the frightened Afghani villagers his men had bullied into the center of the village. I had a bead right on his bloody temple and pulled the trigger.”
        “Well, like I said, I’d never sighted two clicks out before. I underestimated the fall and my shot went low. Now it’s hard to be sure because of those fucking robes, but I’m pretty sure I shot his dick clean off. The bullet landed in the thigh of his bodyguard. The warlord fell to the ground crying while his bodyguards shot each other, each thinking the other had turned rogue. The villagers turned on the guards. It was a fucking blood bath, but within a few minutes, every one of the warlord’s men was dead and the villagers had armed themselves. They found the warlord lying on the roof, clutching his crotch and sobbing, so they tied his wrists together with a rope and threw him over the side to hang against the wall of the building, bleeding from his dick, so that children could come by and throw stones at him.”
        The whole table was laughing, though Princess and Nogitsune were laughing much harder than the men, who all looked amused but uncomfortable. Boomgirl was laughing, too, though she seemed distracted. Simultaneously, all eyes turned to Princess.
        “Okay, okay,” she said. “Obviously, you’ve saved the best for last. That’s right, adorable cigar stories, horrifying toddler terrorists, and even the Taliban cock-shooting-gallery can’t phase me.”
        “Toddler Terrorist?” Boomgirl said. “I like that! Can that be my--”
        “No, Boomgirl,” the rest of the team said simultaneously. Demon laughed and Boomgirl crossed her arms, pretending to pout, but grinning despite herself. 
        Princess had her arms crossed, too, her eyebrow cocked argumentatively. Everyone quieted, and Demon gestured extravagantly to her, yielding the floor.
        “Twickenham Military Academy, 2010,” Princess said, sweeping her hands grandiosely, setting the stage. “The first year they turned co-ed. My dad was on the board of trustees; he was the one that spearheaded the change. I was fifteen, and it was just me and four other girls in that first class.”
        “The provost kept a close eye on everything. We were only hazed as much as the other cadets, and they converted one of the older barracks buildings over just for the girls. But just because they accepted us didn’t mean they had to like it. That first year was so bad. We were so lonely that we even started hating each other. Fights broke out in the girls’ dormitory all the time, even though there were just five of us. We looked like a group of battered housewives, which was just more ammunition for the boys to use against us.”
        “The only class where we didn’t get equal consideration was firearms training. The instructor was a Royal Marine, at least sixty years old, maybe seventy. Sergeant Leatherby. And every day we had sniper training he always said, ‘The Queen has no use for cunts like you on the front lines, so I’ve got no use for cunts like you against the butt of Browning.’ Let’s just say that all five of us got damn good at spotting.”
        “This goes on for a whole year and I don’t spend more than a week of it without a black eye or a busted lip. Then it’s time for commencement, and we get word that eighteen girls are coming up as cadets in the fall. Well, I don’t remember whose idea it was, but we decided that those girls didn’t deserve the shit we’d been through. It was time to show that goddamn Marine exactly what Twickenham cunts were made of.”
        “Wait,” said Boomgirl, leaning forward over the table. “I know this story.” Princess just grinned at her, putting her finger to her lips for silence. Looking excited, Boomgirl fell quiet again.
        “While everyone else is setting up for the ceremony,” Princess continued, “We break into the armory and all five of us grab a Browning. We climb up to the top of the Davis Wing of the Churchill Library and wait. As part of the ceremony, Leatherby was receiving a lifetime service award from the Academy and getting a plaque in the new barracks. Well, he walks up to the stage, shakes the Commandant’s hand, and then I shoot the plaque right out of his fucking hands. The other four girls shoot out all four tires of his Jaguar in the parking lot. Then we stood at attention, disassembled the Brownings in cadence, dropping the pieces on the roof, then saluted until the police came to arrest us.”
        “Jesus Christ,” said Ghost. “You could’ve killed someone.”
        Boomgirl was sitting forward, elbows on the table, her eyes a-light. “I knew it. You’re shitting me. You’re really a Twickenham cunt?”
        Demon shook his head. “No. She’s the Twickenham cunt. The other four got off pretty easy and went back to Twickenham the next semester. Princess here saw a little jail time for shooting into a crowd.”
        Princess smiled and shrugged. “I was a minor. That’s not supposed to be in my record.”
        “It’s not, but I remember the news.”
        “Then how the hell did you end up here?” asked Spark.
        “They let me spend two weeks in a cell without bond. Sergeant Leatherby was furious and he tweaked the Commandant into pressing full charges. I’m pretty sure the Commandant thought it was hilarious, but his wife sure as hell didn’t. But while the police, the judge, the Academy, and the Army were all bickering about what to do with me, I got a visitor. Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Emerald grey beret. No name, no rank, no insignia. He said that while the Queen and the Marines might give a fuck if there was a cock on the other end of that rifle, the SRR sure as hell didn’t. Charges were quietly brushed under the rug, they sent me to Wales and paid my way through a much smaller military academy outside of Cardiff. I graduated last year and just finished a six month tour here in Korea.”
        “You know, you got your own plaque at Twickenham, right?” Nogitsune said.
