Cutting Out Expedition

The Jackalope really ought to be named the Mud Turtle Lieutenant Madison Jones thought. The fleet collier was sitting on a planet with her broadband suppressor field up, hoping that the big squidcat cruiser had more important business than a three-man resupply vessel. Without the field, the Jackalope would get squashed like a bug; with it, the enemy had more limited options - but the Jackalope couldn’t go anywhere with the suppressors up.

“Skipper, I got good news and bad news,” Ensign Yu-Fang Smith reported. “The good news is that the cruiser is leaving. The bad news is that it’s sending us a shuttle. ETA is 35 minutes.”

“All right people, lets break out the party favors,” Jones replied. She opened the ships tiny arms cabinet and looked longingly at the plasmabuss for an instant before starting to hand out the w-grenades. W-grenades would at least work with the suppressors up, and the vaguely shotgun-shaped plasmabuss wouldn’t. “It’s going to be a pillow fight.”

“It’s going to be a puff-duster fight,” Squad Leader R’orl muttered as he reviewed the sensor data on the human ship. She had her suppressor fields up - a new thing in a ship so small - and she would keep them up. If she lowered them, she’d be vulnerable for a painful time, even against a shuttle, until she could spin up her regular defensive screen. But the suppressor meant no powered armor, and none of the usual weapons. They’d have to do this with old-fashioned gaffers and the new grenades.

“Let them come to us, people,” Jones said. She was a spacer, not a marine, but she’d done the best she could with her three-person crew. She had them spread out to cover the entrance to the tiny bridge, spread out enough and not too much - she hoped. “They’ll outnumber us, but the defense always has an advantage.”

“If their leader is dumb, they’ll all be bunched in the bridge,” R’orl mused. He had eight leotaur troopers, plus himself. The kraken shuttle pilot would stay in the shuttle. The humans would only have three or four, but offense was always harder. “Zhon, take your team left. Mcharn, your team goes right. Look for flankers. And be careful,” he added to the hotheaded female trooper. “Don’t just charge in, puff-duster fight or not, and don’t let your people bunch up.”

Smith tossed out a w-grenade, ducked back, waited a five-count, and peeked out again. Three leotaurs sprawled on the deck, made limp as overcooked pasta by the grenade’s weakness effect. They were could be secured up later, once the fight was over. “Got three of them, ma’am,” he reported over his commlink.

“Very good,” Jones’ answer came back. “Don’t get cocky.”

“Aye-aye ma’am - shit!”

R’orl crept forward, the two troopers of his own team staying well back in response to the signal from his lower right hand. He saw the pried-open hatch, and beyond it Mcharn and her two troopers. They lay limp on the metal deck like strips of fresh meat on the grill. Ignoring them, he peeked around the corner and drew back quickly. A human grenade bounced toward him and he flattened himself against the nearest bulkhead. The grenade went off and he felt the tingle in his fur as the weakness effect just missed him. Leaping forward, he threw out a grenade of his own, saw the human try to dodge, saw him fail. Only then did he turn to Mcharn. “I told you to be careful.”

“Bugger you too, sir,” the female answered weakly. “There wasn’t room to keep spread out.”

R’orl grinned - an expression he had heard that humans used too. “We’ll discuss this later. In the meantime you can reconsider your tactics.” The victims of a weakness grenade would lie limp for an eighth-day or so, and then suffer painful pins-and-claws for another eighth-day. There was a field expedient treatment for that, but any trooper would bite his head off - and rightly so - if he were to use it on them.

Zhon’s report came in over his eyepatch reader: The left flanker had been taken out with only one casualty. Very good he sent back. Wait by the bridge entrance. I will join you.

Jones watched the hatchway to the bridge being opened the old fashioned way: Pried open by a leotaur weapon of ancient-looking design and modern alloy construction. Timing. When the hatch was opened just far enough, she tossed a w-grenade.

The grenade went through, but the hatch fell down anyway, wrenched open just before the two leotaurs fell to the weakness effect. She readied another w-grenade, stood to get a better view, and threw. As she did so she saw a leotaur grenade flying toward her. “Damn!” She scrambled backward, but not fast enough or far enough. The grenade went off with a quiet pop, and Jones fell to the deck as all the strength drained out of her.

R’orl saw two troopers go down to the human’s weakness grenade, but they had managed to get the hatch opened before they fell. He stepped forward, threw his own grenade, and jumped back. Once more a human grenade came bouncing toward where he had been standing, and once more he felt the tingle as the weakness effect just barely missed.

“You got her, sir,” one of the troopers reported.

“Her?”

“The enemy leader is female, sir.”

“Ah.” He checked his eyepatch reader to see who was still standing. “Secure the other two prisoners and gather our casualties. Zhon, I name you prizemaster, and give you first choice of the other two prisoners.”

“You are keeping the leader for yourself then, sir?”