        “What?”
        She nodded. “My goddaughter is there now. I was there last year helping her move in. The other four girls pooled some money together and got a big plaque for the girls’ dorm that says ‘Proud Home of the Twickenham Cunts’ over a framed copy of the article that ran on the front page the next day, with that picture of the five of you saluting on the rooftop.”
        Princess smiled. “Sentimental bitches,” she said with a laugh. The other five laughed with her.
        Demon looked around the table, smiling to himself. He loved seeing a team rise from the ashes of strangers. He stood. “Get some rack time. Six hours till we roll out, and I’ll shoot you myself if you make us late.”
        Ghost, Princess, and Spark all laughed. Boomgirl cocked her eyebrow. Demon and Nogitsune just maintained stony, serious looks. The laughter stopped awkwardly and chairs scraped as everyone stood, heading to their bunks in the back of the room.
        Nogitsune turned toward him, lips parted to say something, but he gave her the same look he’d given the others. She frowned a little, nodded, and turned to find her own rack as Demon grabbed a chair and set it by door, killing the main lights. Then he picked up the stacked trays, carrying them back down the hall to the deserted mess.
        He came back to his team carrying on casual conversations as the they prepared for bed. The three ladies stripped down to their skivvies and walked together to the shower and latrine that adjoined their room. Ghost and Spark exchanged a couple of suggestive comments, but found they had little to say to one another without the other four to bolster the conversation. Ghost fell into his bunk with a book while Spark brushed his teeth. Both were asleep before the girls returned.
        Less than twenty minutes after Demon had issued the ‘order,’ the room was still and silent. He envied them a little, his own mind brooding over the mission and the choices he would have to make for these five people over the next several hours.
        “Sleep works better if you’re lying down,” Nogitsune said into his ear softly. He started, glancing up at her and rubbing his dry eyes. When had he dozed off? He glanced at his watch, relieved to find it had only been a few minutes.
        “You know me,” he said lamely, combing his fingers through his hair. Nogitsune sat a chair beside him softly. She hadn’t expected him to take up her suggestion to hit his own rack.
        “Yeah. You like to worry yourself sick the night before a mission, then end up sleeping sitting up, with your eyes open, creeping the shit out of the rest of us.”
        “Were my eyes open again?” he asked sheepishly, remembering the first time something like this had happened, the night before he and Nogitsune had been tagged to protect a convoy on its way into Kabul the next morning. He had woken up to a little shriek of alarm from her, when she’d found him propped up against the wheel of a jeep, staring open-eyed and unresponsive into the night.
        “Yes,” she said sternly. “That can’t be a healthy habit.”
        “What the fuck am I doing, Nogs? I picked a room full of children who’re volunteering to get shot in the face for their country. Princess and Spark just graduated high school for fuck’s sake. What the hell are they doing here? How can the SRR expect me to lead these fucking kids into a mission like this?”
        Nogitsune crossed her arms, leveling a stern look at him. “Kids? First of all, that’s on you. I was in that room. There were plenty of creaky old antiques like you and me to choose, and you picked this lot instead. You picked the four best damn ‘kids’ in that room--plus me--so that you’d have slightly better odds than a snowball in hell to keep those norks from melting all our faces.”
        “Second of all, where the fuck do you get off being such a hypocrite? When you were Princess’ age, you and I were lifting a jeep off of Captain Riggs when that convoy hit an IED. When you were Boomgirl’s age, you were carrying Headcase’s casket down an aisle of flowers in Leeds. And when you were Ghost’s age, you were saluting the fucking general as he pinned a goddamn cross to your chest, Demon. What makes you any better than them?”
        Demon lowered his head into his hands, sighing. “We were stupid,” he said softly, but he knew she was right. 
        “We’re goddamn soldiers, Demon. We know what we’re getting into.”
        “I’m glad you’re here, Cindy,” he said, taking her hand and smiling up at her.
        “Right where I’m supposed to be, Commander.”
        He stood, squeezing her hand before he let it drop. “How’d you make it to the SRR, anyway?”
        “You really wanna know?” she asked, glancing at him sidelong as she fell into her rack.
        “Hit me.”
        “Your dad showed up on my fucking doorstep. Told me, off the record of course, that the SRR had pegged you as an independent commander, doing off-the-books shit like this. He said he knew you’d never call me yourself, never ask me to come with you. Then he said he’d feel a hell of a lot better about the situation if you had your lucky charm on your team.”
        “Dad? Jesus Christ.”
        “Cut your dad some slack. He worries about you.”
        “I’m pretty sure the last time I said those same words about your dad, I came away with a black eye,” Demon said sourly, crossing his arms under his head as he lay down in his own bunk.
        “Yeah, well. . .regardless, I’m glad I took his advice. Plus, the last two times you went on a mission or tour without me, you got yourself shot.”
        He chuckled, nodding. “Didn’t have my lucky charm.”
        The room was silent for a while. He turned to look toward her bunk, but the room was dark enough that he couldn’t see her. 
        “Damn right,” she said.
        Demon smiled and closed his eyes.

        **** END, DAY 1 ****
        