“Of course,” R’orl’s ear twitched in false surprise at the question. “It would be an insult to her bravery to yield her to another.”

Disarmed, stripped of all the useful gadgets that spacers usually carry, and relieved of her boots, Lieutenant Madison Jones felt herself being lifted to the shoulder of the leotaur commander. His two left arms gripped her firmly, and as he walked toward the airlock she felt the claws of one of his right hands touching and tickling the bare soles of her feet. A little strength flowed back into her - not much, just enough to let her giggle and squirm. Squirming, however, only served to emphasize how helpless she still was. The leotaur had an unbreakable grip on her ankles, a grip that likely would have still been unbreakable even if Madison had had her full strength.

Madison gained a little more strength as the tickling continued. She sensed that it was a casual tickle, and that made it all the more frustrating. Up and down the claws lightly ran, from heel to toes and back again. Then back and forth across her insteps. She tried to shield one foot with the other, but that only resulted in the shielding foot taking the full force of the quick, light, tickle-touches. She beat weakly on his back with her fists, but he ignored this. He just continued to walk slowly forward, using that spear-like weapon of his as a staff, idly forcing laughter from her as that one free hand continued to tease her vulnerable soles.

They entered the airlock, and the leotaur paused. The tickling paused too, as his free hand reached for the controls. “I thought,” Madison gasped, “I though you would give me to the tee-pods.” She knew what tee-pod tickling was like, at least. Like all the personnel at this stage of the war, she had been through the Navy’s Captivity Endurance Training. The CET course had left her confident that she could take the squidcat’s unusual methods for securing and pacifying human prisoners, even if she refused to admit to enjoying the experience. But this... personal touch was unexpected.

“No time for that.” The leotaur’s accent was a thick growl. “You would be most uncomfortable when the grenade-effect wore off. This will mitigate that.” He did something to her toes, making her giggle again.

He might have a point, Madison admitted. If the effects of w-grenades were allowed to wear off naturally the victim would go through an hour or three of pins-and-needles. Madison had gone through that once herself, in training, and could vouch for it being “most uncomfortable.” She’d never heard of tickling being used as a countermeasure, though.

The airlock opened, and the leotaur stepped forward. Madison felt the tickling begin again as the leotaurs free hand wandered once more over her soles. Once more the gentle touch of those claws forced squirming and laughter from her. She tried to twist her feet and clench her toes to avoid at least a small part of the tickling and found that she couldn’t. The leotaur had bound her toes while pausing in the airlock, and now her soles were completely vulnerable to his touch. That touch now switched from the slow long strokes he’d used before to quick, sharp attacks that lightly touched there, and there, and there, and there. Heel. Instep. Ball. Toes. In an unpredictable pattern. Madison squealed. She beat weakly again with her fists against the back of her captor, and laughed uncontrollably at the tickle tickle tickle that her leotaur captor inflicted on her as he made his way to the assault shuttle.

R’orl strapped his captive in place, belly down over the laps of two of his casualties. They could support her weight, while being too weak to indulge in any tickling themselves. That was his duty, as the formov of this prisoner.

Humans didn’t use formov; they put their prisoners into a bureaucratic mass rather than assign individual troopers the responsibility for individual prisoners. A recipe for abuse and atrocity, R’orl thought. But then humans had some odd, alien ethics: They used degrading and insulting methods to secure their prisoners, rather than the decent and honorable techniques that the Alliance employed.

Speaking of which... He brushed the fur of one of his right forearms over the exposed soles, producing a giggle. He followed that up with the claws of one hand making long slow strokes, interspersed with quick light touches with a second hand. His captive laughed at his touch, most excellently helpless. Tickling a captive was a little like the hunt, and a little like sex, but mostly its own kind of pleasure. And he had the entire shuttle ride back to the Quickstrike to do so.

He teased and toyed happily with those human feet on his lap. They were softer and more complex than leotaur feet, and more rewarding to tickle. He applied the techniques he had practiced so often in simulation, varying his tempo to avoid desensitizing his captive, applying tickle-strokes that ran up and down, back and forth, and around and around in circles and spirals. He used his claws and the pads of his fingers with his claws retracted. He used the fur of his forearms and a scrap of leather, scraping the tender skin of the instep with its edge to produce a wild burst of laughter.

Every so often he’d pause, allowing his captive to catch her breath. Then he would start the tickling again, sometimes with long soft strokes, sometimes with long quick ones, and sometimes with a vibrating touch. He sought out the most sensitive places, followed the most ticklish nerve endings over the pads of her toes and the spaces between, over the balls and heels of her feet, over the insteps and along the edges where instep met ball or instep met heel. Sometimes he would tickle the entire surface of both feet, sometimes he would tickle one foot only, and sometimes he would focus on a particular ticklish spot. Then he would adjust his tickling once more, to keep his captive laughing.

He kept his captive laughing for the entire eighth-day of the shuttle ride.